If Forbes says it, it must be true…
The period between New Year’s and Valentine’s Day is always the BEST for online dating. The economic slump has interestingly magnified that good news. People look for relationships and love in times of stress, and we are stressed.
Depressed Dow Drives Americans into Arms of Online Dating
A handful of online dating sites are reporting activity spikes following September’s global financial crisis.
“On days when the US Dow Jones industrial went down […] by more than 100 points, more people were likely to log in and spend more time on the site,”
stated Senior Research Scientist Gian Gonzaga in an interview with Reuters.
“People seek out companionship in times of stress. Studies repeatedly show that being in a relationship can help a person’s psychological and physical health.”
CEO Thomas Enraght-Moony of Match.com corroborates Gonzaga’s view. “During these trying times, people are looking for hope in their inbox,” he said.
November brought Match.com its largest membership increase in the last seven years.
But even lesser-known dating sites, like Perfectmatch.com, are seeing bounty. The latter reported a 47% hike in membership in the three months to November compared to the previous quarter.
An Opinion Research Corp. poll, sponsored by eHarmony, found 57% of Americans worry more about their love lives amidst the credit crunch. Married men were most affected, with 63% stressed over love.
And 75% of poll-takers between 25 and 34 worried whether the economy would negatively impact their love lives. Younger, single respondents were more likely to pursue a relationship as a result of these concerns.
Older respondents, which were more likely to be married, still worried financial issues would harm their existing relationships. “There are often more fights over bills and household budgets” among couples in climates like this one, Gonzaga pointed out.
The Opinion/eHarmony poll comprised 1,092 users. Meanwhile, a survey by Avalanche LLC — which operates date.com, matchmaker.com and amor.com — found 84% of people are spending more time online or over the phone before meeting face-to-face.
With all that in mind, it bodes well for the online dating industry that the Dow is down 35% this year.
Online dating services became aggressive advertisers in ‘07, with eHarmony spending the most: $110.1 million in total as of February last year. Match.com followed, spending $66.4 million in total.
Their efforts weren’t wasted. Prior to 2008, Mediamark Research found US adults were increasingly receptive to online dating, which was previously stigmatized as an arena for the desperate and unloveable. Men were slightly more likely to log onto an online dating site (52.2% versus 47.8%), and people between 18-34 consisted of over half of the online dating population. Single parents were significantly more likely than average to pursue a ‘net-based romance.
The face of online dating in general has evolved since then. Online speed dating debuted late last year. And last month, online dating conglomerate eHarmony lost a three-year-old suit for refusing to match gays, lesbians and bisexuals. The company will launch a gay dating site, “Compatible Partners,” in early 2009.
Frustrated with Internet dating? Maybe it’s you…
From my January 1, 2009, *eMAIL to eMATE* You are not a subcriber? Here’s how: https://find-a-sweetheart.com/pages/signup_for_newsletter/
Whether or not you have been using an Internet dating site to find love, a better question than “Why try Internet dating?” is “Why not?”
Yes, online daters experience myriad frustrations. Here are a few that I hear regularly from my clients:
It takes so much time.
I hate all that emailing.
I feel so exposed.
What if my friends/relatives/clients see me on a dating site?
Love should happen naturally, without this kind of effort.
The only people who contact me are jerks/fat/crazy/boring/out for my money/interested only in sex/not interested in sex/ugly/loaded with baggage/scary/liars.
I can’t write about myself.
I don’t have any good pictures.
Any of these sound familiar? Of course, there is some truth in each statement; otherwise, the complaints would not sound so believable. But none of these excuses are good enough reasons not to use the best tool that has come around to help older singles find love – singles over 30, I mean.
The Internet and dating sites are merely tools, good, sophisticated tools, but just tools, nonetheless. You the user have to learn to manipulate the tools to do what you want. If you are not using the tool properly, or haven’t learned how, it’s no surprise that you don’t get the results that you want.
Think of Internet dating sites like specialized telephone directories. Just as everyone with a land-line telephone gets a listing in the local telephone directory, any single with access to a computer and the Internet can sign up to be listed on an Internet dating site.
We all know how marvelously useful telephone books are. I’ll bet it would be hard to find a household without one. If you have a business, you’d be crazy not to have a phone book listing, because that’s where people go to find a plumber or beauty salon or the closest pizza parlor.
Similarly, Internet dating sites are very, very useful. The biggest advantage is that everyone listed is looking for love. Keep in mind how hard it is to tell if someone is looking if you bump into them in the grocery store. On a dating site, you know. And so does everybody else.
But also, think about how much more information you get about an individual who had listed on a dating site, much, much more information than you would get in a Yellow Pages ad. We never think twice about using the Yellow Pages to find a plumber, let’s say. We may ask a friend for recommendations, but we don’t blame the telephone or the directory if the plumber turns out to be a jerk. Nor do we never hire a plumber again. We use our judgment. We simply don’t use that plumber, and we go back to the phone book for another one.
We don’t throw out the phone book or the phone simply because we dialed a wrong number either.
The phone book is full of people who lie, cheat, and you wouldn’t want to marry. But the phone book also contains nice people, great folks, even, and we all know that. We know how to use the phone book as a tool to contact those folks, and we never even notice the listings we wouldn’t be interested in. We skip right over what we don’t want.
Don’t throw out the Internet equivalent of a phone book for singles, simply because you haven’t figured out how to use it to your advantage. Yes, Internet dating sites are much more sophisticated than a telephone directory, and therefore harder to learn how to use effectively, but the principal is the same. Dating sites list hundreds of thousands of singles, 99.9% of whom you will not be interested in. Same with phone books: 99.9% of the listings in the phone book you will never call and never want to. But that .01% you would be VERY interested in, and the phone book/ dating site allows you to find them.
The anger, disgust, disappointment that you may feel about looking for love online is not the fault of the dating site, that is, if you have picked a good, reputable one. Your frustration most probably is that you have not learned how to use the Internet and dating sites to get what you want. Or perhaps, what you want doesn’t exist, so you need to readjust what you are looking for. But the point is, the solution lies in you – and part of that solution may be getting help to learn what you don’t know about making online dating work for you. This is where hiring a coach can really pay off handsomely – just try me.
The best time ever to look for love online! Right now!
If you need more reasons to get going and get online to find love, here’s more good news: First off, online dating sites report huge surges in membership and traffic right after New Year’s, so now is the time to get your profile shaped up and ready for action.
Even better, the economic stresses are also pushing people to find love. Match.com reported the best November in seven years, and other dating sites are similarly reporting surges in traffic.
It’s probably no mystery about why activity is the best it has been in seven years: seven years ago was right after 9/11. That tragedy marked the beginning of online dating coming out of the closet and into the mainstream. In unsettled times, people yearn for family and connection. This is another one of those times.
Pick your dating site and get going. Or if you are already on a dating site, get active. Lots of new folks mean lots of new potential. Take advantage of it!
Last weekend, Drew and I were in New York City (or more precisely, Weehawken, NJ, which is right across the river from Manhattan) at the “Worldwide Conference” of Matchmakers. This was the first one ever, or at least in recent memory, and what an interesting group of people to spend some time with! Graciously, or perhaps to improve the attendance, the matchmakers also included dating coaches, which is why I was there.
I’ve written about matchmakers here in my blog before. Frankly, I am such a do-it-yourselfer that I just can’t see paying someone else to do the work for me. It’s hard for me to take people seriously when they complain about how much Internet dating costs. It’s CHEAP, particularly when you start looking around at matchmakers. One guy at the conference was with a business that charges $60,000 to $120,000!!! Yup, that’s the right number of zeros you are seeing.
Matchmakers have seen a surge in business by riding on the coattails of Internet dating. While dating sites do take a chunk of business that matchmakers might have gotten before, Internet dating has paved the way for people to actually think about hiring someone to help them find love. And the theme I heard over and over was the potential market for matchmakers in frustrated online daters.
Still, the fantasy that many may have about matchmakers being able to find you a mate when you can’t find one yourself has many limitations. First, you still better be pretty marketable yourself: Attractive, in good health, not too old, and with something to offer. Particularly if you are female. ALL the matchmakers complained about the shortage of men, where do you find dates for these ladies?
And remember, matchmakers can only match you with people they have on their own roster. What if your perfect mate lives outside the matchmaker’s area, or would never sign up? Most matchmakers do not allow browsing through their roster either. You are subject to who they pick for you. Me? Uh uh.
Matchmakers also remind me of eHarmony, in that they do not take on people they don’t think they can match. Or the less ethical may take a client regardless of their match-ability, simply for the money. Yick. In fact, matchmakers used to routinely reject all women Over a Certain Age (like 40 or 45). For sure, the older you are if you are female, the greater your chances of being turned down by the matchmaker. Let alone a date.
So if you are male, have the bucks to spend, and no time to waste, you might do okay with matchmaking. However if you are female and over 40, you’d do much better getting online and doing the work yourself. That’s where the guys are.
Ya’ll know I have my problems with True.com (see my postings here), but I am not above quoting their surveys (minus their self-promoting ya-ya). This is from a :
Survey results showed that most single fathers agree that online dating is a safer and easier method for meeting other singles:
—75 percent of respondents said that online dating is the easiest way
for single parents to meet others
—67 percent said that online dating is a safer way to date
And:
The survey also revealed that saving time is considered the most popular convenience of online dating:
—37 percent said that online dating helped them balance time between
work, dating and family
—More than half (53 percent) go out on traditional dates less than once
a month
Ever since I started working to help singles find love using the Internet, I have been astounded at the numbers of people who get impatient at the process and try to hurry it along or quit altogether. “Three emails and then meet for coffee or I am done.” “I met three different guys and they all lied about their age, so I pulled my profile.”
Folks who rush the process are depriving themselves of one of the chief advantages of meeting online: The ability (if you use it) to prescreen potential dates.
Because you get information via a person’s online dating profile that you would seldom get before a traditional date with a relative stranger, and because you are meeting online rather than in real time and space, you can study what the other presents, ask questions, look for gaps or inconsistencies, and read the lines as well as between them. You can learn a lot by what and how a person writes, as well as what they don’t. And all without dealing with the nerves and worries of a first date.
You are bound to waste a lot of time (and drink a lot of coffee) if you move too fast from first contact to first “real time and space” meeting. You could also be inviting trouble. Move gradually, starting with emails through the website, then through a safe email address (Have you set up a Yahoo! or Hotmail email account that is not traceable to you? You can email me for instructions on how to do so). Then, phone contact: Use a cell phone, block your phone number using *67, or set up an anonymous phone number (see my blog piece on how to do so)
We all have the responsibility to prove that we are normal, real and truthful people to potential dates—and they have that responsibility to us, too. Regular, predictable contact over time will allow you both to build trust—or not.
From Your Romance Caoch, Kathryn Lord
Potpourri of Facts
A study by a German Internet dating site (www.single.de) found that older singles did better with online dating than younger folks. The figures quoted in a posting on IOL Technology are a bit confusing, but interesting. The site (which has more than 2.4 million visitors monthly) found that 15% of people age 40 to 50 said they had found a lasting partner on the Internet, while the figure was 11% for those 31 to 40 and only 10% for those 21 to 30.
Buried in an article in Forbes were these figures from Jupiter Research: Online dating is a $494 million industry, expected to reach $642 by 2008. The big three dating sites (Match.com, Yahoo! Personals and eHarmony) account from between 2/3’s and 3/4’s of the total online dating traffic.
Also quoted in the Forbes article was the results of a February 2005 survey by WeddingChannel.com that 12% of engaged or recently married couples met online.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
About.com Takes on Online Dating for Seniors
Here’s a great Q & A on About.com about online dating and seniors, so good that I posted a comment. Here are my words below:
This link to “Is Online Dating Right for You?” gives a great positive overview of the wonderful resource that Internet dating has provided for singles of all ages, but for seniors in particular. Where are all the nice older men (and women)? Online and looking!
I am a Romance Coach working mostly with singles over 50. Internet dating is THE best resource, and best of all, online, it is okay for women to make the first move. Men LIKE it.
I would also add that singles should be prepared to devote plenty of time to their search. We often wish that finding romance should be easy and “just happen,” but we should expect that the older and more certain of ourselves that we become, the fewer the “right” partners there will be.
Please visit my website at https://Find-a-Sweetheart.com and feel free to brouse the copious information there. And subscribe to my free email newsletter *eMAIL to eMATE*
Best, Kathryn Lord
Your Romance Coach
Internet Dating Goes Mainstream
James Silver writes about his return to dating at age 35 (a youngster!) in a lengthy article “Dating game? It’s more like a war zone” for the London Daily Mail. Mostly, the article is a description of first date disasters which began online and off, but I thought one of his observations was particularly apt:
Until a couple of years ago, online romance was a freak show peopled by drooling creeps, social misfits with teddy-bear collections still living with their mothers at 43 and those let out on day-release.
Anyway, in just five years that has changed entirely. While no doubt you would still be able to root out a host of oddballs on every dating site, now many attractive, functional single men and women, who hold down good jobs and don’t live with their mums, are at it, too. And, most significantly, they talk about it openly, compare notes and laugh about their (many) dating disasters.
Since I met my husband on Match.com in 1998, I can’t agree with Silver that up 2004, online daters were members of a freak show, but I do agree that in the last five years, Internet dating has arrived. The turning point was 9/11/2001. Remember what we all went through? Suddenly, we had an almost universal awareness of the brevity of life and an aching for family and connection. People FLOCKED to online dating sites looking for partners. Suddenly, looking for love online was mainstream, and the cyber-closet was no longer needed.
Yes, dating sites have their share of weirdos and misfits, just like in the general population. Yes, you have to weed through to find the gems. But now you know where they are hanging out. And focus on the jewels, not the garbage around them.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Obligation Free Dating
Caitlin O’Neil wrote in the Boston Globe article “Just Saying No” on May 28, 2006, that Internet dating really freed up her dating, creating an “obligation-free zone” that gave her privacy from friends and family. While singles still prefer meeting a prospective partner through friends and family, O’Neil correctly puts her finger on a little described facet of dating online: the privacy to succeed - or fail - without an audience. Unsuccessful match-ups and blind dates arranged by people who care mean that they care about the results, and this can cloud your judgement about the date themselves. If you prefer privacy when negotiating your love life, keep Internet dating in mind when charting your course.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Deals on Dating Sites
You wouldn’t believe the percentage of people, even on the biggest dating sites, who are not paid members. I’ve written about this before. On Match.com, I’ve been able to extrapolate that the percentages are anywhere from 7:1 to 11:11, paid to unpaid. That means that only 1 in 7 or 1 in 11 of the people you contact can email you back without paying the fee—a powerful disincentive to returning your email, unless you are clearly a “10.”
I can’t understand this unwillingness to pay your share for what is clearly a top knotch service. Particularly when the prices are so good when you sign up for more than a month.
Match.com currently is charging $12.99 per month when you sign up for six months. Yahoo! Personals is $12.49 per month for the six month contract. Yahoo! Premier (recommended—here’s why) comes to $20.83 per month for the same period of time.
Don’t worry about the six month factor: It’ll probably take you at least a month or two to get your feet wet on the dating site and get some experience in weeding out potential candidates. Chances are very good that you will not meet Mr. or Ms. Right in your first month. And so what if you do? For an investment of under $100 that gives you access to scads of people looking for partners, even if you find your Life’s Love on the first DAY, it would still be a great deal.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
PSD According to an article on biz.yahoo, Match has over 600,000 paid members and over 3,000,000 profiles (even those figures give a 5:1 unpaid to paid ratio). 60% of users are men (good news, ladies!), and Match has the highest percentage of over 35 users making $100,000 or more (7%).
Another Tipping Point Coming
A little over a year ago, I wrote about 9/11 being a tipping point (a la Malcolm Gladwell) for Internet dating, when going online for love and romance suddenly came out of the closet and into our living rooms.
I think we are at another Internet dating tipping point: Going online to find a romantic partner is about to be the #1 option for singles. Right now, “friends and family” is the only method of meeting a Sweetheart that beats out going online. And the attitude that I have been hearing and feeling coming around to is “Why WOULDN’T you be listing online? You are crazy if you AREN’T!”
Just as telegraphs and telephone and then email trumped each other as preferred methods of rapid communication, so too online dating. The access that a good sized site like Yahoo! Personals and Match.com gives an individual to large numbers of interested others, in privacy, is too good not to take first place.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
http://www.blognewbie.com/contentzsystem/index.php?S=0&C=edit&M=new_entry
Have you happen to have watched the three part “Secrets of the
Sexes” on Public Broadcasting. Catch them if you can—a
tremendous amount of helpful information about love, dating, and
sexual attraction.
Here’s one tidbit: Researchers set up a speed dating event with
40 men and women. They tested various strategies and elements,
trying to predict who would be attracted to whom. Almost all
their theories were blown out of the water. The only factor they
could find that determined who was the most attractive to the
other sex was height in men (the three tallest men got by far the
most date offers), and the ratio of waist to hip size in women
(the smaller the waist in comparison to hips is correlated to
fertility, which men seem to unconsciouly know).
Before the speed dating, the researchers tried to improve the
luck of a couple of the participants. One guy, who by his own
description was short, skinny, and not good looking, was put in a
store front window and women passing by were asked to guess his
profession, how much money he made, and whether they would date
him.
Not only was he short, skinny, and not good looking, he was made
more unattractive by his clothing: layered and badly colored T
shirts, jeans, and very odd shoes. The women guessed he worked
in a shop, made less than 30,000 pounds (the study was in
London), and sometimes rated him below 0 in attractiveness. Most
said they would not date him.
Then the researchers set him up with a stylist who dressed him in
a dark jacket and slacks, white dress shirt (open collar, no
tie), nice shoes and designer sunglasses. Then they put him back
in the store window.
This time, the women guessed that he was a professional or
business owner (in fact, he was a university lecturer), upped his
income to 40,000+, his attractiveness level by several points,
and were much more likely to agree to a date.
BTW, this same guy in the speed dating event (where he wore his
new outfit) did quite well. He indicated interest in ALL the
women, and two indicated enough interest back that he got dates.
He was very pleased and visably excited.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
The one religious group I hear from regularly looking for spouses of the same faith are Jewish. Actually, who I hear from are Jewish women, usually 40 and over. The slice of this subgroup having the most difficult time seem to be never married women in their 40’s. Women in their 50’s and 60’s, even those never married, have an easier time.
Several demographics problematically come together for these age 40’s women: The national trend of both men and women to put of first marriages well into their 30’s; The proverbial ticking clock (approaching menopause) which combines with the seeming heavier-than-average stress on marriage, family and children for Jewish adults; Men’s awareness (and avoidance) of women’s growing pressure to get on with marriage and child-bearing; The fact that both men and women in this group have successfully avoided getting married yet; And the low proportion of Jews in the general population (2%). If you add in that the individual in question may live outside the geographical concentrations of Jewish population (rural, sparsely populated areas are the worse), these women have a big problem.
Jared Shelly in “The Jewish Exponent” describes the demographics and problems succinctly in his article “Search for a mate gets complicated.” Shelly writes: “But while age can present a barrier to Jewish daters, it is not the only obstacle to finding one’s match. In a growing trend, as college graduates find jobs or seek graduate degrees outside their native regions, the Jewish community’s net has both expanded across the country and thinned out. There are now a smaller number of Jews in the places where they once traditionally lived.” Take a look at Shelly’s article for an extensive treatment of this subject.
Internet dating seems made for this spread-out group, and Jdate.com, with its more than 70,000 members, fills a big gap. Speed dating was INVENTED by a rabbi, for goodness sake, and speed dating events for Jewish singles are very popular. Speed dating, in fact, seems to have taken a place right beside Internet dating in popularity for all singles. Seems like the rabbi was onto something.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Romance Lost? Says Who?
Reporter Melissa Rayworth article “Romance lost in love found on dating sites” is interesting, if rather odd. While Rayworth is married, and to a man she met “in real life” and not through the Net, she is alternately curious, respectful, and appalled by Internet dating.
Probably, the basic weakness of the article is that Rayworth has not experienced Internet dating herself. How else could she title the article “Romance lost in love found on dating sites”? Who lost the romance? Online meetings and courtships can be VERY romantic. Just ask me. I had one. Actually three, if you count the two that went nowhere.
Rayworth quotes an expert: “The technology has increased the ability of people to meet others who are similar and meet a much greater number of people who are potential mates for them than has ever been true in human history,” says Robert E. Rosenwein, professor of social psychology at Lehigh University, who researches the connection between technology and human interaction.
Sounds right to me.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Gumtree.com, a London, England, site, surveyed 1600 of it’s members about their Internet dating experiences. While it doesn’t mean much for U. S. singles to know that Glasgow came out on top for dating site usage and success (almost 3/4 of the men and over half the women reported having a “fling” with someone they met online), still, the numbers indicate the growing importance of dating sites for singles to connect. Glasgow men and women also reported high percentages of longer term romance: 68% of men, 71% of women reported at least one serious or long-term relationship stemming from an Internet meeting.
Here’s the figures that I found most interesting: 77% of men and 33% of women from Glasgow said they found Internet dating more comfortable for connecting than a bar or the workplace. Wow.
This all points to the growing acceptance of online connecting. Singles like the ease, simplicity, and privacy. Not to mention the ability to meet many, many more eligible singles than has ever been possible before.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Match.com, Internet Dating, and “The Rules”
Did you know that Match.com and the controversial book “The Rules” both came out in 1995? Just about everyone one of my female clients (and virtually all of them are strong, independent working women used to running their lives) seems to have read “The Rules” and then gotten thoroughly confused.
Internet dating sites have thoroughly trashed The Rules, thank goodness, and Ladies and Gentlemen, be on notice. Women do not have to play the extraordinary coquettish games that “The Rules” suggested.
Dating sites put men and women on an even keel. I ALWAYS encourage my female clients to look around and contact men they find interesting. After all, you are much more likely to get what you want if you do the picking. And an Israeli survey noted that women never make the first move 25% of the time, but a shocking 34% of men never do! Can you believe it???
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Now I do think that women have to be careful to let men do some pursuing. But I also think that it is not smart for a woman to leave all the “getting in touch” to the guy. It is just too risky.
British Singles are Leading the Way Online
My, things have come a long ways since I first heard of Match.com and this thing called Internet dating, way back in 1997. And those singles in Great Britain seem to be taking to finding their mates in cyberspace like a good cup of tea. Maybe even better than us…
On January 31, an article in the Mirror (a UK company that bills itself as “The Best Newspaper on the Web”) listed tips for finding a partner. Look at what tops the list, and what author Flic Everett say about it:
DO IT ONLINE
THIS method of finding a partner offers the highest chance of success.
There are hundreds of good websites featuring literally millions of profiles - try www.mirror.co.uk/dating, where you can specify how near you’d like your matches to live, alongside age, interests and appearance. Online dating has a high success rate because you can check out a photo first and decide how much information to reveal - or not.
BEST FOR: Busy people looking for long-term love, because it offers a huge number of potential partners and allows you to communicate before you actually meet.
Even more interesting is the “Don’t try” list:
NIGHTCLUBS The people you meet will be drunk and on the pull.
YOUR MUM Mother does not know best when it comes to dating - and she’s still going on about that lovely boy/girl you dumped when you were 14.
THE CINEMA How are you going to get chatting in the middle of a film? If you like movies, join a film club to meet a partner.
BLIND DATES You’ll only be insulted by what your friends consider suitable date material.
WORK Although most Brits meet their partners at work, it’s not easy - because if you split up, there’s no place to hide.
I saw recently that more than 60% of British singles are looking for love online. That’s astonishing! I wonder if it has anything to do with how small the country is geographically? Searching all of British singles for possible mates would not pose as difficult a problem as it does here. The country is so small that even if your Sweetheart were at the opposite end of the country. likely you could get there in a day’s drive. Or an easy train ride.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Want some great points to make with anyone who is shocked that you are considering Internet dating? Read this article. The writer interview Melanie who makes the best arguments for going online that I have ever read. Here’s a sample:
“You’re right, the Internet’s a cesspool. I’m going to stop looking for love online and go to that seedy bar down the road where all the smart, intelligent, good-looking single men hang out. Oh yeah, I forgot, all the men in there are drunk. And married. And not that intelligent. The only thing I know about them is that they’re at a bar, not on the Internet.
“Online I can Google them, I can do a background check, I can see their picture,” she continued. “Try that in a bar. Yes, guys can lie online. But guess what? Guys can lie to you offline, too. I dated a guy named Gus I met at a traditional Christmas party for three weeks before I found out his real name was Allen and his wife’s name was Maureen.”
There’s more. You’ll love it. Check it out.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Online Dating Search Techniques
After you get your profile in perfect shape and posted on one or two dating sites, then comes the task of searching for likely mate candidates and sorting through the responses and results. Laura Gilbert of Match.com’s online magazine “Happen” has written an excellent article full of suggestions that will help singles in their search techniques. The fact that Gilbert quotes me in the article makes it no less fantastic. (You need to read through to end—I’m quoted in section #5).
Read the whole article for her in-depth discussion, but here are the points she made that I particularly liked:
#2 Go easy on height and weight constraints.
#3 Expand your age and location limits.
#5 Don’t get discouraged.
So may people are now listing online that it can be easy to get overwhelmed by so many choices. It’s all too easy to cut down the numbers by going for your ideal, ie: Tall, dark, and handsome, rich, and lives within a five minute walk. But every parameter you set ELIMINATES many wonderful candidates. The very best thing about online dating is that you have so many choices! Don’t eliminate the variety in an attempt to simplify your search. Take the time to thoroughly consider all types of potentials.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
I just came across this article, and it is so good that I am copying it in it’s entirety.
Millions of Seniors Use Online Dating Services
Dear Savvy Senior: Do you know much about senior dating services on the Internet? My two daughters have been urging me to try it, but I have some concerns. I am 59 years old, have been divorced for nine years and would like to meet some interesting new men, but the Internet seems a little strange. What can you tell me? - Single Senior
Dear Single: Online dating has become wildly popular among the Boomer and senior populations over the past few years. In fact, more than 16 percent of those active on the top-five dating sites are over age 55, and more than 5 percent are over age 65. Here’s what you should know:
Online dating: Not since high school or college will you find such a large number of potential dates and mates in one place. If you’re interested in dating again or, are just looking for a friend to spend time with, and have access to the Internet, online dating services can be a nice option. Here are some things to know.
* Convenience: You can meet hundreds of single people that tickle your fancy without ever leaving your home. Also, by exchanging e- mail you get to know each other slowly, without the awkwardness that comes with first dates. Most sites also offer instant messaging and chat rooms.
* Costs: Most online dating services allow you to create your own personal profile, post photos and search for compatible members for free. But, when you’re ready to start contacting people, you’ll have to become a member, which typically costs between $20 and $50 per month.
* Safety: When you sign up with a dating or matchmaking service, you remain anonymous. No one should ever get access to your full name, address, phone number or e-mail address until you decide to give it out at your own discretion. Be very prudent with giving out your personal information!
* Informative: Most sites offer personality profiles of their members that include things like photos, hobbies, interests, family history, political beliefs, dreams, goals and favorite activities so you can get to know members online before you decide whether or not you’d like to meet.
* Pictures Can Lie: Unfortunately, some people post photos that were taken many years ago, or that are extremely flattering and not very true-to-life. If you remember that they probably won’t look as good as their photo, you won’t be as disappointed.
* People Can Lie: In an effort to get more responses, or in some cases to deliberately mislead, some people lie in their profiles, so don’t believe everything you read. If they sound too good to be true, they probably are.
Senior dating sites
More and more online dating sites are recognizing the growing number of single Boomers and seniors who would love to find love and friendship with a suitable partner. Here are some top sites that specialize in senior matchmaking.
* SilverSingles.com: Owned by MatchNet, this is a great senior dating Web site with more than 8 million members worldwide.
* eHarmony.com: With more than 6 million users, eHarmony has been courting older singles by teaming up with ThirdAge (a Web site for Boomers) and attending last year’s AARP convention.
* SeniorFriendFinder.com: A senior dating site and part of the FriendFinder network. It draws upon a database of more than 2 million members.
* PrimeSingles.net: This site says it is for single men and women 40 and up, but the age group tends to be more in their late 50s and 60s.
* Match.com: While they don’t offer any special services just for seniors, Match.com is the world’s largest online dating service (for people of all ages), with more than 15 million members, many of whom are over age 55.
Send your senior questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or visit http://www.savvysenior.org. Jim Miller is a regular contributor to NBC’s “Today” show and author of “The Savvy Senior” book.
Source: Charleston Gazette, The
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