Well... you have to be truly stupid to get scammed, I think. Obviously there are many people out there who are desperate and will clutch at any straw, but if you follow the basic guidelines this won't get you.
One of these is: avoid protracted correspondence. These are always a waste of time. Mostly they are not scams but all scams do involve this. Exchange a few emails, maybe a phone call, check out obvious things (swapping photos is essential; anybody who won't do that is 100% likely a chronic depressive with low self esteem) like smoking, religion, etc, and meet up ASAP. Any "story" you get, walk away.
There are many sites with dating tips. I think most are useless because they list all the obvious stuff but fail to admit just what % of women are "serial shoppers", and once you get one of these the chances of making it to the top of the list and staying there is basically zero. Also some % of people are playing behind someone's back and you definitely want to avoid those; the dating sites will never admit to hosting these.
Prenups don't work in most countries but cohabitation agreements do, if correctly drawn up.
I wrote up some notes years ago:
How internet dating works
In internet dating, the women almost never contact the men. According to some dating site admins I spoke to, the message flow is around 10:1 men to women, but that is the overall average, and most women under 40 never contact any men, presumably because they get so many offers they can't see any need, and maybe also due to a fear of rejection. When they get above about 40 they do start writing, probably because they receive far fewer messages (most men on the sites limit their search to 29, 39, etc). There is also a gradual change in that women are more accepting of internet dating as time goes by, but still the indications are that today the scene is dominated by men.
This means that any woman whose profile suggests she is attractive could be getting so many messages she barely has time to read them. And a lot of them will be obscene, of the "do you want a shag on the seafront tonight" type (evidently this tactic works sometimes - men who do it in the club scene report a 10% success rate). This means you have to do a lot of writing! You can expect to have to write to 100 women to get 1 date, but that's still way less effort than any other way of finding women. After you have read the tips here, you should be able to get the 100 down to 10 or 20...
I looked into running a dating site as a business around 2000. In those days it was an easy way to make money. Set up a web server, write some fairly simple software, create several hundred fake female profiles (mostly with no picture, or pictures stolen from the internet, age 29 to 39, slim, attractive, looking for a casual relationship), get it up on the search engines (yes, back then it wasn't just google) and the men will pile in, paying say £10 each for the right to send messages. Eventually women will start joining, but most won't need to pay, but that's OK. As it builds up, you delete the fake profiles... 10,000 men joining per year is £100,000 a year income. This is how most of the sites started.
A further "work" factor is that most women sign up on just one or two sites. Women tend to sign up on internet dating on the spur of the moment, sometimes along with a woman friend, and without realising that if there are 20 sites and they put their details on just 1 they are missing out on 95% of the potential. They are often hesitant, due to all the "pervert" reports in the media. But today there are dozens of sites and that's just taking the major ones. Almost every web portal has a "dating" or "flirting" ("flirting" = casual sex) link on it. So you have to "do" a large number of sites - because you cannot know where you will find the woman you are looking for. She could be on a well known site or she could be on an obscure site. Another reason why the obscure sites are worth doing is that the women on them are going to get fewer offers. I met my lovely partner in 2003 on a site which had hardly any women on it...
The biggest gotcha with internet dating is the amount of competition. If you meet a woman in some social scenario, go on a date, get on well, you can reasonably assume she will want to meet you again. But in internet dating, only the most ethical and straight woman, or a very shrewd woman who knows what she wants and you are just the man, will just do that, and get off the dating site(s) right after meeting you to prevent additional temptation. My wonderful partner did just that, but I know it's rare. The other 99% will continue dating - at least for a while. And it's pretty easy for a woman to do this. Whenever she checks her email, there is likely to be a message from a new potential date. Some will get sick of it (possibly after a bad experience) and drop out. Some will really get into it and continue the "always another bus around the corner" stuff and do a date or two every week (a free dinner and possibly a shag) and often while continuing the contact with you in a low-key way just in case nothing better turns up by the time she gets fed up with it. Most "interesting" women will have little difficulty in running a continually updated list of 10 men to meet up with. The main limiting factor is their time and emotional stamina... you need to be hard-nosed to do internet dating and women don't find that easy. There is nothing you can do about this. It's the way the world runs and the internet just lubricates the process. What you can do is minimise the amount of your time which you waste on useless dates, and that is fairly simple...
How to avoid wasting time
Some simple rules do a lot:
1 - NO blind dates. This one is by far the most important and it will weed out most time wasters and bunny boilers. It is not that appearance is so critical. It is important to most people, of course, though women like to say it matters less to them You do need to be attracted to the woman you are going end up with. Many women don't put a picture in their profile, which is understandable for privacy, but nearly all women who won't supply you with a picture when you ask for it are chronic depressives with a low self esteem and possibly other issues (my ex had that all her life and believe me you don't want to be dealing with it in a relationship). Occassionally a woman might refuse to send out a photo because she is in a relationship and playing around (there is a fair bit of that going on, especially on the more "specialised" sites) but do you want the husband chasing you with an axe? Unless he is stupid, he will know she is up to "something". I heard the most amazing reasons for not sending a photo... one was that she had just one printed photo, and there was a potted plant on the scanner so the scanner could not be used! Do not accept any excuse. With today's mobile phones, there is never an excuse. Equally, refuse to meet any woman who supplies a picture but it's useless in showing what she looks like. There are anyway many women on the dating sites whose photos don't resemble them at all (might be 20 years old) or were taken after a professional makeover, so when you meet up you won't recognise her...
2 - Avoid extensive pre-meeting communication. Many women like to do a lot of emailing before they meet up. Maybe they think that more knowledge is better, or the best man is the one who hangs in there banging the keyboard for the longest, or eventually a man might reveal some show-stopper, or a pervert will slip up. But the most likely reason is that most decent women are nervous about internet dating and want to keep the process in familiar territory (emails and phone calls) until the very last moment. The record I recall was 6 weeks, and when I met her she turned out to be a nutter. Nobody is doing internet dating to find an email correspondence partner, so they either have psychological issues or are running a dozen men concurrently and use this to slow things down so they can check out all the men "face to face". Also anybody who is clever and can write can create an amazingly interesting persona in written correspondence. And some like to do a lot of phone calls. One woman I recall demanded a phone call every day for 2 weeks... She was fun to talk to but didn't like me when we finally met. My suggestion is to exchange several emails, to sort out the basics like smoking, religion, exchange photos, do a phone call or two, and then meet up. It can easily be done in one day! If you can't get a date within a few days, but instead keep getting more and more emails - especially banal short ones full of emoticons - forget it. Women who are running a long list are a waste of your time - only a George Clooney is going to make it to the top of the list and stay there for long enough for her to get bored with dating and stay with him.
3 - Avoid "too busy for next 2 weeks" types. A date takes only an hour or two. So, unless the reason is a 2-week holiday, with a specific return date mentioned, these are playing for time like the ones above.
4 - Meet up in a public casual setting. Women are told to always meet up in public places - because they fear a pervert or the proverbial mad axe murderer. You (the man) must do the same, but for a different reason: she might be in a relationship and playing around and her other half might be violent! You would be amazed how many married women are using the husband's or the household PC for this! The setting should be casual (a walk down the seafront for example) because getting stuck opposite somebody you don't like for an hour over a fancy meal might not be pleasant.
5 - Use your instinct! People tend to think that they can tick boxes on a website and will meet the perfect partner. I think women are especially likely to do this - [ ]adventurous, [ ]spontaneous, [ ]uninhibited, [ ]assertive, etc. It doesn't work, for many reasons. What makes a relationship work cannot be condensed into a load of tickboxes. Long term successful relationships involve similar values, similar ambitions, similar (or compatible) baggage, some non-overlapping personal projects but a sufficient overlap in interests to enjoy quality time together in a low-key way (not fancy dinners). Accordingly, internet dating is just an efficient means of finding contacts to go on a date with. And the way you react to somebody when you meet up in internet dating is no different to the way you would react if you met them in normal circumstances. A 10 year old child can tell straight away if somebody is genuinely nice, but adults have lost that simple evaluation process. If at any stage you feel there is something fishy, there probably is! That includes strange emails; if she sends you emails which are mutually inconsistent, or which keep avoiding questions (reasonable questions) you ask, drop it...
6 - Be direct in saying No. I found that when I said to a woman that she is not my type (usually after she sent me her photo) I used to get an email from her thanking me for being honest and that she wished the others had been like that too.
7 - Avoid over-keen types. As any man who is reading this knows, over-keen women are somewhat uncommon But if you are a non-smoker and you meet one who smokes, that is likely to be a show-stopper. Kissing a woman who smokes is like licking out an ashtray! Now, if she says she will give up smoking, RUN. People do not change (well, some can moderate certain aspects of their behaviour for a short time e.g. prior to getting married) and you should not expect anybody to change for you. You need to find a woman who you get on with without either of you doing anything different. Well, you might end up shaving more often, but anything which e.g. needs new clothes is definitely dodgy!
8 - Limit the distance to something easily driveable. It is easy in internet dating to be in touch with somebody who sounds really great but is impossibly far away. Well, it can work (it is exactly what worked for me in the end - my girl was 100 miles away) but there needs to be a clear path to the two of you moving together eventually. Otherwise you are just clutching at straws. Setting say a 20 mile radius is going to limit the numbers considerably even on the biggest sites, but you have to be realistic.
How to make it work for you
Here are a few tips on how to navigate the maze:
Contact women right after they join up. Both men and women invest a lot of faith in their first date and you need to work that to your advantage. So check all the sites you are on regularly - preferably daily.
Don't act too keen and try to look busy. Keep cool, don't reply to emails for a few hours (a few days is rude nowadays) and make it look like this dating thing is something you are doing in between going out with friends Emphasise the word "friends" - women are very tuned-in to avoiding loners and needy types and are deeply suspicious of men who don't have friends. Also, saying that you are meeting an "old friend" tonight (without saying whether male or female - a deliberate ambiguity because a man with female friends is way more desirable) sounds much better than saying you are going down the pub to get pissed with a load of mates while watching football
Be very careful with the "ex" angle. Women have their antennae specially zoomed in on this area. If your ex has just been arrested for setting your house on fire, best to not mention that until several dates later. That said, any woman with a brain will know that any properly adjusted man will have an "ex" in his past, and quite possibly a spiteful one...
Avoid women who have been on the site for years (on some sites one can see the join date). They are mostly serial shoppers and you are wasting your time - and money because they like to be wined and dined, with the proper protocol observed (= you pay). One I recall was doing two a week...
Make early emails just the right length. The first email or message is crucial. Women are generally far more emotionally savvy than men and read a lot in between the lines. They work hard to spot men who have any kind of psychological issue. If you write 100 lines you will just dig yourself a hole and will never hear from her again. 5 lines is usually too short, however. So keep it to maybe 20-30 lines; initially at least. Read her profile and ask some questions based on that, rather than do what men do and talk about yourself In today's society, email is often regarded as "instant messaging" and many people write a lot of one-liner crap, but any intelligent woman doing dating for real is going to take more care, and equally will appreciate a man who can write a few lines which hang together. Constant instant-message-like emails from her are just another indication that she is running a long list and is too busy with that. On any given dating site, there will be only a small number of interesting women (within some reasonable distance, age range, etc, etc) so you cannot afford to waste any of them by writing a crappy first email. Finally, it goes without saying that you should never press Send until you have thought about what you have written...
Drop a woman who is messing you around. Most women will be running a list. It's the way it is! Even on a date, it is not unknown for the woman to disappear into the toilet frequently, to process a load of text messages from other potential dates! I even had one outrageous date where she was taking phone calls from the others; obviously I wrote that one off there and then. So play it cool. If she has found somebody who she finds more interesting, there is nothing you can do. As every man knows, women almost never give a direct "No" (they don't like to hurt peoples' feelings, is the charitable way of putting it) and instead you get a run-around until you get tired of it. As soon as you see any sign of this, move on to the next one! Never, ever, chase after a woman who is not interested. Even if you do manage to get her back, she will just make your life hard.
Beware of a woman who won't get off the dating site. Once you are "going out properly" both of you should get off the dating scene and make it clear to each other than you have done so. That is just basic ethics and honesty and anything less is not acceptable in a relationship. If you have cancelled but she has not, beware... One way of checking is to create a dummy profile under a different name, which you can use to see when she last logged in
Treat the "specialised" sites with caution. Many sites cover various forms of casual sex, with various perversions thrown in. The veneer of civilisation is pretty thin and you would not believe what goes on out there! Do a google on "dogging"... Some of these sites may be worth looking at but only in case a "normal" woman joined up without realising it. It's possible because most women are not IT-savvy. Otherwise, meeting up women who are married, playing around, etc, is a complete waste of your time. The statistics vary according to where you look but all the numbers on sexual infidelity are staggering. These women are very likely to be running multiple affairs (any woman asking online for casual sex is going to get absolutely inundated) but are unlikely to leave their husband and the joint credit card. Plus you will need to watch your back, run a second mobile phone with an unregistered SIM card, etc... And any woman doing this is not going to stop just because she has found a boyfriend...
Avoid Thai/Russian women. This may be controversial but I would also avoid women whose very recent cultural origin is from far away. I know this rules out your Thai wet dreams (I am reliably informed Thai women are as spiteful and jealous as they can be good looking) and rules out the "Russian brides" which the dating scene is full of, but notwithstanding any physical attraction these women are going to be on a different wavelength. And if you have a child, and the relationship ends, you are going to be in for a load of grief because she is going to fleece you and then go back to Russia or whatever, with the child. Avoid any woman who needs an EU passport. It comes back to my comment about finding a woman who has her own stuff to do and is happy to overlap her life with yours, and a woman who you have "imported" from far away won't have any of that.
Don't give up just because you have had a few crappy dates. I had over 50 dates before I found my lovely partner. There is no way of telling when the "good one" will turn up and it almost certainly won't be the first one.
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