Chapter 2 - How To Use A Dating Agency

This chapter covers everything you need to know to create a great profile that other people will find interesting. It will also ask you to think about the type of person you are and what's important to you. It starts with the most basic stuff and advances through to asking you to decide on the sort of person you would like to meet : not always as obvious as it sounds!

We'll also consider whether you should add a photograph to your profile or not, how to experiment with your profile to help you end up with the sort of person you always wanted, and also some advice for spotting the less serious people using dating sites. We'll also look at some of the techniques available to make your searching easier.

1. Things to bear in mind before placing personal ads or using any dating site. - personal ads
2. If I start dating online should I talk about my bad points as well? - dating online
3. Should I include a photo when I register with online dating services? - online dating services
4. Can I post more than one profile be it a free dating agency or not? free dating agency
5. Looking for internet romances - get your profile just right first! - internet romances
6. Experimentation is the key! - uk dating agencies
7. Why use Love Positive matchmaking services? - matchmaking services
8. Does it matter what I enter? - single girls
9. Avoiding The Liars And The Cheats On A free dating service
10. What does all this mean? - introduction agencies

Things To Bear In Mind Before Placing Personal Ads or Using Any Dating Site

When you make your personal ads or dating site wish list you must remember one basic thing. You are your own person and you need to find someone that makes you happy - not your friends or your folks. It's great if it all dovetails together but at the end of the day you're the one that's got to live with your partner - not the rest of your family or friends.

It's easy to make a wish list that is so demanding that of all the thousands of people that read personals or use dating agencies you end up being left with a very small selection. You can make it so hard for yourself that even with the best will in the world you'll be more than likely to remain single.

Click here to register free with Love Positive!

Personal ads sites are very different to dating agencies or matchmaking sites. Many personals sites have thousands of profiles but they are often quite limited in terms of the information that they tell you. They are also usually not that sophisticated in terms of being able to refine your search. The bottom line is that they don't match you like some dating agencies and all true matchmakers do. The best sites, like Love Positive , match both ways. So just because a middle aged man is interested in meeting a significantly younger woman. It doesn't mean that he will get to see the profiles of all the younger women on the site. He'll only get to see the profiles of women who have expressly said they are interested in meeting a man of his age. This is just one example - good matchmakers apply this practice to many other criteria to end up supplying you with a list of people who should be pretty close to who you would like to meet and they should also be interested in you. So rather than spend your valuable time on a personals site or, worse still, scanning the column inches in the back of a newspaper we heartily recommend using an online matchmaker. They're fairly quick to use, taking perhaps no more than ten to fifteen minutes of your time to get yourself registered, and allow you to narrow down your search enormously so you can concentrate on people who are more likely to be interested in you.

So as we said before - you should be realistic and prioritize what is really important to you and what isn't before you start using any form of dating site. If you asked most people who are married whether they're in a relationship with exactly the type of person they thought they would be, then most of them would say 'no'. That doesn't matter - they were fortunate enough to find someone that suited them by being reasonably open minded.

So the golden rules before placing a personals ad or registering with a dating agency are: create a positive image of yourself, believe in yourself, think about who you are and the type of person you would like to be with, keep an open mind, and always, but always, be extremely honest. So what are you waiting for? Follow the advice - it might just change you life!

If I Start Dating Online Should I Talk About My Bad Points As Well?

Dating online requires honesty - you've probably picked up on the fact that we have constantly stressed this through out the guide. So when you start to think about what you might put in your profile people often wonder just how honest is honest? Should you list all of your bad points as well?

Click here to register free with Love Positive!

Dating online can appear to be a bit of a minefield at first but we hope that we have demonstrated that with a bit of planning and forethought you will be ahead of the rest. There's no need to list all of your bad points because whilst you might consider them to be bad, others may believe that they make you who you are and give you that certain individualism. If you have particular dislikes or things that are really important to you then there's every reason to mention them. You might reduce the number of responses that you get but you will find that the people who do respond are interested in you for the way you are.

Many of us would rather like to be a few pounds lighter than we actually are and would quite like to bend the truth a little in our profile. Don't! Whilst society deems that being slim is something to be worshipped there are other cultures that value being larger. Hard to believe, in this day and age of techni-colour images that are thrust at us every few seconds, but it is true. Just because you may have a few extra pounds around the middle doesn't mean that you're unattractive. In fact many people actively prefer their partners to be a bit more cuddly! People come in all shapes and sizes and there is someone out there for you whether you're slim or chubby or anywhere in between.

In a similar fashion there are women that are single mothers that believe that they are in some way less desirable than women without children. Wrong. There are many men out there that appreciate the extra maturity that motherhood can bring to a relationship. You want meaningful responses from people that have gained the right impression of you - not a false image that you have projected. The bottom line is when you start internet dating you should be honest and not cover up anything that you might believe will make you less attractive to some potential partners - it will make you more attractive to others.

We always try to stress that each person is an individual - so show it. You'll read plenty of profiles that say something like "I've got a good sense of humour and like going out or staying in with a bottle of wine with good company. If you want to know more just ask." The person who writes this type of thing in their profile may well be 100% honest - but it's just not very inspiring is it? It doesn't make most people want to rush to write a message to them. We have a great deal of experience in this and can tell you that these profiles often get passed over for something more interesting ... Aside from anything else it comes across as being lazy. It says 'Here I am but I can't be bothered to think of what to write - I expect you to make all the running'. Using an online dating agency doesn't mean that you can be lazy. You need to make an effort - if you don't then someone else will and you could miss out on a life changing experience.

Should I Include a Photo When I Register With Online Dating Services?

Most online dating services have the facility for you to include at least one photograph in your profile. There are reasons to add one and reasons not to but on balance you're probably better off including one.

Let's first assume that you want to add a photo to your profile and we'll come onto the positives and negatives later. Choose a photo that is of good quality: remember many online dating services will crop and reduce the quality themselves to improve download speeds so it helps to have a good quality image to start with. Choose a recent one that shows you in a relaxed setting preferably smiling, it certainly adds to the sparkle in someone's eyes and makes you look less intimidating. Also make sure that you can actually see you in it and not just a part of you behind some of your friends! Many agencies won't accept photographs with more than one person in it so as not to confuse other users. Finally ensure that you are more than a small dot in the photo because when an operative crops the image and blows it up you'll end up looking little more than a grainy smudge!

You can also judge how well online dating services are run by the sort of photographs that are included on a profile. If the service is poorly run you will find all manner of "adult" material. Any service worth it's salt will approve all photographs before they are allowed to be made public.

Virtually all online dating services agree that adding a photo to your profile will result in more people viewing it - and it's not only attractive people that put photos up. There are a great many extremely attractive people that do not include a photo because they want their potential partners to get to know them as a person rather than just an attractive face. There are also some people that know they're not conventionally attractive so they post a photo so that no-one becomes disappointed when they do eventually meet up.

The only other reason for not posting a photo is if you're worried that someone you know might recognise you. If this worries you then just consider the probability of you both registering with the same site, out of the thousands of available online dating services, and you matching up with each other! It's a pretty low risk and even if they did they can hardly blame you for wanting to change your life and what were they doing looking at the site anyway!

Can I Post More Than One Profile Be It A Free Dating Agency Or Not?

We don't know of one free dating agency that stops you from posting multiple profiles at the moment. Not to say there aren't any out there that do stop you but we think it must be very rare.

The advantages of posting more than one profile are fairly obvious: you can try one with a photo, one without, and vary your copy with each profile. You may also get more response from other users. It's probably wise not to register too many times though as you may get responses from some of the same people and you may also lose track of which profile you are meant to be at any one time! Obviously with a free dating agency it doesn't cost you anything to have as many profiles as you like but eventually you may have to subscribe to get in touch with people. So you'll lose out on the matches from those other profiles anyway.

If you want to post multiple profiles then stick with a free dating agency until you've made your mind up what you want to do, unless, of course, you're lucky enough that money is no object! It's unlikely than any subscription service would stop you from having more than one profile but even if they did you could always subscribe to a different dating agency.

Rather than placing several profiles with a free dating agency we would advise you to just have one profile with a paid for service and to experiment and update your profile on a regular basis until you find what works for you. You'll almost certainly benefit from a better run service and more useful features.

Looking For Internet Romances - Get Your Profile Just Right First!

Most internet romances don't start off in a "full on" way from the day you first register. It often takes a little while before you've "tuned" your profile to gain the sort of response you require. Many things can also affect how successful your profile is such as when you posted it. Did you post it late on during the week? More people tend to look at dating sites at the weekend and during the early part of the following week. It's difficult to explain why but it does seem to be the trend. Did you post it at the beginning of the holiday season? This can be a double edged sword: while some people will have more time on their hands for surfing the internet others may be away doing things with their children or on holiday.

The most important thing to remember when preparing your profile though is to make a draft first and then play with it. It's important to get something down on paper first because it sure won't get any easier trying to write it straight into your dating sites form. If you sit there sucking the end of your pencil for a while don't worry: most people do. It really isn't very easy to promote yourself: the good old British reserve kicks in and seems to make us go all shy and forget that we're really rather good at anything! In the same way that most internet romances don't happen overnight getting your profile just right won't either. Don't give up though: read other people's, get ideas from them and you'll get the general idea.

It might be a good idea to try to split your profile up into two or three sections: your personality and the type of person you are; the sort of person you are looking for; and maybe a small section saying about the type of person you definitely aren't looking for. Once you've done it you should read and read and read it again making any corrections necessary. You may even want to leave it for a little while and then go back to it just to make sure that you think it's the right tone you wish to project. If you have a close friend that would be prepared to read it for you then let them, they may give you even more material for you to work with. Now post your profile: you're ready for your internet romances to start!

Experimentation Is The Key!

As we've mentioned before many good dating agencies allow you to edit your profile as many times as you like. So if you haven't received the sort of responses that you'd hoped for after a few weeks then it's probably time to think about how you might change things.

The easiest thing to think is that your service isn't very good. That may be the case but most dating agencies have an abundance of people from all walks of life so it may well be worth persevering a little longer. After all it's easier to change a profile than it is to start all over again with another site! People are constantly registering and constantly removing themselves from dating agencies all the time. So the "population" is always a transitional one. Mr or Miss Right might be just about to register.

You might try asking a friend or two to have a look at your profile. They might make some astute observations about it and really help you to think about things. Sometimes it's the smallest comment that can suddenly set off a great train of inspiration. Some dating agencies also provide you with hints and tips and maybe even some example profiles that you can get ideas from.

Conversely, you might have a completely different problem: you might be getting too many responses! This will most likely affect women as we said earlier that most dating agencies have more men than women on their books. To reduce this problem you could try narrowing your selection criteria a little bit until you are only receiving the number of responses you can handle and, of course, they will be even better targeted.

Why use Love Positive matchmaking services?

There are literally millions of people around the world using matchmaking services at the moment and everything points towards them becoming more and more popular in the coming years.

we at Love Positive are fairly unique In Britain and believe that we offer a much needed service. We ask all our members to be completely honest as regards their hiv status as this is the only way that  this site will work. This is so that when a member receives a contact from another member they can be comfortable in the knowledge that the contact will be based on other aspects of their profile and that ones hiv status is not an issue, as it would likely be in the real world.

Love Positive matchmaking services can put you in touch with a range of people and can cater for almost any religion, culture, age or sexual persuasion. However, the best thing about us is that we give you peace of mind, by providing a dating environment where your hiv status is not an issue. We also save you that most precious of commodities: time. Instead of you having to search through hundreds and sometimes thousands of personal ads by hand we can do most of the work for you. our sophisticated databases can work much faster than you can so why not let us take the strain. All you have to do is the fun part: reviewing and getting in touch with those people that you matched up with!

Click here to register free with Love Positive!

It's worth making the distinction again between matchmakers and personal ads. Even most online personal ads don't give you much sophistication in the way that you can narrow down your searches to people that you would really be interested in. Matchmakers are looking to do exactly that - match you with suitable people. It may be that you might have many more people to choose from on a personal ads site but most won't be suitable for you. What's the point in having to look at a thousand personal ads when only thirty are remotely close to who you were looking for?

However, while most matchmaking services have thousands of people on their books what selections you make can have a huge influence on the number of matches you receive. It would be very easy to make selections to create this fantasy model man or woman and end up with very few matches. You need to be realistic and, as we mentioned earlier, decide what's really important to you. If it's not important to you then why put it down as being important? It will merely reduce the likelihood of you finding a partner that you can be happy with.

So make your list of "essential", "nice to have", and "unimportant" qualities and play around editing your profile and your selections until you find people that look to have interesting profiles. In the next section we'll look at how silly mistakes and small adjustments to your selections can make big differences to the number and type of profiles you will be shown. Matchmaking services may have thousands of people on their books but they can't magic the impossible out of nowhere!

Does It Matter What I Enter?

You bet! Whilst most online matchmakers have loads of people registered with them remember the old adage "you put rubbish in and you'll get rubbish out." You also need to think a little bit about how other people might answer the questions in deciding what requirements you might have. For instance, say you're a guy looking for single girls do you say you only want to meet single girls?

Click here to register free with Love Positive!

We can't advise you strongly enough to think very hard about the sort of person you would like to meet before you start internet dating. If you leave all the answers to your questions very 'open' then you won't get particularly well targeted matches. On the other hand, if you really don't know the sort of person you are looking for there isn't much harm in just keeping you options open and browsing the profiles. Once you've seen the profiles of people that you wouldn't want to meet you can always edit your profile so that you can exclude these people and so receive more focussed matches.

The problem with the above guy looking only for single girls is that many women may put themselves down as being single because they are - at the moment. However, they may, in reality, be separated, divorced or widowed. They're not lying, it's just a matter of interpretation. What's really important is that they are registered and wanting to meet someone for a new relationship.

In the same way did you really mean that you only wanted to meet single girls in the truest sense of the words? Sure, some people may not wish to get involved with someone who has gone through a separation leading to a divorce. Just be sure that you have read the questions for what they are and have thought about how others might view themselves. It's not unreasonable to expect people to possibly describe themselves as single when they're not in a relationship at the moment.

Another reason that single girls might describe themselves as such is that they may have had a relationship go badly wrong on them, maybe through no fault of their own and they feel they may appear to be less attractive to possible future partners if they say they are divorced for instance. The above examples show just what can happen and why people say certain things, we could come up with many others. The best thing to do is to select the type of person that you want, having thought about what people might describe themselves as, and then make contact. If you strike up good e-mail conversations these things will almost certainly soon come out in the wash.

Avoiding The Liars And The Cheats On A Free Dating Service!

Any free dating service will almost certainly attract more than their fair share of liars. Unfortunately, not everyone out there is as honest as you are. That's why we always recommend that you register with a service that you have to pay a modest subscription charge before you can get in touch with anyone. For some reason it puts the fools off" can't think why!

Click here to register with Love Positive.

Don't necessarily believe that all people play by the same rules as you do: many don't. The motivation for being dishonest on a free dating service is, of course, to receive more matches. You will have picked up throughout this guide that we want to stress the importance of honesty and we hope that the people who are tempted to lie are now convinced of the fact that they will only be fooling themselves. By all means try a free dating service but do keep your wits about you. It's very easy for someone to make themselves out to be something that they're not in cyberspace.

The bottom line is that whether you use a free dating service or a subscription based one you should try to move to meeting up in person, or at the very least, start talking on the phone as soon as you feel comfortable doing so. Most liars aren't very good at it and you will soon find inconsistencies in their stories as you get to know them better.

Meeting in cyberspace is no different than meeting in the real world. You will find liars - but you will find genuine people. Using a subscription based service will cut your chances of meeting people you will be disappointed with. Just keep things real and don't give the keys to your heart away too easily.

What Does All This Mean?

People who use introduction agencies on a regular basis get to know the abbreviations that are commonly used in personal ads etc. However, for the first-timer it can all be a bit confusing! Here we try to unravel the mystery and make those ads easier to read.