An RW's experience on freepersonals

[ScottinCrimea]

I thought it might be interesting to share some experiences of RW with freepersonals so those here can see it from the other side.

At their request, we have helped three acquaintenances with this site.  The first is a 41 year old - very attractive, well educated with an excellent job who speaks limited English but is taking classes and learning quickly.  Her photos are cute and tasteful and her profile is fairly well written. She sent out an initial set of 24 letters.  Not a single response.  In three weeks she has gotten four letters.  Three are from the UK.  One Indian and the other two Turkish.  They were template letters with no specifics as to her profile.  She responded with individual letters addressing comments and questions in their profiles and letters.  Not one has yet to respond to these.  The fourth letter came this week.  It was from a 43 year old man in Switzerland with a picture looking much younger.  It basically said, "My Dear (no name added here).  I liked your profile.  I am serious in my search for a good woman. I will be coming to your country soon.  Please send me your phone number and I will call you when I arrive..."  It was obvious that he had been using this same letter for a long time as he had not updated it in three years, still listing his age as 40.  We helped her draft a replay basically stating tht she wasn't comfortable giving her number to a man until she knew him better and asked several questions.  My guess is that he won't respond.

(continued)

[ScottinCrimea]

The second woman is 47 years old, a really neat lady. Not as nice looking and speaks no English but educated with a decent job.  She sent out 10 letters initially which my wife translated into English for her.  Again, no responses to her letters.  Four men e-mailed her the first day, none since.  All had middle-eastern names.  IIRC, two were living in the UK and one was living with his parents in Algeria.  The other lived in the Netherlands and seemed quite sincere and appropriate so she responded to his letter, again with comments and questions about his letter and profile.  Two weeks later, still no response.

The third is the 19 year old daughter of the first woman who decided to try it just to see what would happen.  Her English is okay so she set everything up on her own and sent out about 20 e-mails that just said, "privyet!'  So far only one response, by a 33 year old man who offered to be her lover. Within two days, though, she had 30 unsolicited letters from various men.  Obviously they had only looked at her photo (cute but in no way sexual) and not read her profile because she had messed it up, listing herself as separated and implying that she had already found a lover.  They ranged in age from 18 to 48 and every one was a basic template.  We helped her clean up her profile and whether it was this or the fact that her profile was no longer fresh, the letters pretty much dried up.  I don't know how things have gone the past week or so because we're just letting her do her own thing.

I found with each of these women, their method of choosing who to write to was the same as with most men who do this  They would look over the photos, find one that was attractive to them and then check their profile.  If the profile matched their criteria, they would write to the men.  there were several cases where they were excited about someone and asked me what I thought.  By reading between the lines I could catch things that suggested they were a nut case or not what they portrayed themselves to be, things that a RW wouldn't pick up on.

So I'll continue to monitor this and if there is interest I will update things periodically.

[BillyB]

Thanks for sharing the journey of 3 RW on freepersonals. Quite interesting. Unfortunately the letters from men will trickle down after the first few days and weeks. Most letters will come from men who have issues. On freepersonals I've seen some Grade A ladies upgrading their profile about every month for over a year and they still have no luck in finding a special man.

There are many men that don't put out much effort to find a woman or don't put out the effort if they aren't attracted to the ladies who write them. It's critical for the ladies to choose a man who will give her the effort to know her. But not all ladies are blessed with youth and beauty and 20% of RW get 80% of the letters from men.

If freepersonals doesn't do the job, ask the ladies to sign up at other dating sites such as bride.ru and even marriage agencies. Exposure is the key and by exposing oneself, you have more opportunity to find what you're looking for.

[ScottinCrimea]

BillyB, I think your assessment will turn out to be the truth.  I'll probably suggest that the two older women sign up with bride.ru just to see what will happen. In any event it's certainly an interesting education for me about what goes on at these sites since I never used any myself.  As for the younger one, until she decides to be serious, I'll just let her her carry on in her own way and maybe only jump in if she starts to get herself in trouble (for her mother's sake).

[BillyB]

If the ladies are reluctant to walk through agency doors and sign up there, some agencies will let the ladies sign up on their website such as aprettywoman.com and they don't have to go through the routine of dating strange men at an agency if they don't wish.

http://aprettywoman.com/girls/apw/index.cgi/103000011344167.171.1.311191881074

Bride.ru could work for them but the more options the better. Prince charming could be anywhere. I suspect bride.ru will also sell the ladies profiles to other sites when they profile gets old. This happen to mine and other guy's ladies who used bride.ru but that is actually to the benefit of the ladies if they are still searching.

[Lily]

I also can share my experience at FP.

When I first signed up in March 2007, the next daus my regular mailbox was overwhelmed with contacts. The men were not interesting at all, in any respect . I deleted them all, and since then I put my profile on hidden.

Then I made search and selected two men. The fisrt contact letter brought no reply at all. After some time, I repeated my try, and I think I had to repeat it three times for every man. Finally one replied and we switched to correspondence by regular emails. The other one were silent to even more letters of me, until he finally replied and send me more photos which made on me slightly different impression with their higher resolution  and closer shot.

In October 7, I did another extensive search at FP and selected 7 profiles that had my interest. I wrote short individualized messages to every man but the first reply came only today. One men of 7 replied to me today.

Now I ask myself whether the others are not interested, or did they just not received my message of interest? Priceeding from my earlier experience, I'd say that they may have not received it, otherwise they may have replied earlier, without me having to contact them repeatedly.. If they just did not like me and my profile, why reply at all? If they liked it, why not to reply straight away? They did visit the site regularly..

Based on that practice, I got an impression that the message at FP are either not delivered at all ot delivered days later, although not sure about that.

[bgreed]

I met my beautiful Lena on freepersonals and prior to that wrote several other women.  Sometimes we would write for a while and then letters would stop or sometimes I found out things that I didn't like about them and a few were scammers.

But when Lena and I started writting we both knew right away that we had found someone special.

Lilly I can't believe that a guy receiving a letter from you would not respond. Either he's crazy, blind, or an idiot.

[SANDRO43]

Now I ask myself whether the others are not interested, or did they just not received my message of interest? PrOceeding from my earlier experience, I'd say that they may have not received it, otherwise they may have replied earlier, without me having to contact them repeatedly.. If they just did not like me and my profile, why reply at all? If they liked it, why not to reply straight away? They did visit the site regularly..

Lily, I'll tell you how I normally handle the 5+ letters/winks that I find daily in my email, as a possible insight into how (some of) the other half thinks:

1. If what I receive includes an interesting photo, compatible info (age, mostly) and originates from a "trustworthy" agency, I visit the agency's website for a closer look at her profile and, depending on what I find there (and applicable conditions: free/fee), I may decide to respond (usually the same day, or the following).
2. If the above conditions are not satifsfied, I may defer visiting the agency's website until a few days later (I don't recall if FP include photos in their notices), or not at all.
3. If I receive repeat contacts from someone I have previously ignored, I MAY be tempted to re-evaluate her profile, thereby possibly finding some reason to reconsider my previous decision.

Now what happens sometimes when I eventually reply, i.e. no further communications, puzzled me at first, but then I attributed it to the fact that I was just one of the many contacted, and obviously NOT the pick of the lot .

[Lily]

Sandro, I understand that you still don't leave the messages of women interest unreplied, in any way? That's good. I prefer receiving a short 'thanks I am not interested' than silence.

bgreed, I am not a U.S. dollar to be liked by every man  , it's allright that some men in who I am interested would not want to correspond with me. Rejection is something to be expected in dating. It does not hurt that much in online dating as it does in real.
My point at the moment is that some letters at FP just seem to be not delivered, or delivered late.

[Serebro]

That's a great thread, I like it
At the beginning of this summer I was registered in a few DA, all my photos were quite nice, real and non-professional, I am 26 and I had a big smile on my photos.
The experience was really bad: the quality of men who wrote to me was really low and the men who I wrote to didn't reply at all.
So at the moment I take only one DA serious-that's EM.
In fact I wasn't very popular there at all, too. The story repeates but it is more entertaining..
From time to time I receive short messages like this one

Hello Olga,
my name is Oliver, I was live in germany and I want to meet you, because you lookes like beautyful. I was finaly love if I saw them. If you like to learn more about me, a german boy, please write to me back. I will send you some pictures to your Mail.
For the first I give you some kisses and hope to hear from you.

Kisses
Oliver
from men like this one
http://www.elenasmodels.com/index.php?ap=3820348

And this man
http://www.elenasmodels.com/index.php?ap=442888
wrote to me that "Russia and all countries around it are full of scammers and b@tches and if I am not one of them he will be happy to correspond"
That was my respond:
"Hi, Edward. It was very nice to receive a message from you. Unforunately most foreigners I can see in my country and around it are losers and/or sexual tourists, so if you are not I will be very glad to hear back from you, too:)"

this is his answer that I received a couple of day ago
"sex will come after marriage.. do you believe in such a practice?"
 
The correspondance looks nice so far, the problem is that it's not my type of humour.

When I sent long letters that were quite close to the letter of the sender and answered his questions I received  something dry and which is good to be sent "to anybody" instead

So I do like the way it works, I am still impressed how you managed to find something nice among this "trash"/*applauds*

PS: one day I decided to write letters myself(in English of course)
this is the reply
Hello Olya.
Thank you for your letter and yes I would like to get to know you some more but please be patient. I am going to write you a longer letter and have it translated so it will be easier for you to read. It should take a few days. Would you like me to send it to your email address? Mine is xxxxxxxx@xxx.com.
Best wishes to you!
Scott.
The message was sent about 2 months ago.
I am still being patient and waiting for the longer reply in Russian which is easy to read.A couple of weeks later I decided to inform him that letters in English are ok, too but he didn't answer. I think he is probably lost in Russian grammar.

in fact the letter from Scott and the expression of interest from Baran received on the same day
http://www.elenasmodels.com/index.php?ap=1863970
 
made me smile.
This is another reason to visit these nice websites!

[Blues Fairy]

In August 2003, I joined Emode.com (later Tickle.com, later LoveHappens.com) to calculate my IQ.  After doing the test I saw that my profile (together with the test results) was automatically listed on their dating pages.  I added some photos and descriptions to it and decided to give it a try.  A nice thing about Emode is the option to filter the search by many various parameters.  The ones I used were: IQ, level of education (MA or PhD), and physical height.   So that's how my fiance's profile came up in the very first search - but as you may already know, we were in for a 3-year epistolary drag, so let's leave him for the moment.

During the time that ensued, I received about 3-5 letters and/or icebreakers per day.  A good percent of them were from India, Pakistan, Turkey and the like.  Some from Europe, some from the States.  I only replied to personalized letters that did not sound rude or stupid.  During 3 years, without any active search, I got 2 decent correspondents excluding my fiance (decent style, OK personality, relatively promising), about 7-8 not so decent but amusing correspondents (obviously unpromising but still fun to write to), and hundreds of total wackos whose stream of consciousness I cut off after 2-3 letters.  I believe if I did search more proactively, I would have gotten more good catches but it was not a burning agenda for me.  Besides, I noticed that decent guys would rarely respond to an icebreaker from a Russian - apparently for fear of scammers.  My photos were indeed a bit intimidating that way, I guess.     

[Lit_1nce]

I don't use freepersonals, but a similar site..  With 3 ways of contact.. The sending of "interest", sending an email, and then there is a live chat.

The women who send "interest", get about the same degree of success as I do when I send interests.. It's a low success rate, because basically it's the lazy way out... but there are times when it works.. My latest strategy of dealing with "interested" people  that I am in return interested in, is to send them an "interest" back. If an email follows then I email back.. otherwise to respond to them is usually a waste of time, because I am only one of many many that she has sent interest in.

Emails...,  it's so easy to spot one that has been sent to hundreds of other guys. These get no response of course. Unfortunately, these seem to be in the majority. Then there are emails from 20 year old women, who have actually read my whole profile. I do answer such letters to tell them when I am not interested, because even though I am not interested, the effort that they made deserves a response. (anyone I am not interested in not just "20 year olds")

The live chat thing, is just not my bag either. It could be useful once a relationship was established with another member.. but there are other ways to communicate. Not saying it's altogether bad.. just not for me.

The whole thing is quite a bit of work. .. with limited success. Kind of like the "real world", .. That 2 people can meet, be attracted to each other, have compatible personalities and interests, and fall for each other is a damn miracle... To do it online, and then have it work out in a face to face meeting.. well you need a lucky avatar don't you ?

[softy]

i am so glad to hear such nice stories as Blues Fairy's and bgreed's ones that those people at least found their soulmates. i didn't use such services but my friends who joined to websites as freepersonals or others ask me often to translate emails.. what can i say... world is full of perverts... only about 10% of emails, that i had translated, were like from real people, others were not serious

[Lily]

I don't use freepersonals, but a similar site..  With 3 ways of contact.. The sending of "interest", sending an email, and then there is a live chat.

The women who send "interest", get about the same degree of success as I do when I send interests.. It's a low success rate, because basically it's the lazy way out... but there are times when it works.. My latest strategy of dealing with "interested" people  that I am in return interested in, is to send them an "interest" back. If an email follows then I email back.. otherwise to respond to them is usually a waste of time, because I am only one of many many that she has sent interest in.
 

There are sites when a non-paying member, often the woman, is allowed only to send an 'interest', or 'wink'. For instance, at the site where I am active, I can send a limited amount of letters pro day, and when this amount is exhausted, I only can continue with the winks. If the man who is gold member and able to send letters replies me with a wink, too, then I have to wait for the next day to write him something meaningful.

Also, Lit_1once, why do you think that you are only one of many many that she has sent interest? Would not you think that you are one of 3-5 men, and that if you would reply her in a meaningful way, you will stand out of the crowd?

[SANDRO43]

Sandro, I understand that you still don't leave the messages of women interest unreplied, in any way?

Depends on whether sending a reply is for free or not .

That's good. I prefer receiving a short 'thanks I am not interested' than silence.

I, too. However, in my experience, when I take the initiative and the "target" FSUW is not interested, I very rarely receive a 'thanks I am not interested', either .

Lily, if you want to check how long it takes for your FP message to reach an FP addressee, send one to 233133 there (me ), and I'll let you know if/when I get it.

[Lily]

Sandro, just sent!

[SANDRO43]

Sandro, just sent!

No sign of it in my mail, yet, maybe FP are off for the weekend . Stay tuned.

[Lit_1nce]

Also, Lit_1once, why do you think that you are only one of many many that she has sent interest? Would not you think that you are one of 3-5 men, and that if you would reply her in a meaningful way, you will stand out of the crowd?

Well, that I am one of "many", is just my guess. More often they are messages from a new member, and perhaps I am just lost in in all the mail and interests from others, because I noticed when I first signed up, I was swamped with a lot of interest... as time has gone by it decreased substantially... I am sure that new female members probably get an enormous amount of interest and mail when they first sign up.

I have written meaningful replies to women who sent me "interest" .  If it was something that worked, I would still write them, but as I said it is usually a waste of time... Perhaps it is like seeing the girl across the room wink at you.. you wink back and then she comes over to meet you.. or you discover that she was winking at all the guys in the room to see what happens.

I think it is this very thing that makes this difficult... You see when I am sending an interest, I am interested in communicating with this person.. I am not sending out dozens at a time..  but given that the response to interests is so low (and that's from me too) I can understand why people (both guys and girls) send many.. but that doesn't make it right... If I sent an interest out, and that person wrote to me, I would write back regardless... But I find that the reverse is true when I am writing in response to someones interest in me..  so I can only assume that I am lost in "many" that they are dealing with, or that something has changed (perhaps they are focusing on another interest)

So for me, it works to reply to an interest with an interest.. and if she is really interested then email follows.. otherwise I assume they are just playing the numbers game.

Your mileage may vary...   

[SANDRO43]

Well, that I am one of "many", is just my guess. More often they are messages from a new member, and perhaps I am just lost in in all the mail and interests from others, because I noticed when I first signed up, I was swamped with a lot of interest... as time has gone by it decreased substantially... I am sure that new female members probably get an enormous amount of interest and mail when they first sign up.

That's SOP, I'd say. When you post your profile on a new site, what usually happens is:

1. You search the site DB for suitable candidates.
2. You send winks/messages to your selections (your flurry).
3. Your new profile appears in the next daily/weekly site newsletter, and is seen by their FSUW population.
4. A number of them consider you a suitable candidate, and send you their winks/messages (their flurry).
 
After a while, this settles down to a slower, steadier rhythm. Unless the agency policy is to send "automatic" winks/messages .

[Zadan]

It seems many women don't receive too much attention. I have to wonder if it's just because a small minority of guys are getting the most interest too. I've also wondered about the selection criteria of women from the FSU (and other int'l sites). Is it any different? Doesn't seem so from what Scott says.

On more domestic/U.S. ones, I would receive a moderate amount of attention. Initially quite a bit, then steadily less, as Sandro described.  It would take me a couple hours to reply. On the foreign ones, it was unbelievable. I remember coming home one day and spent almost the entire night writing replies.  I chaulked it up to me using a picture in dressy work clothes.

I really wanted to reply to everyone who took the time to write me, but it got to be too much.  I had to start sending fairly short, pre-written responses, which I think is better than no response at all.

[Misha]

It seems many women don't receive too much attention. I have to wonder if it's just because a small minority of guys are getting the most interest too. I've also wondered about the selection criteria of women from the FSU (and other int'l sites). Is it any different? Doesn't seem so from what Scott says.

Whether they admit or not, women are attracted to looks. A tall and very attractive man who is not overweight will attract much more attention that one who is not. Then other factors come into play. When it comes to a site, women will do what men usually do: look at the photos first, then read the profiles.

[SANDRO43]

On the foreign ones, it was unbelievable. I remember coming home one day and spent almost the entire night writing replies. I chaulked it up to me using a picture in dressy work clothes.

Zadan, I don't know what your line of work is and how attractive you look in dressy apparel, but how many replies did you get out of your one-night effort ?  Are you sure you were not the target of an agency mail-mill ?

[SANDRO43]

When it comes to a site, women will do what men usually do: look at the photos first, then read the profiles.

That's what you'd reasonably expect, and it's also a good way to discriminate among sites/agencies. For instance, from this site:

http://www.mypoppet.com/

I receive messages only from 18-29 year olds, regardless of what I stated in my profile .

[Lily]

Whether they admit or not, women are attracted to looks. A tall and very attractive man who is not overweight will attract much more attention that one who is not. Then other factors come into play. When it comes to a site, women will do what men usually do: look at the photos first, then read the profiles.

It seems to be true that a small amount of men attracts majority of women. Just like in real life.

I look for a man who could be attractive to me. Every woman has her own taste in men, so it is expected that she is guided by her taste. Yes it should be expected that photos receive the immediate attention. As for me, I look for expression in his eyes first. There are really ordinary faces with added attractivity that has been augmented by smile, face angle, well positioned lightning, etc. Then it comes to profile wording.

[Zadan]

Zadan, I don't know what your line of work is and how attractive you look in dressy apparel, but how many replies did you get out of your one-night effort ?  Are you sure you were not the target of an agency mail-mill ?

I don't recall the exact number anymore as it was so long ago now.  I would guess around 50. My first thought actually was "well, this has gotta be a scam" too--but none of the ones I corresponded with turned out to be scammers (unless they were the super KGB-agent ones on a really long timeline and I simply couldn't tell ).

Funny what you mention in your other post--I had the problem of getting women 3-5+ years older than me expressing interest. That to me says they didn't even read the age on my profile (or damn, do I look so old already?).

One woman I remember specifically asking: "Thankyou for taking the time to write to me. I am flattered by your interest in me, however, I am looking for someone closer to my age and you are 9 years older than me. Did you read my profile?"  Then began a long series of responses to the question with her own questions and asked me why it was women who had to be younger! 

That had me wondering if some of them were so accustomed to being chased after by older guys, that by the time some of them saw me they assumed I was older than I was.