Online dating sites

I often talk about free online dating sites. I've joined so many during the years but frankly I barely spend time on them lately. The latest one I tried out was mingles, it's free of course, not very flashy like paid dating sites are but it looks OK. I'm not going to write extensively about it like I used to, I'll just point you to another site where you can read about it in more details.

I see many people use free online dating sites the same way they use social networks. They don't really search for dates as they contact people from far and distant lands that they will never visit.

Many people, especially those that are online often seem to use those sites to find a chat partner. That's way they will often give you their msn messenger email in the first message that they send you. I've met a few people on some of those sites but since I don't use msn messenger a lot we don't really keep in touch.

Meet local Singles for free at Meeta

You know by now that I've joined quite a few dating sites already, yet I couldn't resist joining one more, Meeta.com.

I came across Meeta a few times before and it always surprises me that people actually take the time to put together Free Dating sites even though there are so many out there already. I joined Meeta.com hoping to find something really different or at least as good as the best free dating sites I've tried so far. I'm going to tell you about the registration process and my very first experience with Meeta.com.

Meeta has a very clean and simple look. I like the light colours and the whole ambiance of the site. There are three steps that you need to go through to join Meeta.

Step 1 : enter your basic information
You need to provide your name, birth date, sexual orientation, what you're looking for, your city, your email, your surname and password.

Step 2 : create your profile
You need to provide more detailed information about yourself, your appearance, habits and preferences.

You are asked for your relationship status, hair color, eye color, whether you have children, whether you want have children, whether you drink and smoke. All those questions are mandatory. Then you are asked optional questions about your religion, race or ethnicity, interests, and occupation.

Step 3 : add a picture
You are invited to add a picture to your profile to boost your chances of success. Meeta claims that with a photo you are 10 times more likely to succeed in your online dating experience. Photos are not mandatory therefore you may simply proceed without adding one, click "Submit" and your profile will be created without a photo. In case you decide to add a picture you should be aware of the fact that Meeta has picture rules. They are quite simple and short so I copied them here:

We suggest that you go solo in your MAIN profile picture after all, people are here to meet YOU. All pictures must be property of the user and contain none of the following:

• Nudity
• Racist or hateful behavior
• Obscene gestures or lewd behavior
• Copyrighted material or licensed material
• Celebrity pictures

Now that I had my profile I decided it was time for me to find people because that's why I joined Meeta after all.

Meeta has the typical look of free online dating sites i.e. covered with ads for paid dating sites. But unlike many free dating sites Meeta offers matching. You have matches pages with a list of your potential matches based on your match preferences. Unfortunately for me I had 0 matches.... They tried to cheer me up telling me not to worry and encouraged me to search for people on the site while they find me some matches. They also suggested that I refine my match preferences?

I decided not to let the lack of matches discourage me and continued to explore the site. Meeta has Forums and Groups. I tried the groups first and of course there were no groups in my city and since I wasn't interested in creating one I went on to look at "All Groups" and saw all those that were created. Unfortunately they had very few members and not a single topic.

I thought maybe I would be luckier with Forums. Indeed they were a little less empty than the groups, a few threads had been started but not many replies.

Yet I decided to go ahead and simply browse members' profiles. By default you are restricted to profiles of people near your city. If you want to see more people go ahead and click the "All Members" option in the sidebar. If you're in a city with few or no members on the site the city restrictions might bother you.

Meeta does not have an overwhelming number of members, you are certainly not going to spend hours browsing profiles but you might find a topic or two to which you can reply in the forums.

I find the search feature very unpractical, it's one of the worst search experience I've ever had on a dating site.

I wanted to try specific searches for people of a certain age range and in specific areas but it just wasn't going to happen. As far as the location is concerned, you can only search for people near a certain city, not a country, not a state but a city and they don't even provide a drop down list or any aid of any sort to look up city names so beware of typos. Since Meeta allows approximate ages like 20's and 30's, in profiles, most of the time you won't know the person's exact age. A person in his 20's can be anywhere from 20 to 29. So good luck finding the exact person you're looking for.

The most annoying aspect of Meeta is the fact that the site feels like it's still in Beta, with the occasional 404 error popping when you click a link. I hope they find the time to look around the site and clean up a bit, removing those errors.

Meeta really needs to improve their search feature. On a dating site I want to be able to search for the exact person I'm looking for and Meeta does not allow that with ease, they should try and make their search more specific. Because after all you're here to fine your match.

I like Meeta's look, it's a nice site but unfortunately I don't see why I would spend my time there. I hope they send matches by email, I believe that would be their only chance to have users come back because there isn't a whole lot for me to do while on Meeta.com. Who knows, maybe one day I'll find a Meeta message in my inbox telling me someone is interested in me, it might happen.


This post has been a sponsor post.

Free Online Dating at Wheresmystar

Update: Wheresmystar does not seem to be operational anymore, therefore I have removed the link.

Free dating sites are hard to resist, I've joined most of the free dating sites I've come across except for the really ugly ones and the ones for specific groups of people that I don't belong to.

Not so long ago, Jason Sebik asked me if I could write a bit about his free online dating website called "Wheresmystar". At the time I thought I was finally becoming famous online! Webmasters asking me to review their site, wow! I said yes, after looking at his site and exchanging emails with him.

The idea behind Wheresmystar is simple, online dating should be free and Jason Sebik, the man behind Wheresmystar.com, is committed to keeping everything on the site absolutely free. Wheresmystar is his answer to big online dating companies who stop at nothing to get money out of online daters; in fact Jason wants to " put all Big-Money Pay-Dating sites out of business." I don't completely agree with Jason on paid dating sites and I'll tell you why in a moment but first let me tell you all you need to know about wheresmystar for now and why you need to join today ;)

Wheresmystar is not only a dating site where you can post a free profile and search for potential matches for free, it also offers a variety of services to its members, similar services that you might find on paid sites. In fact many of the services offered at Wheremystar are not typically available on free dating sites.

Here is a list of features and services available to members:

• You have the ability to set your photos to be public or private. It gives you control and lets you hide your picture from the general public plus you are sure that your photo will not be used in an advertising campaign for the site.
• You have safety features like Sparks that guarantees you don't receive unsolicited messages.

• You get personality profiling data
• Two way matching, which is a feature I see most free online dating site lacking, usually you get two way matching on paid dating sites.
• You can bookmark the members you are interested in to make it easier for you to contact them later on
• You can see not only who's viewed your profile but also who has bookmarked you so you know who is really interested in you.
• Jason is always working on making the site better and invites members to ask if there are any features they would like to see added to the site.
• Jason promises that there aren't fake filler profiles on his site, not many online dating site owners can make that promise.

There are a few things I certainly like about Wheresmystar, the fact that it focuses on functionality, which is not the case with most free dating site, Wheresmystar can really boast about the number of services that they offer their members. Also I have to say the proximity of the webmaster is a plus, Jason is available and open for contact, knowing that you can contact a real person with a name when there's a problem or for a simple suggesting is really a good feeling.

If you're still not convinced here is the WheresMyStar.com Promise:
"This place will always be totally free. Visitors will always be able to search freely and see everything that a normal member would see. We’ll never use any deceptive scams, tricks, or tactics to get people to sign up to this site. Compare us to "the others", and you’ll instantly see the vast differences. "

About Big-Money-Dating sites, indeed online dating is a big money business and many online dating sites use deceptive methods to get users to pay for premium memberships. Clearly, Wheresmystar is not one of those because it's free, but I've also seen free online dating sites who basically sell their members by making their profiles public and bombarding them with ads from Big-Money-Dating sites. Of course wheresmystar is not one of them. But the way I see it, most free dating sites are only making money because paid dating sites are paying to advertise on them, if you kill those Big-Money-Dating sites the free dating sites would die with them.

I've not only tried many free dating sites but I've also joined quite a few paid dating sites and some are part of those Big-Money-Dating sites Jason likes to refer to. I've also paid for a premium membership on a dating site and from my own experience I can say that it was worth the money I paid. I'm not even revealing the name of that site but you can find out since I've mentioned it before on this blog. I believe that creating and maintaining a dating site has a cost, advertising for that site also has a cost therefore those costs have to be covered by revenue. I also believe that if you are offering a service there's nothing wrong with getting paid for it especially if the service you are offering is of good quality.

The dating site I paid for is a good site in my opinion, I had been a member for some time and I had met people without paying but at some point I not only had enough money to pay for a full membership but I also had a really good motivation, if you see what I mean... Even though I did think the membership was a bit high, I gladly paid for it and after the membership expired, I still remained a member of the site. The key here is that this specific site allows members to view all the information on other members for free; in fact you can do almost everything for free on the site except send messages to other members. They match you up, they tell you who has viewed your profile and you can show interest but no contact unless at least one of the two people pays. Many find this frustrating and I can understand them but I've come to discover that, when you can afford it, the price does not really matter.

Most other paid dating sites I've tried hide so much information from you, they go as far as not letting you see other members' full profiles, they don't tell you who's viewed your profile and even when they allow other members to send you messages they don't let you see who sent you a message much less read messages unless you pay. You're paying while you don't even know what's there but you know what, those sites are highly successful at getting paid members...

Many people don’t mind not getting a lot of information before paying on a dating site maybe because they thinks it’s normal to pay for what those sites promise them. In many cases those people rely on the site’s reputation, the promises made by the site and in some cases the testimonials of members of the site.

The point I'm trying to make is that you cannot put all paid dating sites in one basket, many are not completely honest with their members and they are more concerned in billing them than giving them a good service while others are open but ask to be paid for the service offered. If I can afford it I don't mind paying when I can see what I'm getting for my money. Two things are important to me, what services are offered by the site and how much information I can get on the other members with a free membership. If the site takes the time to match me up, send me emails with my matches, offer advance search features, allow me to see full profiles and tell me the last time someone was online, I don't see why I wouldn't pay to contact people I would be interested in.