Wow frustrated.... You sound like you've met the "winners" of the world. It's those types of people that you have ran into that gives everyone else a bad name.
I no longer consider myself on the dating market. I met someone through work. She is 13 (almost 14) years older than I am, but we get along great. Nobody at work knows that we are dating (outside of her 2 best friends). We enjoy a lot of the same things, and are willing to try new things. She knows a lot about stained glass, which I know nothing about. However, she knows that I am willing to learn about it. She doesn't have a broad range in music, but is willing to listen to what I listen to (stuff from Beethoven to Malmsteen to Manillow). My kids like her as well.

How did we get together? Funny story. I am the PC tech (software) at work. She brought her home PC into work for the hardware tech to look at it, and upgrade the memory. After he got it going, he couldn't get into Pogo to try it out. Since I was familiar with Pogo.com, I knew that it couldn't be played through the firewall. That is how we started talking, through our common interest in Pogo. At the time, I had given up on the dating sites, and basically finding anyone for awhile, and concentrating on raising my daughters.

Internet dating is a scam. That woman you think you are writing to is most likely a man who is laughing at your cheesy note while he hacks into your computer, steals your personal information, and gives your computer a nasty virus. When you discover that every female profile belongs to some type of internet porn spamming company you will already be out your initial payment and potentially a few more months while they charge your card despite repeated calls cancelling your subscription.

I've got some stats you might be interested in... I've been running a survey on "controllable factors" that increase Internet dating success for my master's thesis. One of the questions I ask about is writing back--and that question is broken down by gender.

The link to the survey is:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=38640517881

If you think you'd like the results, breeze through the survey (only 17 questions) and then let me know and I'll send you the link to live results. My email is Lisa@Write2Market.com. The only reason I'm not posting the results link directly is the survey only has 89 full responses, and I need well over 100 to have size group I want to analyze...still, some interesting data is already in.

Sincerely,
Lisa

This is the type of site I should have used before joining match.com. The BEST things about this site is that it is near where I live and the fact that this is the only site that takes a personal check instead of only credit cards and I know cc horror sotries galore.

I joined around Nov 1, 2004. I sent out about 600 HUNDRED e mails. There is an actual counter on this site and I have discounted for the times that I sent multiple e mails to the same woman answering questions.

Here is the routine. I may get a woman to answer my e mail with questions of her own. I answer those and offer my phone number so we can talk. Never hear back or get another e mail with more questions. Rarely do I get a phone number. I am so bummed out by this that a few dates have been cancelled on my part (about 2-3) because I went on one that the woman was still getting over her ex boyfirend and I had a three week fling with a wolf wolf.

I have changed my ad so many times I have lost track of my personality. I am SICK of reading 'love to laugh or love to have fun'. These are the dumbest phrases I have recetnly heard. Even my mom thinks they are stupid when I told her about the air heads on this site. This is in the Dallas, Texas area.

I read an old Playboy article about net dating and it was about a guy trying it in NYC in 1999 I believe. His expereinces and mine were almost the exact same.

As far as women writing me back or writing me first, the only time that women wrote me before I was a member but had a profile were 2. Once I became a member, NONE ever made initial contact.

Great site for Ken and Barbies but if you live in Dallas-its the LA of the south. Plastic people and living in the right areas and driving the cool cars and stuff.

Avoid this site unless you like rude women and fingers that hurt from typing all those e mails.

7 months on Yahoo & American Singles, over 100 emails sent to active members, every guy that replied back to me was either going through a divorce or had so much drama going on I couldn't even keep up with him, I take advantage of all available public records, online espionage YOU BET! Believe only 1/2 of what you hear & all of what you see! That is the only way to do it, where I live criminal records are accessed for free at the courthouse, property tax records are availabe online for viewing for free, even tells who the taxpayer is for the property he claims HE owns LOL Just my 2 cents worth. I have a better chance of picking up a guy at the bar LOL

Post a good picture for one. And open with a good introduction. The thing that bothers me most is a guy that sends you a message and you reply to him, then you don't hear from him again.

I belong to flirt and I actually respond to ALL emails, even ones where I just get a picture sent to me. Now granted of all the emails that I receive, 90% of them have not read my profile which states that I will only go out with guys who are taller then I am. I have tried the shorter Guy and as sweet as he was it just wasn't for me.
When I respond , I also say "good luck finding your Miss right" and I say it sincerely.
Someone has taken time out of their day to write to me, I feel that they deserve a reply.. Just my 2 cents..

First off, many people don't pay for the subscription so they can't respond. So don't be discouraged.

Second, if you're too picky, you'll miss out. Online dating is like going out to meet people. The more people you flirt with, the better your chances.

Third, if you look like Norm/Carla from Cheers, don't expect responses from Brad Pitt/Christy Brinkley types. It sux, but that's life.

Question: how am I supposed to give my email address to non-paying members if they can't read my emails anyway. You basically just have to be sneaky enough to get it into the profile essay.

Cheers!!

I always wrote back, if nothing else to thank them for winks, emails and showing interest in general. IF I couldn't write back due to not being a paying member, I'd send a wink as most pay sites let you do this free of charge and it hopefully let them know that I appreciated what they had sent me.


Ok well maybe I'm just burned out and burned up on this subject, but my experience is this, I have been on several dating sites both as a paying and non paying member, pay sites and free sites, G rated sites and adult sites. I am professional, own my own home, have a sense of humor that my friends and family love, am not drop dead gorgeous, but not ugly either. I am, however, 5'5" and 230 lbs.


Plus sized sites???? Well maybe if you live in a major city or at least within a reasonable proximity to one.

I have met 6 men from these sites in the last 9 months. For the most part, all but one were nightmares for one reason or another. One told me to my face that he did not find me physically attractive, and proceeded to hit on my roomate as well as ask me to put in a good word for him with her. I do not lie in my profiles, I post recent photos and of course on the normal size people sites, get next to no responses.

Just for fun, I made up a profile and all I changed was my weight, same location same age and no photo. The amount of emails and winks I got was amazing. 4 or 5 a day compared to maybe 1 or 2 every couple of weeks.

As I see it, the problem with online dating is that there are too many fish in the sea. They can pick and chose, date others along with dating you ( wich is no big deal, but not for me ) And the fact is, the majority of men on these sites do not want to have much to do with a larger lady. You WILL get the pigs....of course, they all know that for a fact all the big girls are easy. IT's all a bunch of garbage and I have thrown in the towel. If I can ever lose this weight, I may try again but I'm not putting myself out there on the world wide web to be used and abused by insensitive, shallow people. And I'm sure that men get the same thing from women about their weight as well, I'm just stating my experience.

woah... yeah, now that was right on. I liked that. That was a real cool lady who took time to write all that. Im paying attention..

thanks sweety.