Online Dating:  FREE to Start

by Evan Marc Katz

So you’re new to this whole online dating thing and you don’t know where to begin. You do a Google search and here you are; hundreds of sites facing you, none of which you can tell apart from the other. What is an intelligent, kind, funny, attractive single like you to do? First of all, don’t panic. This happens to everybody. You might say it’s like being a child looking down the cereal aisle – everything looks appealing, but you can’t put a box of everything into the shopping cart. The difference is this: online dating is free to start. No supermarket I know is going to let you open up a box of Honey Nut Cheerios to see if you like it (although if you know of one, please tell me. I’ve been dying to try S’Mores for a long time now.)

There are innumerable advantages to dating on the Internet, and this is the first and most obvious one. You can’t go out to ten bars in a night and not pay for a drink, a cab or a cover charge. Yet here you are with the world at your fingertips. The freedom of this medium is that you can post a profile, browse members of a website and often receive emails at absolutely no cost. You only pay when you want to write back to someone or initiate first contact. This means you never have to join a site that doesn’t meet your own stringent criteria. That may take a little research using dating directories like this one, but it also means you won’t waste $25 a month on a service that has only fourteen people signed up within a 100 mile radius of your ZIP code.

I’m not going to endorse a website or tell you the “right” way to approach getting started. Many people begin based on a referral – your friend met his fiancée online and you figure you’ll try out the same site to see if lightning can strike twice in the same place (and by the way, it can, and often does). Others have narrower criteria because they strongly associate themselves with a specific group – Christian, Asian, gay, vegetarian, swingers – name your special interest and there’s undoubtedly a website for it. Because these sites are, by nature, niche sites, you may be best served browsing the content to see if there are enough members to justify a paid membership. On the big sites – you know, the ones that advertise everywhere – it’s a pretty safe bet that even in a relatively isolated area, you’re going to find more like-minded singles than you would on a small niche site.

The point, really, is to keep your options open. Online dating is inexpensive, but often, out of sheer eagerness, people sign up for five subscriptions in one day without realizing that those charges are going to recur at the end of each month. Ultimately, I do advocate paying for multiple sites. Like buying multiple lottery tickets, it increases your chances of success. However you shouldn’t pull out a credit card until you’ve inspected the goods. Use a bit of commonsense, be patient, and you’ll never have to be disappointed in the performance of an Internet dating website - you can test as many dating sites as you want by signing up with a free profile.

Evan Marc Katz is the CEO of E-Cyrano.com, America’s leading online dating consulting service, which specializes in writing winning profiles and offering personalized dating advice.  He is also the author of Amazon bestseller “I Can’t Believe I’m Buying This Book – A Commonsense Guide to Successful Internet Dating” (Ten Speed Press, Jan.’04).