Online Dating Guide

Tips for Handling Too Many Emails When Dating Online

Brad — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 04:00:38 +0000

A reader recently wrote in with the following question after she had received a large number of emails after signing up for online dating:

The challenge that I have is that when I go online, I get so many views, flirts, im and email requests that it is impossible to finish my profile, search or anything else.
I did hide my profile for now so that I can work on my profile. Thanks. Is there a strategy for handling all the requests and sorting through these interested men efficiently?
If I have to hide my profile, I am not viewable and it seems to defeat the purpose of being on the site. I am happy for the interest and am truly not complaining.

As she had suggested, this is actually a good problem to have. Most of the people who contact me have the opposite problem where they receive little communication or have trouble receiving responses. Still, this is an issue that some women run into.

While I do have some thoughts on dealing with the situation, honestly in the beginning you’ll probably just have to put in some extra work to review all of your emails. Just remember that things could be much worse and try to have fun with it!

Handling Large Amounts of Communication

Vague Emails are a Bad Sign
The first step you can try is to identify emails from men who are not actually reading your profile. As I discuss in my online dating guide, there are some men who spam the same email message to many different women. Spotting these is not too difficult. You should be on the lookout for emails that are vague or are not specific to your profile. A vague email does not always mean the man is spamming the email, but it is a warning flag. On the other hand, any emails where the man specifically references something that was in your profile, well that’s a good sign.

Things May Slow Down Over Time
Simple patience can sometimes help, too. This is because after the first month or so the number of emails that a woman receives often decline. This has to do with men identifying and contacting the women new to the service, thanks in part to how dating services flag new members. However, if you continue to receive too many email messages, you could try requesting in your profile that any man who contacts you put something specific in the subject line of his email. For example, you could say: “If you put your favorite color in the subject line of your email, I’ll be sure to get back to you as quickly as possible!” This provides you with a way to recognize those men who have read your profile without even opening the email. Obviously you would not need to use colors and could instead make it related to something in your profile…you could really use anything you want. Just remember, this is a rather strange thing to request in your profile so I would only recommend this if you feel this is absolutely necessary.

Winks and Other “Weak” Communication
As for winks and views, I would recommend ignoring these as long as you are receiving a large number of emails. I would concentrate on communicating with those men who are sending actual emails or other tangible communication, such as IM. They’ve shown the right amount of interest for you to continue pursuing communicating with them. Obviously if you’re interested in a man who winks at you, you should absolutely communicate with them! I only make this recommendation to try to save you time as an email is a better start than a wink.

If You Are Hiding Your Profile…
As for hiding your profile, this can be necessary in some circumstances. However, if you are paying for a dating service and at the same time hiding your profile that’s not a good thing! If you do hide your profile, I would recommend that you set aside some time to go through all your communication to identify the men you are interested in and start communicating with them. It may take some extra work, but by doing this you provide yourself with more opportunities in the long run because you don’t want to leave your profile hidden for too long.

If you still find yourself endlessly swamped with too many emails, you could try service like eHarmony or Chemistry. Since these services provide you with matches based specifically on your personality, you may find the communication process much more manageable.

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Does eHarmony Work?

Brad — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 04:00:03 +0000

Does eHarmony work? Do people really have success using it? The simple answer is this: yes, it does work and many people have great success, including marriage, using it. While that is the short answer, I think many people are more interested in this question:
Will eHarmony work for me?

That question is harder to answer but I’ll explain my thoughts with the hope that it will assist my readers when choosing whether or not to try eHarmony.

So…Will eHarmony Work for Me?

Now obviously I can’t promise you that eHarmony will work for you specifically. What I can do is explain what to expect when trying eHarmony and why it has worked for so many people.

First, eHarmony has had the majority of its success, in my opinion, because it removes much of the guess work out of online dating. With other online dating services bad dates are more common as is meeting people that you don’t get along well with. While people do have complaints about eHarmony, generally speaking the people I talk with agree that the matching system works very well.
Due to the above point, eHarmony limits the members you can communicate with. Sometimes you’ll have no one new to communicate with for days at a time. This can particularly be a problem if you live in a low populated area. This issue is perhaps the biggest complaint of eHarmony but this is the cost to be paid for a service that matches you as well as eHarmony does.
eHarmony has a guided communication process which is part of the benefit of the service but can also create a situation where the communication process (and the process of getting to the first dates) can take a little longer.
As I’ll discuss a little later, eHarmony has millions of members and the last I heard it was still the largest online dating service (when measured by daily visits). This fact does help off-set the issues discussed above.

With those points about eHarmony explained, I believe that someone with the following qualities is most likely to find success using eHarmony:

They live in an area with a good sized populate or they are willing to travel to meet other singles
They can appreciate (or at least accept) the benefits of the guided communication process, even though this may cause the overall process of meeting to take some additional time.
They can accept that at times they may not have new matches to communicate with. Many people never experience this issue but be aware it is a risk.

If you feel that you meet all of the qualities I describe above, then I do believe eHarmony can work for you (although I would encourage you to continue reading because the success many singles find is not limited to the service they are using).

No Dating Service is Perfect

If you are a single person who is considering trying online dating, let me give you a warning: no online dating service has a perfect record. Many people have found success and even marriage with eHarmony while others have not. The same can be said for every online dating service.

In my opinion, much of the success you may or may not have will come down to how you approach online dating and how committed you are to your dating life. The people I talk to who are committed to dating online, even when it gets frustrating, have much more success than anyone else, regardless of service. Keep this in mind regardless of what service you eventually decide to try.

The Success of eHarmony

If you are hesitating to try eHarmony because you suspect it might be a scam or not really work, that is not the case. This can be seen without even trying the service just in the amount of success it has had. As eHarmony points out on their web site, they’ve had over 20 million subscribers since the service was created. A service that flat-out fails its customers would never have this type success.

Learning More About eHarmony
In another article, I discuss in much more detail how eHarmony works. Also, I have written a free online dating guide that discusses many different aspects of online dating that go well beyond what service you decide to use.

Try eHarmony today.

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Lavalife Free Communication Weekend September 4th – 6th

Brad — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:52:32 +0000

Note: This free has ended but Lavalife offers a free 7 day trial you can use if you are still interested in trying the service.

Lavalife is having a free communication weekend this coming weekend starting Saturday, September 4th and running until Monday September 6th 2010. This weekend will be 100% free to communicate with all other members on Lavalife. This event appears to offer the entire service for free: contact any of the other singles through email or instant messenger and you can even take advantage of features such as seeing who has viewed you

Why Is This Such a Great Deal?

If you follow my blog, you realize there are free weekends at different services happening all of the time. So why is Lavalife any better of an opportunity? Mainly because of the freedom this type of service gives you. eHarmony and Chemistry.com are the two service that give out free weekends the most often: most months either one or both of these services will have a free event.

The difference between these two services and Lavalife is that Lavalife allows you to contact anyone at any time. eHarmony/Chemistry both give you matches: they control who you can contact. With those services, you may only have the opportunity to contact 5 or 6 other singles because that’s all the opportunity you’re given. With Lavalife, you’re really only limited by the time you have.

A Note to the Guys Out There…

Now, let me just offer a warning to the guys out there: you might be tempted, as many men are, to write one email and then send it to every woman within 30 miles of you. Don’t do this. There will be plenty of other men doing this and you want to separate yourself from the rest of the guys (plus, it’s a pretty annoying thing to be doing). If you have time, log into the service before Saturday morning and start adding women your interested in to your hot list. This way, when the weekend rolls around you will have identified women you are interested in and can take the time to write a personalized email to her.

That’s all the advice for now. Best of luck to everyone who is able to take advantage of this free event! For details on all the free events I’ve discussed on this site, check out this post.

Join Lavalife FREE!

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Online Dating Message Tips

Brad — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:00:53 +0000

Photo by The Welsh Poppy
Writing online dating messages can be frustrating. Spending the time to write the “perfect” email only to receive no response can cause many of us to ask if we’re doing something wrong.

Below are some online dating message tips, most of which I also cover in my online dating guide. Hopefully these will help you with communicating on online dating services and might even help you realize that a problem you think you have isn’t a problem at all:

Be Realistic with Your Goals
First, don’t be too hard on yourself. More often than not your dating messages are not going to lead anywhere. Many people, especially those new to online dating, see every unanswered message as an insult. Don’t let this be you. There are many, many reasons why you may not receive a response. Don’t assume that you’re doing something incorrect. While it is a good idea to look for advice and to try and improve your messages, is a bad idea to assume that everything you’re doing is somehow wrong.

Be Open
Don’t be too strict with your messaging. Again, many people limit themselves on who they contact or how often they contact new people. While I often encourage people to contact a certain number of other singles within short time periods, it is a bad idea to set artificial limits on the number of people you will communicate with.

Additionally, you should be open to communicating with many different types of people. Many singles I talk with believe that they know exactly what they’re looking for in the person they date. Then as they date more often, that idea of what they’re looking for changes over time. Give yourself every opportunity and communicate with anyone who catches your interest. Even if they are lacking in quality you would like or have a quality you dislike, it is just communication at this point. Even if it goes to a first date, it need not go beyond that. Don’t risk robbing yourself of finding that special someone just because you’re a little too picky with who you talk to.

Perfect Is the Enemy of Good
Don’t get hung up on trying to write the perfect email. If it’s taking you an hour to write a few lines to someone who may not even write back, you’re spending your time in an inefficient way. Better to write many good messages in an hour and try to write one perfect email in that same time period. There are many reasons why people do not write back and even if the perfect initial message existed (and I don’t believe that it does) you still might not get a response when using it.

Early On, Be Brief
I discussed this idea in great detail in my post on writing your very first email to someone new. Don’t be concerned with trying to “sell” yourself in your first messages. Express your interest and see what comes of it. As in my last point, this is in part to best spend your time while using the online dating service. You can read more on this topic in detail in the post I mentioned above.

Prove Your Read Their Profile
Many men do not take online dating seriously. They write one message and then send that same message to 50 women. To stand out from this tactic all you need to do is mention something specific from the profile and you’re already ahead of the game. So read the profiles of the people you are contacting and start a real conversation. This advice goes for women as well although generally speaking they seem to already follow it without being told to.

Where’d they go?!
At times you’ll be having a great conversation online and then the other person will disappear. Just like in my first point, don’t immediately assume you’ve done something incorrectly. This can happen for many different reasons. One very common reason is that they have met someone and are pursuing a serious relationship with them: always remember that you do have competition!

So don’t be too discouraged if occasionally someone you’re talking to disappears or stops responding to your communication. In fact, you should be communicating with multiple people simultaneously as well and may find yourself in the position of “disappearing” someday yourself.

Photo by stuartpilbrow

Hesitation Can Hurt Your Chances
This is true in several different ways. First, if you see a profile that you like and say to yourself, “I’ll contact them next week”, you have no guarantee that they’ll still be looking next week. You’re not the only person viewing these profiles so waiting can hurt your cause.

Additionally, the goal of online dating is to meet other singles. Not to communicate with them for weeks and weeks on end, with no hint of ever wanting to meet. Again, you do have competition. You have no guarantee that you are the only person they are communicating with and your competition may be moving forward where you are still asking basic questions in messages on the online dating service.

I can’t say this enough: the goal is to meet people! That doesn’t mean you have to ask them on a date before you’re comfortable doing so but it does mean you should always be trying to move things forward. Whether that means talking on the phone were moving the conversation to an instant messenger, your actions should always be meeting you towards that goal of actually meeting the person you’re talking to.

I hope you find these a good starting point for writing better online dating messages. For more information, be sure to check out my guide.

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Is eHarmony Free?

Brad — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:00:18 +0000

Is eHarmony free? This question comes up from time to time and the short answer is: no, eHarmony is not free (see this post for cost information).

Parts of the service are free and there are also free events that the service has from time to time. These two areas can confuse first time users about eHarmony so I’ll explain each of them and what exactly is free about eHarmony.

What Parts of eHarmony Are Free?

eHarmony is an online dating service that is all about matching you with other singles based on your personality. Because of this, the personality test is entirely free to take and your personality results are also free. These results will describe to you what type of person you are in a relationship and help define the type of singles you should be looking to date.

Once you’ve finished with your profile, eHarmony will then search other singles in your area and provide you with the best matches based on your personality. You can view your matches for free as well. However, you will not be able to view the photos in these profiles.

The next step of eHarmony would be when you would actually begin to communicate with your matches. This would be done by either contacting a match or responding to communication that they have sent to you. None of the communication steps are free, however, eHarmony has frequent special events where you can communicate with other singles for free.

eHarmony Events

eHarmony has free weekends that occur on most months. Normally these run anywhere from 2 to 5 days, although there have been events that have been as long as 10 days. When these free events are occurring you can communicate with your matches.

Because these free events exist, I recommend anyone thinking of trying eHarmony sign up so they can take advantage of them. If you sign up, you’ll begin to collect matches and then when the next free event comes you can communicate with them. Just be sure that when you sign up you have enabled the setting for eHarmony to send you email updates on their events so you’ll know when one is happening.

More on eHarmony and Free Events
If you’re looking to learn more about eHarmony you can see this article where I discuss exactly how eHarmony works. Also, if you are interested in what the actual pricing of eHarmony is, check out this post on eHarmony cost.

I also try to discuss each of the eHarmony free events as well as other free online dating specials when I hear about them. You can see a list of these in my eHarmony free weekends post and also my list of all free events that I’ve talked about on this site.

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eHarmony Free Communication Weekend September 3 – September 6, 2010

Brad — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:10:54 +0000

Note: there is also a free weekend at Lavalife this weekend so it’s a good weekend.

eHarmony is having another free weekend from September 3rd to September 6th, over this coming Labor Day weekend. The event will be available to both U.S. and Canada residents and will begin at 12:01AM on Friday the 3rd and will end at 11:59PM on Monday the 6th. This means the free “weekend” is actually four days long this time.

Last time eHarmony had a free weekend it was 10 days, although in that case the free event didn’t include email communication. It appears that eHarmony has gone back to the “normal” free weekend this time giving a shorter time period but allowing singles to communicate through the entire eHarmony process.

I think this is a good move: while 10 days sounds great, if you can’t take the conversation to the next stage its nearly impossible to actual end up going on a date. While the 4 days will go by quickly, it still gives someone who is committed the opportunity to (hopefully) line up a date or two. We’ll have to wait and see if eHarmony will continue to bounce back and forth between these two “free weekend” models or if they’ll stick with their original now and the 10 day was only an experiment.

Beat the Rush…

As I always say, if you’re reading this early, I recommend signing up prior to the free event as opposed to waiting for Friday to arrive. This is because the sign up process will take you some time and also by signing up early you can start to collect matches now and decide who you want to talk to. Also, if you have a 9 to 5 job, on Friday morning you could quickly send out a few communication requests and get the ball rolling while you’re away at work. Hopefully you’ll even have some communication waiting on you when you get home!

eHarmony.com – Try for Free July 2 – July 5.

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5 Mistakes Men Make When Dating Online That Scare Women Away

Brad — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 04:00:35 +0000

Photo by D Sharon Pruitt

I recently read an article AskMen.com that covered five mistakes men make early on that scare women away. I think this article is well worth reading regardless of how you are meeting women. I also wanted to offer my take in this area, but specifically for online dating.

Most of my thoughts revolve around one idea: not coming off as strange or the stalker-type. Appearing strange or appearing like someone who might stalk the woman is a great way to scare women off, particularly when dating online. You may not feel that you’re at risk of appearing to fit into one of these categories, however, on the internet we can send signals without realizing it. Also, there are many men who have likely come before you that have created a situation where the woman is now extra sensitive to certain signs that suggest she may be dealing with someone “crazy”.

In other words, this list aims to help you from being inappropriately stereotyped based on the certain actions that can cause you to be “red flagged”. In my mind, it comes down to the weird factor and what you can do to avoid incorrectly being labeled as such.

Five Mistakes Men Make in Dating Online That Scare Women Away

1. Long First Emails
As I’ve discussed on this blog many times, your first email serves as an introduction and a method to get the woman to view your profile. Your profile is where you make your arguments on why someone would want to date you, not your first email. Win the woman over in your profile not the first email.

In addition to the higher risk of appearing strange, writing long emails means you are spending a larger amount of time contacting one woman who may or may not respond to you. Assuming you only have a limited amount of time to write emails every day, if that same time period were spent contacting multiple women with shorter emails you will find you have greater success.

Photo by Thorne Enterprises
2. Too Much Contact
Another red flag is communicating too often because this can send the message that you have absolutely nothing else going on in your life. Now it may be true that you do have very little else going on in your life…but this is still not a message you want to be sending. I am not a student of the school that says, ”wait two days before calling her” but I do understand why such a thought exists. Generally speaking, this rule is easy to follow: you should both be contacting each other in equal amounts. If you are sending her two emails for every one reply you contacting her too much.

Also, don’t send emails like: “Haven’t heard back from you since my last email, just wanted to make sure everything is OK”. If she’s not responding she has either lost interest or has become very busy. If she’s lost interest the second email you send only confirms to her that she made the right choice in stopping communication. If she’s just busy, when she does have time to come back to her inbox if she finds it filled with messages from you, you may have just killed your chances.

3. Too Many Compliments
It is fine to compliment a woman. Often it’s better than just “fine”; it can be quite a good thing! However, problems occur when compliments are excessive or are the main source of the conversations you are starting.

I believe this is particularly true of physical compliments. While women do enjoy knowing that their beauty is appreciated, I think most women want to be desired for more than just their attractiveness. If you do feel the uncontrollable desire to continuously complement the woman at the very least move it beyond physicality. At least in this way she knows that you are learning about her and not just staring at her photo for hours and hours every night.

4. Profile Insecurity
Profile insecurity is the popular approach that both men and women take where they degrade themselves in their own profile. Comments such as “I can’t believe I’m trying this” or “I failed at every other dating option” are both quite popular. Don’t do this.

It is one thing be able to poke fun at yourself to show that you don’t take yourself too seriously. It is quite another to paint yourself out to be some kind of loser or to suggest that online dating is for losers. Keep in mind that suggesting so is something of an insult to everyone who reads your profile!

So don’t beat yourself up: painting yourself as pathetic is not attractive.

5. Never Taking the Next Step
This one unique compare to the others: in this case the man isn’t so much scaring the women away as he is boring them away. It is fine to want to get to know someone but this is better done on something more substantial than just emails. My preference is getting to the first dates quickly but even moving to the phone is better than perpetually emailing each other. Online dating needs to include some actual dating so don’t wait around trying to figure out the best time to ask her out. Sooner is better than later. It’s not as if people are signing up for online dating to gain a pen pal.

Again, for me I think much of this just comes down to not raising any red flags that might give a woman the wrong impression about who you are. To quote my online dating guide, often just coming off as normal is the most important thing you can do!

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How Your Voice Could Make Your Match

Brad — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 04:00:43 +0000

Photo by hans van rijnberk

We all have different voices – some screechy, some mellow; some high, some low. To some extent, our voices play a key part in attracting and being attracted. Seductive, charming, confident voices; Australian accents, Scottish accents, Irish accents – we all have our preferences. Yet little would we suspect that the simple matter of vocal pitch could have an immense influence on our emotions.

Recent research has actually proven that men are attracted to higher-pitched women, and women, in turn, are drawn to lower-pitched men. A study by Aberdeen University has actually shown that the higher the voice of the woman, the more attracted she is to a deep-registered man. The researchers tested 113 heterosexual female undergraduates, measuring their voice pitch by asking them to recite vowel sounds, a sentence and a passage of text. They then had to decide which voice they preferred as four recordings of differently pitched men saying either “I really like you” or “I really don’t like you” were played to them.

The general results showed a decided preference for the lower-toned men. But with the higher-pitched women who heard “I really like you”, there was almost a universal partiality towards the more masculine register. However, the “I really don’t like you” results saw a less marked difference in the choice of higher- and lower-toned women. So, women with higher voices – whether in Manchester dating or in Madrid dating – will prefer nice men with a deep tone of voice!

In addition to this, a study from the University of California confirmed that a woman’s voice pitch changes depending on her menstrual cycle. It seems that it is her unconscious goal at this time to enhance her attractiveness by making herself appear more feminine. 69 women were tested at various stages of ovulation. On average, they were seen to increase their pitch by a whole semi-tone from the least to the greatest level of fertility. This means that during this time, as the previous study has shown, they will be more attracted to the deeper-registered man.

It is largely unknown what this quality indicates in a person. High-toned women could appear healthier to a man due to their higher levels of oestrogen and consequent assurance of a working reproductive system. For men, however, it is slightly more unclear. For a deep voice doesn’t necessarily indicate size – perhaps it is the simple assurance and confidence this kind of register can command. As Dr Alan McElligott of Queen Mary, University of London concludes, “the exact link between quality of the men and pitch of the voice is not known.”

So, all dating UK trends depend to some extent on vocal pitch. Apparently, we are no different from the countless animals that show outward signs of fertility or seduce each other with their low and high calls.

Photo by su neko

This article is a guest post by John who is a friend of the site. If you would be interested in writing a guest post please feel free to contact me.

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MatchAffinity Free Weekend August 27th to 29th 2010

Brad — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:02:57 +0000

MatchAffinity will be having a free communication weekend this Bank Holiday weekend, Friday the 27th to Sunday the 29th 2010. All members of MatchAffinity (including non-subscribers) can communicate with other singles for free starting at 4PM on Friday and going until 11:59PM on Sunday night.

For those who are unfamiliar, MatchAffinity is a service for singles in the UK. It takes a mixed approach to online dating: where some dating services pick your matches for you and other dating services let browse everyone, MatchAffinity takes a mixed approach by offering some features of both types. For more details see my full review on MatchAffinity.

I feel like a broken record but I’ll say it again: if you are considering trying out MatchAffinity this weekend, sign up straight away. The free event will only last so long and most of us only have so much time we can devote to a date site. By signing up early, you can identify the singles you would like to contact and even prepare what you would like to write them when you communicate. This should help put you in a good position after work on Friday to send off some communication before you begin the other activities of your weekend.

For those who already have a free account at MatchAffinity, there is nothing for you to do: you are already prepared to take advantage of the free weekend with your previously created account. That being said, I think the advice discussed above where you plan who you will contact is still worth following.

Best of luck to all those who look for love this weekend! Also, check out the full list of free events discussed at this site.

Try MatchAffinity Today.

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Dating Commercials are Better in the UK

Brad — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 04:00:40 +0000

It seems to me that dating commercials in the UK are far superior to those in the US. Here in the States most of our commercials are either couples talking or black-and-white commercials of a single person sitting or laying and occasionally laughing (and I’m not sure what the point is to these commercials, to be honest). I get the feeling I’m not the only one because I am having a hard time even finding the US commercials online! Before today I didn’t even realize what a difference there was between the campaigns.

Anyway, for those in the US like me, here are some UK commercials:

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On the Fence about Online Dating