In my last couple of blog entries I talked about both the security at Dream-marriage, and the way they charge for their services. While you can check out what I found in detail in my previous blog entries, the bottom line is that their security protocols are some of the best I have ever seen, and their pricing policies are such that you pay for what you want, and have the ability not to buy (or pay for) those services that you don’t want to use. Unlike most of the online dating services I have looked at – which offer a one-size-fits-all approach to pricing for their services – Dream-marriage allows me to control how much I spend, and what I spend it on.
As promised in my last blog, today I am going to start talking about the women of Dream-marriage.com. Let’s be honest here, guys – pricing is important, and online security is very necessary – but it is the people, and in my case specifically the ladies, who are going to make or break a site in terms of how valuable it is. Not every woman is going to appeal to me on every level, and I am certainly not going to appeal to every woman I meet, online or off. That means that for a site to have a chance with me, it is going to need to have a large community of women in it, so that I have plenty of choices available to me.
Whatever concerns I might have had about the number of women who used Dream-marriage faded away just about 30 seconds after I created my free three-day trial account and started sniffing around the site. There are thousands of ladies there – maybe even tens of thousands – and more are joining every day. These ladies range in age from 18 to 60, and come in all shapes and sizes – and from several countries. Just quickly glancing at their individual homepages on the site, in the matter of just a few minutes I found everything from dancers and musicians to teachers and secretaries, and virtually everything in between. And the thing about it is, while a lot of these women are drop-dead gorgeous this is not a site that is filled with wannabe super-models or ersatz, cosmetically enhanced creations with more add-on parts than a supped-up ’57 Chevy. These are real people, with real jobs and real lives, who are for the most part looking for the same thing online that I’m looking for – companionship with a member of the opposite sex. The fact that the team at Dream-marriage also verifies the identity of most of the women on their site (and indicates this right on the woman’s homepage) further goes to show that these ladies are who they claim to be.
Now, Dream-marriage states on their site that their goal is help facilitate long lasting relationships between men and women, but at this point in my life, I’m just interested in looking – playing the virtual field, if you will. While I very well might be interested in some kind of permanent relationship with one of the women on the site at some point in the future, right now I am just interested in having a little fun, and getting to know some lovely ladies without any strings attached. Dream-marriage makes this easy by allowing me to control exactly what I choose, or do not choose, to tell any of these women about myself and by also giving me a number of options regarding how I want to interact with them.
The most basic form of communication they offer is secure email that runs through the site. Basically, if I see someone I might be interested in getting to know a little better while I am browsing through profiles, I can fire them off an email. If they choose to respond, their return email comes to me through my Dream-marriage.com account – not through my personal or business email address – assuring my complete anonymity. That way, if the woman in question isn’t someone I want to continue to exchange mail with, I don’t have to worry about her spamming me to death.
Another way to communicate with the women on the site is by using their live chat capability. In this case, obviously, the woman in question has to be online, but Dream-marriage provides both a list of their online ladies, as well as an indication of their online status on their homepages. I tend to prefer this method personally, as I have always been pretty much a one-to-one kind of guy. Once I enter her private chat room, I can talk with the lady in real time and get to know a little bit about her. If she is someone that I think I might want to get to know a little better over a period of time, I can add her to my favorites list, and if she is someone that I don’t think I really have much in common with, I can simply click out of the chat room, end the conversation, and move on. Try managing that when you’re still on the appetizer course of a dinner date with the girl of your nightmares!
Another way that you can get to know some of the ladies on the site is by using their live streaming video service. While this isn’t available with all the women on the site (since, I imagine, some of them don’t have webcams) it is available with a lot of them. Basically, this service is used in conjunction with the live chat function, and lets you see the lady you are chatting with, in real time. This is one of the most popular services on the site, and it’s easy to see why. Live streaming video makes what is essentially a virtual experience all the more real and really enhances the connection you have with the lady you are talking with.
The ladies themselves … well, I think I’ll save talking about them for the next time. I have only gotten to know a few of them (so much beauty, so little time!), but the few I have spent some time with were all fantastic. So, yeah, I’ll tell you about a few of them the next time.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
Money Can’t Buy Me Love
Hi there, and welcome back to my blog (or welcome to the blog, if you are a first timer). About a month ago, after a couple of years of alternating between trying to be your basic 21st Century version of Don Juan (too expensive) and a monk (too lonely), I checked out a website that a friend told me about called Dream-marriage.com. It’s a site that looks to hook guys like me up with Russian women and while that whole idea didn’t appeal to me much at first, I took advantage of their three-day free trial anyway, just to see if there was anything there for me. Well, it’s been a month, and I’ve been having a great time on that site so far, so I guess the answer to that question is, yes!
In my last blog, I wrote about the security set-up they have on Dream-marriage.com because, being in IT, security is very important to me. You can go back to that entry to see what I found in depth. Suffice it to say, these folks take their security very seriously and, judging from the things that they post on their site that they are doing, continually upgrading their systems. They not only take care of the technical concerns on their end, but also have a huge database of articles relating to anti-scam strategies, and how to stay safe online. All in all, I give them 5 out of 5 as far as their security is concerned.
Now while security was my primary concern about the site (just as it is about ANY site I choose to use for anything, not just dating), running a close second to that was cost. Let’s face it, guys, money is tight these days – I don’t care who you are or what your story is. The economy went into the tank across the board and while things seem to be getting a little better, that was certainly a wake-up call for me when it came to my spending habits.
When I first started checking out online dating sites, I quickly learned that most of them fall into two categories; the ‘one-size fits all” bunch, and the ‘hidden costs’ bunch. With the first group, you have these mega-sites that charge you a small fortune for your six-month or 1-year membership and for that price give you all these goodies. The problem I had with those sites was simple – I didn’t want all the goodies and, since I didn’t want them, I sure didn’t want to pay for them. I didn’t want their machine “matching” me with my “perfect mate”, I didn’t care about ‘date-tracker’ services (if I meet someone and it doesn’t work out, why on earth would I want software to remind me of that) and I couldn’t care less about any ‘compatibility inventory’. Half the fun of dating is finding out about compatibility for yourself! The other kind of service doesn’t charge much of anything initially – or, at least, that’s what they tell you. But with these sites, I’ve had a couple of friends (who, admittedly, didn’t read their Terms and Conditions as closely as I would have) who found HUGE charges on their credit cards for doing things on the site that they thought were free. With both these kind of sites, the idea seems to be that you are made of money (which I’m not), and that you really don’t care how much you spend (which I do).
Dream-marriage doesn’t do business in either of the two above ways. In the first place, they offer a wide range of membership options – starting at FREE and working up from there – and then let you buy the services you want to use, while not forcing you to pay for things you don’t want to use. You know, like you were an adult or something! In the second place, not only do they tell you what the various services you might want to use (introduction video, live streaming video, etc) are going to cost up front, they also provide a confirmation box that you have to click OKAY on before they even let you spend your money – so there can’t be any accidents on your part. In other words, you buy what you want to buy when you want to buy it, and you are in complete control of not only how much you spend, but also what you spend it on.
The way they do it is through a ‘credits’ system – which is something else that just makes a ton of sense to me. Basically, after the free trial once you create an account, you can start buying credits (anywhere from 50 to 500 at a time – and the more you buy at one time, the less they cost), and then that’s it. The credits are how you buy the services you want. Your credit card is only charged at the “buy credits” stage – never directly for the individual services – and then the credits act as currency on the site. No hidden charges, no multiple credit card billings – everything right there out in the open. For me, not being an accountant, that system makes it real easy for me to not only keep track of how much I am spending, but also control what it is I am spending it on. To give you an example, while I really like their live chat service, there have only been a couple of instances (so far) when I’ve been interested enough in a girl to want to use their live streaming video service. So, since I don’t want to use it all the time, I don’t have to pay for it all the time. It just makes sense – I mean, I wouldn’t go to a restaurant that charged me for things I didn’t order, so why would I do that on a website?
Anyway, the bottom line is that unlike most of the other sites I have looked at, Dream-marriage not only doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to use, but also lets me decide how I want to spend my money. You would think that would be a no-brainer for just about any site, you know – but it isn’t.
Okay, that’s about it for now. Next time, I’ll tell you about some of the girls on the Dream-marriage site but, until then, if you want to check it out for yourself, remember their three-day free trial.
In my last blog, I wrote about the security set-up they have on Dream-marriage.com because, being in IT, security is very important to me. You can go back to that entry to see what I found in depth. Suffice it to say, these folks take their security very seriously and, judging from the things that they post on their site that they are doing, continually upgrading their systems. They not only take care of the technical concerns on their end, but also have a huge database of articles relating to anti-scam strategies, and how to stay safe online. All in all, I give them 5 out of 5 as far as their security is concerned.
Now while security was my primary concern about the site (just as it is about ANY site I choose to use for anything, not just dating), running a close second to that was cost. Let’s face it, guys, money is tight these days – I don’t care who you are or what your story is. The economy went into the tank across the board and while things seem to be getting a little better, that was certainly a wake-up call for me when it came to my spending habits.
When I first started checking out online dating sites, I quickly learned that most of them fall into two categories; the ‘one-size fits all” bunch, and the ‘hidden costs’ bunch. With the first group, you have these mega-sites that charge you a small fortune for your six-month or 1-year membership and for that price give you all these goodies. The problem I had with those sites was simple – I didn’t want all the goodies and, since I didn’t want them, I sure didn’t want to pay for them. I didn’t want their machine “matching” me with my “perfect mate”, I didn’t care about ‘date-tracker’ services (if I meet someone and it doesn’t work out, why on earth would I want software to remind me of that) and I couldn’t care less about any ‘compatibility inventory’. Half the fun of dating is finding out about compatibility for yourself! The other kind of service doesn’t charge much of anything initially – or, at least, that’s what they tell you. But with these sites, I’ve had a couple of friends (who, admittedly, didn’t read their Terms and Conditions as closely as I would have) who found HUGE charges on their credit cards for doing things on the site that they thought were free. With both these kind of sites, the idea seems to be that you are made of money (which I’m not), and that you really don’t care how much you spend (which I do).
Dream-marriage doesn’t do business in either of the two above ways. In the first place, they offer a wide range of membership options – starting at FREE and working up from there – and then let you buy the services you want to use, while not forcing you to pay for things you don’t want to use. You know, like you were an adult or something! In the second place, not only do they tell you what the various services you might want to use (introduction video, live streaming video, etc) are going to cost up front, they also provide a confirmation box that you have to click OKAY on before they even let you spend your money – so there can’t be any accidents on your part. In other words, you buy what you want to buy when you want to buy it, and you are in complete control of not only how much you spend, but also what you spend it on.
The way they do it is through a ‘credits’ system – which is something else that just makes a ton of sense to me. Basically, after the free trial once you create an account, you can start buying credits (anywhere from 50 to 500 at a time – and the more you buy at one time, the less they cost), and then that’s it. The credits are how you buy the services you want. Your credit card is only charged at the “buy credits” stage – never directly for the individual services – and then the credits act as currency on the site. No hidden charges, no multiple credit card billings – everything right there out in the open. For me, not being an accountant, that system makes it real easy for me to not only keep track of how much I am spending, but also control what it is I am spending it on. To give you an example, while I really like their live chat service, there have only been a couple of instances (so far) when I’ve been interested enough in a girl to want to use their live streaming video service. So, since I don’t want to use it all the time, I don’t have to pay for it all the time. It just makes sense – I mean, I wouldn’t go to a restaurant that charged me for things I didn’t order, so why would I do that on a website?
Anyway, the bottom line is that unlike most of the other sites I have looked at, Dream-marriage not only doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to use, but also lets me decide how I want to spend my money. You would think that would be a no-brainer for just about any site, you know – but it isn’t.
Okay, that’s about it for now. Next time, I’ll tell you about some of the girls on the Dream-marriage site but, until then, if you want to check it out for yourself, remember their three-day free trial.
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