General News

CNN Living has a story that looks at scam artists, internet dating and the website RomanceScams.org, where you can report on romance scams. In my opinion the article doesn't really put online dating scams into perspective but, it did have a few good examples and tips. One excellent point includes this quote about how to identify a possible scammer:

If their spelling is horrible, they use emoticons heavily and they appear to be available at unusual hours for your time zone, they may be scamming you. Scammers often work on the Internet from other countries and use photos of others they find online. Often, a simple Google search can help identify whether your online companion is legitimate or whether he or she is simply using someone else's name and photo.

This story uses some scare tactics that I don't agree with. In one case they mention that the FBI Internet Crime Report had 206,884 complaints last year about internet fraud which cost the victims over $239 million. That's a good thing to know but this statistic appears to take into account all online business including online stores, online auction sites and the list goes on. What percentage of this is deals with online dating? Where are the statistics that compare it to other online industries or email and normal mail fraud? Maybe online dating has a better track record, who knows? You can't tell from the CNN article.

The other statistic in the story I wondered about was, according to Romance Scams website, of their 30,000 members 883 people reported losing over $8 million too online scammers. This works out too almost $10,000 per person on average. This seems a little high to me. I don't know many people who have $10 grand to give to their friends and family let alone to someone online. I wish the author had expanded on this information a bit further and included a few links to some reports.

Romance Scams is a non-profit site that does offer excellent information about dealing with and identifying online scams. A lot more dating sites are starting to take this issue more seriously and have started to include easy to find "Report Abuse" links on dating profiles that allows you to identify a scammer. Dating Services also monitor and identify scammers manually and automatically through software. Singles need to know, and to watch out for online dating scams but, you do have to keep things in perspective and use common sense.

A student at Penn State posted a "My Opinion" piece called Internet dating sites unrealistic. She wrote a cynical view of online dating services and in my opinion never really gave them a chance. After viewing some profiles on Match.com she decide to write up a sexy profile under the alias "MeltNmyMouth69" (I have to admit, I laughed a bit at the name). She then proceeds to be surprised when she got a ton of winks (she had only signed up as a free member) from what she termed as Creepers. At the end of the story she proclaims:

You will not find love on the Internet.

If you truly are interested in a long term relationship then this is obviously the wrong approach. You have to take online dating seriously and put the time and effort into it. If you create a profile that is going to attract horny individuals, then of course this is who is going to contact you. Much the same way as if you are going to a bar dressed seductively, you are going to attract a certain type of guy. If this was not the type of men she wanted to attract then, of course her online dating experiment was going to fail.

I'm not sure were they got their stats from but, being Wired Magazine (a reputable source) I thought I would write about it. Wired did a short piece called 3 Smart Things About Online Dating. The first "Smart Thing" the magazine listed I found the most interesting. It states that singles find marriage or a long term relationship on the internet 17% of the time, which is 3 million people. This is exactly the same number of singles that have found love through church. The article leaves a lot of information out like the time period for the statistic and what countries are included in the count (I am assuming the United States) but it's an interesting statistic never the less.

Mark Brooks over at Online Personals Watch did an excellent interview with Alex Burmaster of Nielsen Online (offers comprehensive, independent measurement and analysis of online audiences). The interview talks about the state of internet dating today and how social networking is affecting it. According to Nielsen Online statistics, the UK dating industry is in a bit of a decline but, the US dating industry doesn't seem to be that affected by social networking. In fact the growth of the two industries follow a very similar path. Mark and Alex also discuss in the interview the top dating sites in the US (eHarmony) and Europe.

Every month Mark also updates his Internet Dating Rankings. He gives the top official rankings from comScore, Nielson Online and Hitwise. These companies measure the internet traffic certain websites receive in which other competing companies buy to help them in their marketing strategies. These marketing companies use multiple methods to estimate traffic to websites.

It is good source material to help gauge a websites popularity but in most months comScore, Nielson Online and Hitwise rankings never seem to agree with each other. A lot of the same dating sites are in the 3 ranking lists but they never seem to rank in the same spot. This shows the difficulty in trying to rank any site.

CNNMoney has an article about the marketing approach one dating site called TeamDating.com took to get free publicity. This was all done without hiring a PR firm or consultant. TeamDating has appeared on many popular national TV shows like The Today Show, Good Morning America and Extra . Print publications include newspapers like USA Today. Every show or news piece TeamDating has appeared in has given them a huge traffic spike like with over 600,000 visitors when TeamDating appeared on the Today Show. The article doesn't mention what their average daily traffic is now but it does say they have 60,000 regular visitors (what does regular mean? Weekly?) and over 20,000 registered dating teams

Ray Doustdar, who owns TeamDating achieved his PR success through his own hard work of reading, researching and contacting media people. He spends over 90% of his work day dealing with marketing his dating service. He knows where his customers are and who to contact to get a story out. He also knows what type of story each media outlet is looking for and who there readers or viewers are.

Now days most internet businesses need a detailed marketing plan, and dating sites are no exception. Gone are the days of "if you build it, they will come"! Competition is huge in the online dating market and any company wanting to create a service needs to realize that marketing is the most important thing to your sites success.

Western Alumni Gazette from the University of Western Ontario has a piece about the owners of the dating service Christian Cafe. They go into details on how Philip and Samuel Moorcroft got ChristianCafe.com off the ground in the late 1990's, some of the challenges they faced and how the dating site is fairing now. Currently the cafe is one of the largest Christian site's on the internet with over a 100,000 members. The business is based in Markham, Ontario, Canada and employees 15 people.

For more information on Christian Cafe please read our review.