The CyberDating Blog ~ An Online Dating Blog
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When is a Dating Site Newsletter Not Much of a Newsletter?
June 1, 2010
It's the beginning of a new month and, being a savvy Internet marketing company (not to mention an darn fine singles website), we just emailed out our our monthly (well, sort of) newsletter. The funny thing is that we really don't have a whole lot to chat about this month so the email is really short. Our developers are working on refining the back-end software that displays the dating profiles, but it's not ready to be shown off yet. So, this begs the question, why would we send out a monthly email if there is noting useful to say?
There are two good reasons for us to keep in touch of our dating site members.
The first is that, by sending an email message out to our members regularly, we can determine if the member's email is still valid. That's useful in helping us to determine if the member has moved on and is no longer a valid member. Since our site is free, we cannot rely on billing information to keep us up-to-date on who is active.
The second reason for sending an email is simply to stir up some attention for our Members. Since it is important for our members to have others reading their messages and contacting them, occasionally we need to remind people that our singles profiles exist. Again, since we are a totally free dating site, and since we never bill anyone, people may forget that we exist.
So, you may have received an email from us that was kind of dumb, but at least now you know there was a reason for it :)
Till next time.
CyberDating a Cougar? Whatever...
April 28, 2010
OK folks, I'm a cynic. I don't want to burst your bubble but CyberDating is a Web marketing company and we are always looking for ways to promote our websites. And in the 13 years that I've been building and managing free dating websites, I've seen a lot of wacky stuff, but I think I've hit the wall with this whole "Cougar Cyber Dating" fad.
The other day I read about one of the big cougar dating sites. The site claimed to have really outstanding usage stats, among which was a 50/50 male to female member ratio. That's when I had to take a time-out to stop laughing. If you've ever been on a dating site you know that the usual male/female ratio is about 8 or 9 to 1 - nowhere near 50%. So frankly, I don't buy any of it. I think the whole cougar dating thing is just a load of hooey.
I'm not an expert on cougars (or women for that matter) but let's think about it for a second. The premise is that there are literally millions of older women who are itching to meet younger men - extensively just for sex. That's not what I've observed. On CyberDating, the vast majority of women only respond to men within about 10 years of their age. The more mature ones almost exclusively are looking for long term relationships or marriage and would never consider a short term sexual relationship. And most mature women have no use for guys who are less employed than themselves, which younger men are likely to be.
So, I don't buy it. Cougar dating is a cute (actually lame) premise for a TV show, but like American Idol, it does not reflect real life.
Tucker - An expert on nothing but CyberDating!
How to Write an Effective Online Dating Profile - Your Presentation
April 21, 2010
While there are a multitude of aspects that effect the likely hood of someone responding to your dating profile on a singles website, dating experts suggest that the single most important one is "presentation".
You've heard it before - to succeed, you have to make a good first impression. Obviously you wouldn't intentionally show up on a first date with a stain on your shirt, or with a big zit on your nose, so why would you write a personal ad that was anything less than the best you could do?
So, if you want to make a good first impression, don't make spelling mistakes, typos or grammatical errors. Regardless of how great your profile makes you sound, and no matter how witty and interesting you may be, if you have errors in your ad, the reader is going to think you are a complete boob and he/she will just move on to the next profile. Sure we all make mistakes, and you wouldn't want to misrepresent yourself by writing a singles ad using language that is beyond your vocabulary, but your ad is often your only opportunity to be found, so make it work.
How do you maximize your chances to look good? Firstly, write your ad in a word processing program and run the spell checker and the grammar checker. Also be sure that you type your singles ad in the correct, mixed case and pay attention to the length of your sentences. Remember that Internet etiquette is that if you write in all capital letters, you are yelling. Next, ask a friend or retaliative to read your dating profile for you. Your friend will be sure to pick up the spelling and syntactical errors that elude your eyes. Hopefully your friend will also be able to help you hone the content so your profile sounds perfect.
Then, simply cut and paste the text into your Online profile and sit back and wait for the responses to start pouring in.
Tucker @ The CyberDating Network
April 8, 2010
Become an Expert at Identifying Cyber Dating Scams
It's no secret that the Online dating world is chock-full of scammers looking to take advantage of unsuspecting singles. But if you spend a few minutes learning to identify the most obvious red flags that indicate the fake cyber dating personal ads, you really don't need to worry about being scammed.
The most obvious indicator of a cyber dating scam is that they often will say that they are "honest". Honestly, how many people use this term in a personal ad? It seems so obvious that nobody would say it, but scammers do.
Another good indicator of a fake dating profile is those where the person says that he/she is either widowed or orphaned. As before, how many normal people would talk about that in a dating profile? Since Cyber Dating is for adults, who cares if you are an orphan. They are just setting you up so they can ask for money.
The last thing that I'll suggest is that if you see a profile where the person is "God fearing", chances are it is a fake. Real people wait until their 2nd date before they discuss religion - they certainly don't express their fear of God in a dating profile!
You don't need to be a cyber dating expert to recognize fakes; just use your common sense and stay alert.
Does your Cyber Dating Profile need a little Spring Cleaning?
March 24, 2010
Here's another quick Cyber Dating Tip: whether it's spring or not, periodically freshening up your dating profile is always a good plan.
I see it all the time; you read a dating profile where the single guy/girl talks about walking on the beach and it's the middle of winter, or a reference to a social event that was a year ago. These things instantly tell the reader that either you really have a lame social life, or that you are too lazy to keep your profile up to date.
In my expert opinion, having seen literally hundreds of thousands of dating profiles, the best ones are the freshest ones. If you keep your profile looking good, with timely content and a clear picture, you're sure to find a mate.
How we are embracing social networking and other time wasters.
March 16, 2010
OK, stop badgering me, I'll do it!
You can't read an article about promoting your website (dating or otherwise) without them telling you that you have to be involved in social networking. It seems that the toys such as Twitter, Youtube and Facebook that once simply entertained the masses, are now the most powerful marketing tools in cyber space. Go figure. I have always shunned such sites as time wasters and bandwidth hogs. They just get in the way of important stuff - like Online dating.
So, in spite of my personal opinions about social networking and it's value on the Web, we at the CyberDating Network have been forging ahead with our corporate presence. If you look back in our Blog posts (oh ya, blogging - another time waster), you can see we have been using Twitter for a while now to notify our singles of messages in their in boxes. But here's the big news. We now have a CyberDating channel on YouTube to showcase some of our more interesting profiles.
Granted, our CyberDating content is sparse today, but we have big plans. We may put up a few more videos. And, if the Internet marketing experts are right, we're going to get really famous because of it. Just watch us go...
P.S. Don't bother looking for us at Facebook. We run a totally free dating website and simply cannot afford the time - at least until we are forced into it ;)
CyberDating Tip: Writing introductory messages that will get you noticed?
March 10, 2010
Hey CyberDaters...
Yesterday a fairly new member deleted his CyberDating profile and he said the the reason was, "this site doesn't work... nobody replied to my messages".
Obviously we don't want our members going away dissatisfied, so I did some research to try to identify the problem. After checking our process logs to confirm that he had not encountered any software errors or usage problems, I looked at his profile and some of the introductory messages that he sent to other members. The problem was clear. His messages were just - to be polite - not good.
If you've been dating Online for more than a few days, you've seen what I am talking about. His message read simply : "Hi, I liked your profile. Send me an email if you are interested". It's no wonder he got no responses; they were not interested.
I'm not saying I am an expert in human behaviour, but I do know that people appreciate it when you make an effort to introduce yourself in personal terms. The email message that I quoted above, didn't give the impression that the author had even read the recipient's profile before sending off the message. The recipient my as well have been number two hundred among the impersonal messages that the guy sent that day.
My advice: read the person's profile and take note of a section of the profile that stands out as something that is important or relevant to you. Then in your reply, using your own words, summarize your impression of that thing that stood out. Try using the phrase "I liked the way you mentioned...". Be sure that you are being honest though, because you know the recipient is going to mention it in his/her response.
The only other advice for today is, keep it fairly short. If your first message is too long, the recipient is going to assume you cut and pasted it in. Shoot for three or four sentences of quality original content.
Cheers,
Tucker
Why don't you allow personal contact information in the singles ads?
February 14, 2010
One of our members recently asked our resident CyberDating Network pro: "Why, since it's a free site, can't I post my email address on my dating profile?"
There are two reasons for this.
The first is that if we allow email addresses on our dating personal ads, then we get a whole bunch of wasted traffic. Let me explain; spammers are always looking for places to steal email addresses and if they see that we have email addresses on our dating profiles, the spammers then send robots (automated website surfing programs) to read all of our profiles to gather the email addresses. With at least 60,000 dating personal ads on our site, that's a lot of wasted work for our servers and a ton of wasted bandwidth (Internet traffic).
The second reason is that once the spammers have gathered the email addresses from our site, then they send junk email to our members - often pretending to be affiliated with us. That means that our CyberDating members are inconvenienced by the extra junk email, and some of our members may stop accepting legitimate email messages from us, sending our messages to their junk mailboxes.
So, that's the deal... No contact information in your public dating profile. But, you can put it into your messages within our CyberDating Mailbox system.
Happy Valentines Day!
Tucker, The CyberDating Network
Searching for the perfect mate? Forget searching and browse.
February 10, 2010
You may have noticed that, in the last few weeks, that all of the dating profiles and search result pages in Cyberdating include "breadcrumb navigation". You cyberdating experts know that breadcrumb navigation is a way for a surfer to see the hierarchical structure of a website. But do you know why we added it as a feature in our dating site? It's all about finding the perfect mate...
We've found that searching for profiles is not necessarily the best way to find compatible singles on an online dating site - browsing is. You know how when you go to the video store to find a specific movie that you always see a dozen other interesting movies on the shelves next to it? Well that's what we mean by browsing. By looking at groups of singles profiles in the same category (same gender and location) we think you'll see many more really "dateable" singles. It takes the focus off of age, gender, height etc. and it puts the focus on the eligible singles in your area.
So, by adding the breadcrumb navigation on our dating site we are encouraging you to browse your way to more singles.
At Cyberdating, it's OK to say "Just Browsing!"
Tucker, The CyberDating Network
What did we ever do to you, Mr. Yahoo?
February 7, 2010
It appears that the folks at Yahoo, and most of the other free web mail services out there, think that we are spammers. I know! The nerve of them! Just because we offer a free service and we are in a business that has traditionally full of spammers and scammers, it doesn't mean that we do it.
In any case, if you are a member of one of the CyberDating Network of dating sites, please be sure to add us to your contact list (here are some instructions). If you don't, your email notifications will likely go to your spam mailbox.
Why should you care if your cyber dating notifications don't show up? It's because you won't get notified when you receive new messages in your Cyber Dating Inbox. I know lots of you check your Inbox regularly, but there are also plenty of our singles who are just too busy to check for new messages regularly. If the messages in your CyberDating mailbox get to be over 45 days old, we delete them.
That brings me to another related topic. People occasionally notice that their sent messages are not being read by the recipient and they ask us if the member is inactive or fake. The problem is that people are not getting their message notifications and they are forgetting to check their email. They are not dead - they're just dozing.
Want to see more of our CyberDating Network Blog? Check out our older dating blog entries.
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