Free Dating Sites vs. Paid Dating Sites

We have used both kinds of Internet Dating sites, free and paid for, and the honest answer is "You get what you pay for."

Lets look at the websites themselves first of all.

Totally Free Dating Sites

These sites, like all websites, cost money to run, and it's a safe bet that if they aren't charging you money up front they will be making money in other ways. The less money they actually make, the less features these sites can afford to offer or be bothered to make work properly.

But, as you might expect, these websites actually DO make money, and in a couple of obvious ways.

• They make money from the ads they show to their members - if you click on them. Which is all they really want you to do - they aren't that fussed if you find someone on their site or not.
• You also have to give them your e-mail address to join the site, and the lists of e-mail addresses they harvest in this way can be sold to commercial mailing companies (that's spam to you and me!), or they might do the mailings themselves - either way you are likely to get loads of spam.

You have to accept that not everyone using a free dating site will be genuine. These sites unfortunately attract all types of idiots: Nigerian scammers, Russian 'mail-order brides', giggly school kids pretending to be adults and making up profiles (complete with photos they've downloaded from other websites) and all types of unstable people - because it costs them nothing except their time.

But that's what it costs you too, your time - sifting through tons and tons of rubbish to try and find the odd nugget of gold in the shape of a real, genuine person looking to find friendship and love. Free sites usually don't have the manpower, the money or the inclination to police their sites properly and keep these time wasters off.

You can waste days, weeks even, sifting this way, and I don't know about you but I value my time more highly than that.

Paid Membership Dating Sites

The companies running paid dating sites have lots of competitors all after your money too, so they have to get everything pretty much right. If they don't, you might sign up for a week's trial but you certainly won't stay as a member for long after that if it doesn't live up to your expectations.

Paid dating sites will also ask for your e-mail address, but it would be foolish of them to spam you, wouldn't it. And very few have much in the way of advertising on their sites - they don't want to annoy their paying customers with lots of obtrusive ads.

Paid Internet Dating sites vary in what they charge, but it is usually between £5 and £30 per month - which straight away weeds out most of the idiots that are cluttering up the free sites. And frankly, if the people on the free sites can't scrape together £5 then do you really want to meet them?

Now, ask yourself what you might possibly be getting for the money? Only an introduction to the person of your dreams, that's what! Isn't that worth what you'd pay per month for Sky TV, or a take-away meal for two, or a couple of bottles of wine?

The simple fact is, on a paid dating site you and the others there will have invested hard-earned cash in joining - so they will be more serious and won't play silly games.

As you can see, using a free dating site can actually be really expensive. It costs you your time and effort, and I'd rather pay a small amount and know that everyone else on the site had too - it's just better all round.