another suspicious website: elenasmodels.com

[Nando]

As far as my experience tells, Elenas Models has been a total lost of time.
I suspect that many gals in their database is no longer available.
The only benefit was to get the prove that two of the girls were GCG or were not writing for themselves, or don't like guys from SRC (second rate countries in terms of economy as SO certainly would say)

A waist of time in my opinion

Just my two cents

[Turboguy]

Everyone has the fans and thier unhappy customers.   There are a lot of people who have had very good results. 

I will agree with Stepinit about her book.  I bought it out of curiosity and it was a total waste.  One thing she said seemed like an interesting approach so I tried it out on one gal and never heard from her again.

I think their weekly matches are really just their new members for the week and go out to everyone.   Yes, I get 19 year olds in there that say they don't want to meet anyone over 25.  I have a hard time remembering 25. 

Once you plunk down your cash for the first platininum membership it is only $ 199 to renew.  That is not bad and I sure do meet a lot of new gals for my investment.

Yes, I think they do send out mens profiles to other agencies.  When I joined for the first time I was getting mail faster than I could read it.  Something like 80-100 new gals a day for a short while.   I would guess in the first week I got 500 letters.  Now I get 4 or so a week. 

I do think you need a platinum membership to be worth while.  It has been a heck of a good value for me.  If there are better sites tell me about them.

[andrewfi]

If they offered value TG, you would not be here following another brace of failed 'relationships' the agency would have done their job and you and some lazy young bint from the FSU would be like a couple of pigs in muck.

But, if one defines value simply the number of 'profiles' that you get to read as being a conclusive measure of success, then perhaps they and others like them offer some kind of value.

Call me an old cynic, but IMHO the BEST agency is the one that provides a link to ONE woman and the outcome of that link is a happy marriage.
The very worst of agencies can provide laods of contacts, that they do not is simply a measure of their laziness and their male clients low standards.

[Bruno]

Call me an old cynic, but IMHO the BEST agency is the one that provides a link to ONE woman and the outcome of that link is a happy marriage.
The very worst of agencies can provide laods of contacts, that they do not is simply a measure of their laziness and their male clients low standards.

Hello old cynic 

A "marriage agency" is not a "matchmaking agency"... in some way, the big majority of marriage agency are like a newspaper... you pay for the newspaper and seek yourself for the ads who interest you... You pay for a catalogue, not for a marriage... in reality, they are more "introduction agency"

I know a real matchmaking agency located in France... they interview the man personaly, use service of professional psychologue... if they accept you, you pay a one time fee near 10000$... and they help you for find a russian bride with no limit in the time... so agency can almost promise a marriage but the initial expense is very high... they work with maximum 30 customer in the same time but result are great... almost 100 marriage last year and 95% of men find the bride during the first year...

 

[andrewfi]

Bruno - Marriage agencies are advertising conduits, in this you are correct. They advertise women to men and vice versa. When selling advertising, most novice buyers of advertising are concerned about getting the most possible responses from their ads. The experienced buyer knows that good advertising is targetted, it removes that prospects that the advertiser does not want to see. The theoretically perfect advertisement delivers one response per view and each response is a purchase.
It is exactly the same with a marriage agency. If the adverts are well written and well targetted then the theoretical perfect situation is one ad, one response, one marriage. In practice more than one is required, but for sure, as can be seen time and time again, sources that provide huge responses are usually less effective in terms of providing one meeting and a subsequent marriage than services that do aim, honestly to provide targetted advertising.

Of course, for some, there are good reasons why a large number of responses may be preferable:
guy has no clear idea of his needs
guy needs the ego stroking that a full mailbox of fake profiles can provide
guy is a newbie who does not understand that quality is much more important than quantity.

So, Bruno, sorry, but you are wrong. BTW, if you asked a newspaper ad department about what I wrote, a professional ad rep would tell you exactly what I told you - I know, that was my business, once upon a time...

whoops.

[Rvrwind]

that quality is much more important than quality.

However being an editor of that newspaper I would correct the text to read more precisely as: that quality is much more important than quantity. With the rest of your assessment I totally agree.

[SANDRO43]

For a list of 450+ FSUW dating sites, subdivided by type of service offered (free, fee, etc.), you can have a look at this page on my website :

http://www.floriani.it/sitirussi/elencositi-eng.htm

(Warning : profile figures are from 2004 and not up-to-date)

[Turboguy]

If they offered value TG, you would not be here following another brace of failed 'relationships' the agency would have done their job and you and some lazy young bint from the FSU would be like a couple of pigs in muck.

But, if one defines value simply the number of 'profiles' that you get to read as being a conclusive measure of success, then perhaps they and others like them offer some kind of value.

Call me an old cynic, but IMHO the BEST agency is the one that provides a link to ONE woman and the outcome of that link is a happy marriage.
The very worst of agencies can provide load's of contacts, that they do not is simply a measure of their laziness and their male clients low standards.

Heck Andrewfin, the best agency would be one where you send them $ 5.00 and a few days later UPS rolls in with the most beautiful gal in Russia who is also full of other good qualites and swearing her undying love.   When someone finds that one let me know.

Well Andrewfin,  I guess there are a lot of ways I could be looking for my lazy young bint (I learned a new word, wow)  for the next failed relationship.   (pigs in muck, now you are making me feel guilty about the second piece of cake at the graduation party yesterday)

No Andrewfin, I don't determine value by how many profiles I can look at.  I can look at profiles for free all day long.  All that will get me is eyestrain.

To me, value is the money invested / results.  At the moment I am using two ways of contacting gals, Elena's and freepersonals.   Free personals is free.  Elena's for my platinum membership costs me $ 199.00 every six months.   Free personals doesn't cost me anything.   Which is cheapest.  Elena's!!   How could something I pay for be cheaper than something that is free.  Because if I put any value on my time at all I waste ten times as much on Free Personals than I do Elena's.  If I figured my time at Russian wages it would still be cheaper. 

I mostly just write the gals who come in on the weekly "my matches" thingy that are really just their new gals and not screened at all.   Most weeks there are 100-125 new ladies and I find about 3-5 in the mailing I write where they are interesting to me and I am somewhere close to their requirements.  Some weeks there are none.  The most ever was around a dozen.   Without doing a detailed analysis I hear back from just under half of the gals I write.  (I am stretching their age requirements by a little in many cases which probably cuts my responses to some extent)  With free personals my response rate is more in the 10% range.  From what I hear some of the gals in FreePersonals are getting 500-1000 letters from guys. 

Probably of the close to 50% I hear back from half of those drift off within a few letters.  The ones that are left are real live girls not some fake letter generated by an agency secretary paid to write guys to generate fees.   The biggest problem of course is they are scattered from Sofia Bulgaria to Vladivostok.  I am heading out in two weeks on a trip that will take me everywhere from Odessa to Novosibirsk to meet gals I have met through Elena's.  Hopefully I will find a lazy young bint to come wallow in the muck with me until the relationship fails.

Usually when I hear Elena's discussed the comments are more favorable than negative.  In this post lately it seems to be the opposite.  All I can relate is my personal experiences which are good.  I communicate with a lot of nice gals.  The biggest problem is I have more good candidates than I can make trips to meet.  I get my moneys worth with Elena's.   I would be better off to say they are terrible and a big rip off.  It might steer a little competion away and make the pickings even better.

PS.  The spell checker doesn't like "bint" are you sure that is a word.  For us we would use the word bimbo

[Ste]

PS.  The spell checker doesn't like "bint" are you sure that is a word.  For us we would use the word bimbo

'Bint' is an Arabic word I think, opposite to Ben or Bin as in Laden, common(ish) UK Slang for 'woman'. Quote Mont Python, The Holy Grail, "just because some moistened 'bint' lobbed a scimitar at me...."...

Is there no end to the trivia in my mind!

Ste

[Rvrwind]

Sandro, I sure hope that list is a work in progress because I  counted no less than 12 sites that I know for a fact have sammers in the agency & some the agency themselves are scamming & they are in your white list.
I think you best do some research & make sure you know who & who not to blackball! But either way your list lacks credibility because of that very factor, however, a newbie would be totally unaware & go to a site that should not be in your white list.

[SANDRO43]

Sandro, I sure hope that list is a work in progress because I  counted no less than 12 sites that I know for a fact have sammers in the agency & some the agency themselves are scamming & they are in your white list. I think you best do some research & make sure you know who & who not to blackball! But either way your list lacks credibility because of that very factor, however, a newbie would be totally unaware & go to a site that should not be in your white list.

OK, I see what your objection is about. You may appreciate that keeping that list up-to-date is a hell of a job. If you care to send me, here or via a PM, your list of 12 sites, I may do some belated updating. Anyway, my main reason for showing that list was not scammer-related, but service-reelated, i.e. showing what sites provide free or semi-free services.

[SANDRO43]

'Bint' is an Arabic word I think, opposite to Ben or Bin as in Laden, common(ish) UK Slang for 'woman'. Quote Mont Python, The Holy Grail, "just because some moistened 'bint' lobbed a scimitar at me...."...

Ste, "al bintu" is Arabic for "the girl". It became popular with Allied troops (mostly British & Commomwealth) stationed/furloughing in Cairo during WW2, because it was shouted by local pimps peddling their wares.

.. and now, for something completely different : Portugal vs. Holland 

[Rvrwind]

OK, I see what your objection is about. You may appreciate that keeping that list up-to-date is a hell of a job.

Yes, I can appreciate that it is a hell of a job & precisely why very few people tend to tackle it. IMHO unless one has the time to do it & do it properly, one should not start in the first place as it just confuses the newbies. I think that you are trying to do a good thing, don't get me wrong, but something as important in nature as this should not be done halfway.
Sorry, got distracted by the fireworks!!! Tver Day today. There are buildings in Tver that were built before the USA became a country & the city of Tver itself is older than Canada. Just awsome, & that is what I love about this country, the history!!!

If you care to send me, here or via a PM, your list of 12 sites, I may do some belated updating. Anyway, my main reason for showing that list was not scammer-related, but service-reelated, i.e. showing what sites provide free or semi-free services

Ahhh, so that is where I errored. Then I should have said that a caveate emptor might be sufficient to suffice as an indicator that some of the companies listed may or may not be functioning perfectly legitamately & that you are only listing them for thae aformentioned purpose.
I got the impression you were listing them as such & that you were listing them as scammers as well. A newbie might well make the same errors. As for my list if that is not the function of your site, my list is of little value.

[Momus]

I just signed up for a gold membership at Elena's Models. It's $149.00 US for six months, with unlimited ability to contact women and up to 50 women's contact info. I've been on the site for two days, and here's my experience so far.

The first day, I sent out maybe 40 "expressions of interest." Basically, this is just an automated message that says, "Hey, this dude is interested in you." So far, I've had 20 responses: 9 expressing interest in me, 11 not interested. I've also gotten 5 unsolicited expressions of interest from women, one of whom I am pursuing. Thus, in my limited experience, it does not seem to be the case that you need a platinum membership to receive any interest on EM.

I should note that I was "swinging for the fences" in my initial contacts, picking the best women in terms of looks, profile quality, English ability, etc., in my judgment of course.

I've sent an introductory email to the 10 women I've made successful contact with and have begun a correspondence with one of them.

All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with these results. My profile needs work (especially some better photos), and it's only been two days, but so far so good. Of course, there's absolutely no indication thus far that any of these contacts will lead anywhere, so I'll update my progress from time to time.

- Momus

[BillyB]

Welcome Momus,

I hope all works out for you and I'd be interested hearing your update as you progress with Elena's models.

[Doug S]

My favorite thing is

"You, too can marry a (beautiful) Russian woman like me!"

Every time Olga and I see that it just cracks us up.

Sadly, most guys who want to, can't. Or they "can," but boy will they be sorry.

To me, that is the epitome of marketing-lying.

It's like, "eat this bottle of phen-phen and you will look like the bikini model pictured here."

I know that more than one person died from that.

[DKinSD]

Here's my 1/2 rouble:

Per my "newbie" post / intro over a week ago, I have done two tours of duty on Elena's as a "gold" member (eg. 50 contacts / unlimited "expressions of interest")  I have looked at a few other sites (freepersonals, etc.) but chose Elena's mostly on perceived value - similar to Turbo's experience.   (Turbo, I will refrain from calling you T/G given the more widely recognized use of those initials in the on-line dating world.)

For now, I'm going to call my experience pretty positive.  After using my 50 contact opportunities during the first go 'round, I met 4 or 5 good prospects and had extended contact with 2 or 3 of them.  Admittedly, however, I just wasn't ready to date in the FSU and ended the "relationships" after a very short time.  As most of you know, your head has to be in the right place to make a serious go of this.

More recently, I finished round two with Elena's.   I would characterize the results as identical to my first experience, with one important distinction - I'm READY this time.  (so much so that I just bought tickets to Siberia for the end of Sept - more on that as details unfold.)

There is one very obvious dynamic going on with Elena's.   "They" have a vested interest in getting you through those 50 contacts so that you are jonesing for more - either by re-upping for another 50 or shelling out for Platinum status.  I would estimate 60-70% of the ladies that I "expressed interest" in returned the favor.  This, of course, prompts one to send a longer letter and try to develop some meaningful contact.  If Yuri is on the receiving end of your "expression of interest" there's no doubt that there will be positive response and you will burn a contact.

Of the 60-70% of initial respondants, I would say that only 10-20% actually reply to a "real" letter and perhaps only half again reply with something that wasn't cut and paste.   Result?  50 contacts yield about 2-3 good prospects....YMMV.    An interesting feature of EM is that there is an "expression of interest" response rate listed for every girl.   You can be sure that the ladies with 90%+ response rates are the ones more likely to "waste" one of your 50 contacts (thanks Yuri.)

Now, having said all that, my lady in Siberia is a 90+ % responder. 

DK

[Manny]

Having just read all 7 pages of this, I think its fair to summise that EM is not a "perfect" agency, but then again you will search long and hard for one of those, its practices are geared up to making the owner money (I see nothing wrong with that) of course some scammers slip through the net, but it remains a fact that some folk are happy with the service they bought, and some other folk are married as a result of EM introductions.

Ideal they may not be, but fraud they dont seem to be. The point seems to be to pay for the upper levels of membership though if you want a result. 

We have a saying here in the north, "you dont get owt' for nowt'" 

[Turboguy]

There is a difference between making money and stealing money.  There are a lot of agency's that steal money.   You are right.  Elena makes money by having satisfied customers.   Of course some of the ones that steal your money do so by making you think you are a satisfied customer but in Elena's case most of the gals are real.  I am sure some of the gals get a ton of letters, particularly the ones that are knock outs.

Yes, I too get a cut and paste first letters most of the time.  Of course my first letter to them is cut and paste also.  After that I pretty much try to write real letters and I do try to modify my cut and paste first letter to suit things they have said in their profile.  Doing so really increases my response rate.

Yes, I have the platinum membership.   All the letters I want.   This week there were 14 in the weekly mailer I wrote to.  That is a few more than most weeks.  Truthfully I could spend all my free time writing gals who are good prospects if I wanted to.   One thing about the platinum membership that helps is once you have it you can renew at a lot lower price.  I forget right now if it is $ 149.00 or $ 199.00  It is really a bargain for what you get.  You can do a $ 3500 romance tour and get one good prospect who will probably turn out to be a scammer anyway.  Elena's is not perfect but they do deliver a good value.

[Manny]

Turbo.........a little off topic.....

Enlighten me please......... to save me reading ALL your posts........

Judging from others comments, you seem to have been "looking" for a long time, may I ask, are you just a sex tourist or have you not found a good enough woman in all your visits, contacts and relationships?

It will help me (and others no doubt) see where you are coming from with some of your posts.

I read one comment of yours that said something like "The women who wrote me were all about 10 years younger than me - much too old!"

I am just trying to get where you are coming from and what you are looking for?

[Turboguy]

Well first off I am not a sex tourist.  About as far from it as you can get.  If I wanted to be a sex toursit I could move to Thailand and have a room full of naked gals every night for a year for the money I have put into my search.

Sex Tourist.  If there is anything to "Use it or Lose it, I am a goner"

There is sort of a quick blow by blow synopsis of my mistakes in the thread about how important English is but in general. 

Probably my biggest problem was poor judgement on my part.   Some of that was in gals I chose to meet some was in the techniques I chose to use.  I dropped out of this scene for a year and a half or two because all I seemed to meet was scammers or nutcases.  Nutcases include Nina from Krasnodar whose favorite pastime was aiming her car at crowds of people, pushing the gas pedal to the floor, laying her hand on the horn and watching all the people jump for their lives.  Also Natasha from Vitibisk that I really thought was going to be my gal.  She wrote wonderfully romantic letters but when I visited she spent all her time screaming at people.  Not me too much, but her mother, her father and a few others.  I am sure when she married her husband would have been her chief recipient.  Other than that I seemed to be a big magnet for scammers.

There were very few that were good candidates that I chose to reject.  Svetlana from Kiev was one and I have kicked myself ever since.  It was right before I met Natasha from the last paragraph and I was sure she was going to be the one.  Tania from Omsk was a good gal.  Yes we did have sex and the biggest reason I rejected her was I just did not like painful sex, particularly when the pain is mine.  Otherwise she was a great gal.  Lena from Donitsk was another.  We really hit it off and I dropped her for Luda.  Actually when I went to meet Luda the main thing I planned to do was to eliminate Luda so I could persue Lena with a clear mind.  That was not what happened.   Lena and I are back in touch by the way and I will meet her again sometime soon.  The only other one I rejected was way back and was a gal in the Czech Republic.  I spent a week with her.  She was about 30 pounds heavier than her photos and needed a wide seat but I did not really care about that.  We spent 7 days together.  She was smart, funny, and an amazing and wonderful gal.  The problem for me was we had no romance.  She asked me what I thought at the end of the 5th day.  I said I thought she was wonderful but we had spent all that time together and had not kissed, held hands, walked arm in arm and that I was not even sure she liked me. The next day which was my last she did warm up a bit and we did neck a little and so on but it was a little too late for me.

When I talked about poor judgement about technique, that was referring to the fact that I used big agency romance tours as my primary way to meet gals for a while.   That was a poor choice.  About the time I figured that out I met Luda.  Luda by the way was a nice gal who might have been a little bi polar.  We did a K-1 visa and she was here 89 days and went back to Russia.  It was her choice not mine.  I would have done anything I could have to get her to say or to make her happy. 

That is my story.  I am back at it and I hope a little wiser thanks to RWD.

[Manny]

Thanks for sharing that Turbo.

I am a bit clearer now as to where you are. 

[Turboguy]

You are welcome Manchster.  Sometimes I think I might have been smarter to be a sex tourist and put all that money and effort into good times but it is really just not me and not what I want.  I just want to find a good girl that I am compatable with and build a nice happy life together.  It will happen.  I beleive in the law of averages and I have done enough wrong things that I should accidentally do something right one of these days.  Having all the great advice and great people here helps a lot too.

[Oiler]

I would not use such a large bulk agency. In general I am very lerry about agency women.

[Turboguy]

Suit yourself Oiler.   Think about it this way.  If an agency is large it is because a lot of people use them.   

If a lot of people use them it can be some combination of these two.   1.  They do a good job of satisfying their customers.  2.  They have enough advertising clout and BS to lure in foolish new customers faster than the old ones figure things out and quit.

If you prefer a smaller agency Oiler, perhaps I can help you.  You might want to check out some of the agencies in Logan's.   They are a little smaller.  You will find the entire staff works night and day to help you.  You will be amazed how many beautiful gals you will find just dying to write you and falling in love with you in no time, maybe even the second letter.