Online Contact Form

What is your name?

Where are you from?

E-mail address?

Most people who have used an online dating service have an enjoyable experience. Still, you want to take a few precautions when placing your ad so your encounter is fun and safe!

Personal Ad
Never put personal, identifying information on you ad. Don't post your phone number, name, address or photos. The great thing about online dating, is that you can meet and talk to your potential mate through anonymous e-mail accounts and chat rooms. Once you get to know someone better, you can choose whether or not to share this information.

Use the Services
Many online dating services now offer ways for you to communicate completely anonymously through e-mails and chat rooms. Use these services until you get to know your date, then consider giving out your personal e-mail address.

Watch Your E-Mail
Many personal e-mail accounts have identifying information attached; names, phone numbers, etc. Before using your personal account, check and see what sort of information goes out with each e-mail.

Meeting
If you decide to meet your date in person, do it in a public place. It is also a good idea if the meeting place is "neutral"; not your place of work, your friend's restaurant, etc. You may decide after meeting your date in person that one date is enough!

The key to finding your perfect match through an online dating website is with your personal ad. Not only must you communicate what you are looking for, but why someone might be looking for you.

Who You Are
The first thing you need to think about when writing your personal ad is who you are. You want whoever looks at your ad to get an honest sense of you. Since most people know what they are looking for, you need to communicate your personal and individual qualities clearly.

Things to Mention:

What You Want
It is very important that you describe what you are looking for in detail. For a person to respond to your ad, they need to be able to see themselves in the description. Be specific: if you are not clear on what you would like, you may be unhappy with your matches. If you are clearly looking for a non-smoker, you'd better mention it.

Honesty
Above all, be honest in who you are. Don't try to get more responses by "beefing up" your personal description. You want someone who is looking for you! With so many people dating online, you are sure to find someone who will be interested in what you have to offer.

The same goes for what you are want. If you are looking for just a light, non-serious relationship, don't say you want a potential spouse because you think it will increase the dating pool. Not only will your date be deceived (and probably mad at you), but you will not get the responses you really desire!

Grammar and Spelling
Lastly, be sure you check your grammar and spelling. Your written personal ad is all online daters have to go by. You want to come across as intelligent as well as desirable!

It can be really hard to find romance these days. People are busier than ever. Who has time to go looking for a mate?

Where do you go anyway? You are tired of the bar scene. You've scoped out everyone at work. The last three dates your mom set up are memories you are desperately trying to forget.

Why is it so hard to find someone? You know exactly what you want... just not where to look.

Now finding that perfect someone is easier than ever. Online dating is the hottest trend in matchmaking today. People all over the world are placing personal ads at online dating service sites.

What Are Online Dating Websites All About?
When you go to an online dating website, you can scroll through thousands of potentially perfect mates. Unlike the traditional newspaper personals, ads on online dating sites are organized for easy searches. Just type in what you are looking for, and all those who match that criteria pop up instantly.

Or maybe you are the person someone has been searching for! Many dating sites allow you to type in your information and find the person who's been dreaming of someone like you.

Online dating may be what you are looking for. Dating Personal Ads Online was created to introduce you to the world of online dating and personal ads. Many people have found love and romance with their computers - you could too.

New Love Found Through Online Personal Ad
After his first marriage ended in divorce, Steven Rudin, 42, decided to have a go at online dating. He wasn't expecting much. In December 1998, he logged onto a website he'd heard about devoted to matching prospective mates with an interest in rural life. Soon enough one profile caught his eye, that of Ann Christensen, also 42. Within a few weeks, the two were e-mailing each other, and by February they were engaged. Rudin moved from Seattle to Fresno, Calif., found a job as an auto mechanic, and last June he married Christensen, a customer-service rep with an agricultural company. The newlyweds completed their rural idyll by settling down on a 30-acre raisin farm. "If you had told me that I would wind up meeting my great love this way," says Rudin, "I would have said you were crazy."

Crazy or not, the world of online dating is certainly booming, with millions of willing singles hunched over keyboards touch-typing their best smooth lines. "It's to the point where mothers are actually telling single daughters to search for their husbands on the Web," says Trish McDermott of an Internet dating service that boasts about 100,000 active members.

New, Old Rules for Dating Online
In many ways, this is courtship as it once was, before the advent of the singles bar. There is plenty of conversation but no touching. With the computer serving as a chaperon, guaranteeing that no one gets too close, tastes are compared, as are family backgrounds, hopes and dreams. Much as sites such as Priceline and eBay encourage old-fashioned economic behavior--one bids, one negotiates, one doesn't pay retail--the dating sites serve as 19th century parlors where couples sit in chairs and chat. Even the word chat is slightly antique, recalling porch swings and glasses of iced tea.

"You're actually seeing couples court each other and build up some level of intimacy," says psychologist Alan Clark of Santa Monica, Calif. "This can help make relationships more meaningful and exciting down the road."**

Online Dating is Popular
Online dating has become so common it's being studied by experts in human behaviour and the financial stakes are growing. Sociologists Robert Brym and Rhonda Lenton - a married couple who met in their university cafeteria - call Internet use "the birth of a new society."

So begins their 56-page study on online dating and personal ads released last week - funded by Microsoft Canada - to give a snapshot of who's surfing for sex, love and other personal reasons.

The Birth of Online Dating and Personal Ads
Internet dating began about five years ago, says the study. In North America, the dating-services industry was estimated to be worth $1 billion in 1998 and is projected to reach $1.5 billion by 2003, says the Computer Industry Almanac.

"The main important finding that's emerged from this study for us is how mainstream online dating has become," says Lenton, a professor at McMaster University in Hamilton.

The Report on Digital Dating in Canada is an analysis of a phone survey of 1,200 people over 17 and an online survey of 6,581 dating service users.

Who Dates Online?
Most online daters in the Lenton-Brym study were men, or about 68% of respondents.

Among the other results: 63% of respondents said they had sex with someone they met online; 60% formed at least one long-term relationship, 27% met at least one partner, and three per cent eventually married.*

Online Dating is Popular
Online dating has become so common it's being studied by experts in human behaviour and the financial stakes are growing. Sociologists Robert Brym and Rhonda Lenton - a married couple who met in their university cafeteria - call Internet use "the birth of a new society."

So begins their 56-page study on online dating and personal ads released last week - funded by Microsoft Canada - to give a snapshot of who's surfing for sex, love and other personal reasons.

The Birth of Online Dating and Personal Ads
Internet dating began about five years ago, says the study. In North America, the dating-services industry was estimated to be worth $1 billion in 1998 and is projected to reach $1.5 billion by 2003, says the Computer Industry Almanac.

"The main important finding that's emerged from this study for us is how mainstream online dating has become," says Lenton, a professor at McMaster University in Hamilton.

The Report on Digital Dating in Canada is an analysis of a phone survey of 1,200 people over 17 and an online survey of 6,581 dating service users.

Who Dates Online?
Most online daters in the Lenton-Brym study were men, or about 68% of respondents.

Among the other results: 63% of respondents said they had sex with someone they met online; 60% formed at least one long-term relationship, 27% met at least one partner, and three per cent eventually married.*