New to Dating Online: Where Should I Start?

Published on December 18, 2009

If you’re new to online dating or still considering signing up, figuring out where to start or what service to use can be difficult. Here I’ll provide 5 tips to get your online dating life moving.

1. Sign Up At A Free Dating Site
First and most important: sign up for a free dating service. I recommend OKCupid although Plenty of Fish is the most popular. I can’t recommend Plenty of Fish because I believe the service fails to provide singles with a good opportunity to have success. Even if you’re on the fence about online dating, you should sign up for a free service. It won’t cost you anything and it will give you a taste of what to expect.

2. Measure Your Commitment And React Accordingly
How serious are you? If not sure, stick with OkCupid for a month and see if you feel any stronger about dating. I would recommend you stay with the free service until you feel more committed to finding that special someone. While I do believe OKCupid is the best free service I’ve seen, I still think some of the pay services offer better odds for success. For example, all pay service I’ve used are far more aggressive at eliminating members who harass other members. For example, at free services women will receive far more emails requesting sex or naked photos. Second, those people who are paying are more serious about dating (otherwise, they wouldn’t pay). If you’re serious and can afford it, I’d recommend signing up for one of two services:

• If you’re nervous about meeting people, want some extra guidance, or if you’re shy, I would recommend signing up for eHarmony. The single month price is really high so I’d recommend signing up for three months (see this article on my thoughts on subscription pricing).
• If you’re want to have as much control over who you meet or are interested in meeting people quickly I would recommend trying Match.com. This is a solid service: it has great features, a very large number of active members, and the site has some polish that other dating sites are missing. It’s also the service I used when I met my wife, so I may have some bias. A single month of Match is cheaper than a single month of eHarmony, but I would still recommend using the 3-month plan. In most cases, I see these plans as the best value without over-committing yourself to one service.

3. Get Some Advice
This is especially true for those that haven’t had much dating experience or haven’t dated for an extended period. Also, some areas in online dating aren’t clear even to those people who have dated actively in other ways. I do my best to offer good advice here with my online dating guide and the blog you’re reading now, but by no means should you limit the advice you take to this site. There are plenty of great books, blogs and services that are able to provide excellent advice. Even being open with your friends is a great first step. Not only will you get advice from people who care about you, you might even find them arranging dates for you when they realize you’re looking.

• There are people out there who are looking to take advantage of singles using internet dating
• Never send anyone money. Ever.

5. Know That Success May Be Elusive
You may follow all the advice you can find, sign up for multiple service and aggressively try to go on first dates…but success is often hard to find for many of us. Even people who provide dating advice such as myself normally have some type of story on the long amount of time it took us to find that right person. If you think about it, if it didn’t take us a long time to find someone what would our advice be based on? Even when you’re doing everything right, that doesn’t mean things are going to be easy. You must be committed to finding that special someone to have success (see tip #2 above).

For more tips regarding online dating, please check out my free online dating guide. Online dating can be frustrating but if you can remain persistent and positive, I believe you can find success just as I did.

The eharmony Difference? Deep compatibility! Try it Today!

Author: Brad

Brad initially struggled with online dating but over time became quite successful using it. He met his wife using online dating and has been giving advice and helping people improve their results since 2007. He has written a Free Online Dating Guide to help others find success with online dating. You can learn more about his personal experience using online dating and running this website here.

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