Successful online dating agencies
Everybody’s heard of match.com. It’s the biggest dating agency in the world in terms of the number of profiles it contains, but how does it stack up when compared to its competition?
How many times have you sent a message to someone on an online dating agency and not had a reply? I bet it’s quite a few times! Some online dating agencies are set up to encourage people to reply to one another.
Dating agencies that allow you to reply to anybody that sends you a message without requiring payment from you are doing something that’s very sensible. If people cannot reply to you for free, this is the scenario that may occur: You pay to join a dating agency, send many messages out to potential datees, and find that very few people reply to you. This has certainly happened to me in the past. Is it likely that you are really such a bad catch that sending messages to 20 people or so should produce virtually zero response? It’s not likely if you are pleasant and friendly in your emails! It simply has to be that people are not paying for the service, and therefore cannot reply to you.
So, the first thing to look for is a dating agency that allows anyone to reply to you for free, if you contact them first. It’s not necessarily the case that you won’t find success at the type of agency where both people have to pay, but it does make the job harder.
You’re also looking for a dating service that’s attractive, and will keep people coming back. LoopyLove for UK residents is really excellent in this regard; you get an email from them every now and again saying that somebody new has joined who lives in the area. It’s a shame that they don’t allow free responses (well, there is a way, but it’s not really feasible to use it); otherwise that would have been a really great service. Plentyoffish emails me once a week to get me to revisit the site, and although the email is not targeted, at least it keeps me visiting the site periodically. Plentyoffish is also free, so they really do well.
Unfortunately, Match.com does badly in both areas. They have plenty of profiles, but many are inactive. It may be worth signing up for a profile, and seeing if you generate any interest before you pay to subscribe to them.
OkCupid is another site where it is free to send messages to people and to receive them, but they don’t email me very much to keep me coming back! Everybody is busy, and most people need to be reminded that they could pay a visit to their dating website. However, OkCupid does have plenty of content to keep you coming back, and you can even create your own questions and surveys for it! These free dating agencies tend to generate plenty of word-of-mouth advertising, and have interesting features to keep you coming back, including their matching technology, which is the most novel one that I’ve seen, and has the potential to be the most accurate.
In my research so far, I have reviewed OkCupid, LoopyLove, Match.com, and Plentyoffish. LoopyLove comes out on top so far quite easily, because I have received 14 messages over a period of about a month, and 20 women have viewed my profile! If I was actually looking for a date, I’d be really tempted to subscribe to LoopyLove!
When you’re looking at online dating agencies, then, these are the things you need to look for. They’re selling you a dream, but it’s still you that has to turn that dream into a reality, and those dating agencies that can provide more to help you with your quest should be the ones that you look at first. I’m here to help you, by posting reviews on this site. I’m aiming to review one dating service every month. Just remember that while dating agencies want you to find love through them, as soon as you do, their gravy train of your ongoing subscription dries up!
Subscribe to our newsletter and get a free copy of the above e-book now!
Please review Spring Street Networks. This site used to be featured on the webzine site “Salon” I thought it was a great site for a certain kind of person. Maybe your more progressive, liberal type of individual that didn’t vote for Bush. I met some really interesting people on this site. The profiles were different and interesting too.
It was a “pay as you go” concept. That is to contact someone you purchased “credits”. But the site seems to have disappeared. I understand they were sued by someone over the “pay as you go” program.
Thanks – Matt
Matt, I did have a quick look at Spring Street Networks, but they seemed to be a business providing dating websites to other businesses to me. I’ve asked for more information in the new forum, so hopefully somebody will reply there.
Really damn good post, keep up the good work mate, I’m gonna add your site to my rss feeds!