There is an old saying that you get what you pay for. If that is true than one would expect that you would get better results from paid dating sites than from free ones. But, is that assumption true?
Not only did I use both paid and free dating sites in my single years, but, I have done some pretty intensive research on them recently for a series of articles I am planning to write, and I can tell you both from interviews I have conducted and from personal experience that paid dating sites are not necessarily better than free ones for finding a great date or even the love of your life. In fact, finding the right person on dating sites seems to be a simple matter of being in the right place at the right time.
At one time, I belonged to a paid dating site, that charged what I considered to be a pretty hefty fee. This dating site required you to fill out a lengthy questionnaire and then matched you to suitable matches based on your answers. In the year I was a member of this site, they matched me with exactly one person. A gentleman who was looking for a week end fling. I had stated on my application that I was looking for a long term relationship. Obviously, they did not match my profile with this gentleman’s or their definition of long term was far different than mine.
Another paid dating site I belonged to got me plenty of emails but no one with serious intentions.
All the free dating sites I joined, got me dates, but, still no romance.
I finally met my husband on a dating site where he paid to join but I did not.
I have over the last three months interviewed about 2 dozen couples who met online and several people who tried Internet dating and discovered it was not for them. Of the two dozen couples 14 met on free sites and 10 on paid sites making the changes of meeting on either type of site almost 50/50.
Interestingly enough most of the disillusioned people, who gave up Online dating having had no success seemed to have joined paid sites. This leads me to the conclusion, that although you may not get more from a paid site, people who pay for these dating sites expect results.
For those of you who are just now thinking of giving on line dating a try my advice would be to choose the site most suited to your individual needs whether that site charges or is free.
Just remember not to expect more from any site than they can deliver, which is simply a chance to meet people of the opposite sex.
