Online Dating: Getting Started
By Nina Atwood
First of all, congratulations on taking a bold step toward a new future! Online dating is a powerful tool that cuts both ways, so let’s talk about what works and doesn’t work. To get started, you’ll need to do some research online and choose the best site for you. I recommend that you choose two sites. Why? Because you’ll cover more ground, so to speak, if you do that, but you won’t overwhelm yourself. More than two sites and you’re unlikely to keep up.
How to choose the best site. There are essentially three kinds of dating sites and services out there: 1. Very large sites that allow you to post a profile and advertise yourself to a large pool of singles. Examples: match.com, yahoo personals, etc. 2. Matchmaking sites that attempt to match you with people who are deemed compatible. Examples: eHarmony, It’s Just Lunch (this one is conducted locally offline). 3. Smaller sites that are more specialized. Examples: christiansingles.com, jdate.com, blacksingles.com.
Choose one very large dating or matchmaking site and one smaller specialized site. If you want to add the in-person experience, you can go with It’s Just Lunch in addition to the two sites; IJL does the work for you so it doesn’t take any more time. The warning with IJL: it’s a great option for men because the membership is so highly skewed toward women, so you’ll have lots of matches. For women it’s not such a great deal because there are typically so few men. I’ve heard lots of stories from women about disastrous IJL dates because they were put together with the few men in the database regardless of compatibility. If you’re a woman, ask for information before you sign up: how many men are there in the database that fall in your targeted age range plus a couple of other criteria (such as education or children).
Buyer beware: There are no matchmaking services that get it right on the whole. Most of them put people together and it’s pretty much a gamble that they are compatible. These services never share their matchmaking methodology so that it appears they have some magic formula, but the reality is they don’t. NO ONE knows what makes one couple fall in love (who don’t appear to be a match) and another pair shrug and walk away (who on paper look perfectly matched). If you use a matchmaking service, you have to take the same attitude that you would for randomly shopping online: it’s a gamble, and you still must do your due diligence to discover if it’s a viable match.
Now, go do your homework: search out the sites, and choose two. Next we’ll look at how to create the best online profile.
Entry Filed under: Dating
