We occasionally hear people express confusion or disapproval over the difference in platform pricing between male and female professionals.
Some people believe that having a monthly subscription model for male professionals is sexist against men. E.g. why should they have to pay each month when the vast majority will be unsuccessful?
Equally vocal is the claim it’s sexist against female professionals. E.g. why can't they be on a subscription model too? It might be cheaper than commission.
From our perspective, this is less about gender and more about data and market demand.
We originally didn't have website support for male professionals because there was so little client demand for it. We eventually decided to support them but based it on a subscription model in order for it to be financially sustainable for us.
Men can pay higher premiums for auto insurance and women can pay less for life insurance. The former have more accidents, the latter live longer. This disparity of price reflects the data, not prejudice. Similarly, our professional pricing models are based on the reality of the market and the data we have.
Some of our observations:
- Female professionals represent the vast majority of client demand.
- The quantity of interest in being a male professional is notable.
- That interest is completely disproportionate to the demand.
- The quality of interest in being a male professional is significantly lower than that of their female counterpart. It’s fraught with seemingly non-serious and frivolous candidates.
- A subscription model is a psychological barrier to entry, which is one reason why marketplace platforms tend to go with commision based models.
- In the case of male professionals, this financial commitment and psychological barrier acts as a net positive by effectively filtering out much of the unsuitable candidates.
- In the mean, a subscription model is financially less appealing to a male professional due to the additional challenges and uncertainty they face in the market.
- Conversely, the subscription model rewards the very few male professionals that are successful, in the form of comparatively lower platform costs.
The majority of female cuddlers will receive enough business that allow for a 15% commission to adequately compensate our costs. Whereas the demand and subsequent success rate for male professional cuddlers is drastically different which resulted in us taking a different approach.
We are hopeful that as the professional cuddling industry matures and becomes more mainstream, the divide in demand for male and female professionals will narrow.
Topic created for FAQ linking purposes only.