As much as Match.com, E-Harmony, Chemistry.com, and countless other smaller sites want to claim they'll help you find "that special someone," all they really want to do is bait you in and take your money. Now that may sound harsh, but trust me, as far as they're concerned they have the market covered. If you find a successful relationship, they make money. If you don't find that perfect someone, they make more money.
If you've never dealt with one of these websites, they each go about things a bit differently, but the modus operandi is the same:
1) Force you to create a "profile" before you can search any of the other profiles.
2) Provide limited functionality, withholding much key information including the ability to actually communicate with the people you find, unless you actually pony up the dough and subscribe to their service.
3) ...and this is the key to the entire business model... allow users to receive notifications of communication without subscribing, but provide them so little information that they have no way of finding out who contacted them, what they sent, or anything else about them unless they also subscribe.
3b) Provide no way of knowing if the person you are attempting to communicate with is actually a subscriber, or has any way of actually reading anything you send to them, unless they pay to see it. So essentially, you have no idea if the other person read your profile/message and just wasn't interested, or if they just aren't a subscriber and never received your message in the first place.
The "big 3" (Match, E-Harmony, and Chemistry) vary somewhat in how they try to do things, and vary greatly in price.
Match is cheapest, and the first of the "picture and a profile" style of online dating. You browse through the website for people who look interesting, and send them an e-mail hoping they respond.
E-Harmony pioneered the "intelligent matching based on a bajillion degrees of compatibility" or whatever. As close as I can tell, this really provides no more successful matching than browsing through a bunch of profiles. Oh, did I mention they charge about 3x as much as Match does for this "significant advantage"? They seem to attempt to cater to people who can afford the higher price, but I think the result is just that the odds of someone you try to contact actually being a subscriber are a lot less.
Chemistry (owned by Match) is just an attempt to copy the E-Harmony model. Same silly idea.
Truth be told, nothing beats RealWorld.Life for meeting people. But I've still not completely given up on the online dating options. It's just not as easy as one might think, but I'll be the first to admit there probably is some value there if you look hard enough.
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