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How many members do you have?
Since we started way back in 1999 we have had over 300,000 people register profiles with us. We think the
flow of good, new members is more important than absolute numbers. As a member
you want to be seeing new people week after week. Typically we get 500-1000 members joining per week. The amount depends on what
marketing we do.
Are all your members actively dating?
Some people use the site much more than others.
We encourage people to delete or suspend their profile when they don't need
our site any more. Some members are more passive and want to remain
online waiting for people to contact them rather than logging in themselves to
proactively search. They might have a
last login date of some time ago but we know they still visit the site to look
around and are receiving our emails. We do archive unused and unvisited
profiles from time to time. You can tell when a person last visited the site from
their profile.
Are you just a UK + Ireland based dating agency?
The majority of our members live in the UK and Ireland.
However, we do increasingly have significant numbers of members from abroad. We
are popular with people that want to meet someone in the UK (e.g. Americans),
expats (English speakers living in France, Spain, etc) and travellers (Brits
backpacking across India).
Genuine people from anywhere in the world
are always welcome. We spend a lot of time and resources blocking fake profiles of
scammers and spammers who try to join. We're proud that the quality of our
database is much 'cleaner' than many other sites, whilst still having a bit of
international 'flavour' that some strictly 'UK only' sites lack. We would ask
anyone from places like Eastern Europe, Philippines, etc to make sure you have
a fully written profile (all 'Wordy Stuff' sections
completed) in good English with some good photos and to email our admin team
when joining so as you are not suspended.
If you are a nice, literate Moscow or Manilla based Economics
Lecturer who likes to come to London from time to time then of course we want
you aboard. However, over 80% of Russia/Philippines/etc based profiles are
zapped as they are either from spammers/scammers or too low quality.
Are you just for dating?
We're called 'Loveandfriends' as we're not just a
dating site - although most people joining are indeed looking for a partner. We would
say 90% list dating/finding a partner as their primary objective and just 10% making
friends/meeting new people. However, lots of the people who join for 'dating' are
open to meet new people and do make friends along the way or at least some
interesting new acquaintances.
The 'andfriends' bit is very important to
us as it adds a more relaxed flavour to our site and does help facilitate the dating
aspect in a more friendly manner.
What's your success rate?
Checkout our success stories page - where you
will see literally hundreds of emails from happy former members! We have had
thousands of people email in over the years. We can't give
an accurate actual percentage success rate as lots of people just put their profiles 'on
hold' and don't tell us why. At some point in the future we'll do a survey or
something - however we have so many other good ideas to work on that this may be
some time
Is your 'Free' membership genuine?
We have 2 levels of membership. Free and
Full. The idea is you can join on free and have a basic use of the site if you
wish. We have all sorts of tempters to get you to upgrade - however you can
send/receive some messages as a free member - there are very
few dating sites left that still let you do this. The main reason we offer a
usable free membership is so that you can heartily recommend us to your friends.
What's the
difference between free and full membership?
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FREE |
FULL |
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MESSAGES:
You can send a limited number of short
messages
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MESSAGES:
Send as many messages as you want to
whoever you want.
Send longer messages - express yourself
more fully
Read Receipts - find out if/when your
message is read.
eCards - Send a picture with your
message.
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SEARCH:
You can do a simple search on basic
criteria - age, location, etc. |
SEARCH:
Much more powerful and fun searching
- Detailed Search
- Matching Search
- Keyword Search
You can search anyway you want - people
that have been to university, over 6' 0", skiers, doctors, Catholics,
Vegetarians, slim, etc., etc.
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MATCHING.
The matching and compatibility parts
of the site are for full members. |
MATCHING.
Matching + Lifestyle/Personality Questionnaire
...checkout how compatible you are with other members
Matching Feedback: See how you compare to
what other people are looking for
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PHOTOS:
You can upload one photo for display on
your profile |
PHOTOS:
Upload loads more photos.
Have a private photo on the site only
available to selected members. Attach your private photo on messages to
members.
Access all photos immediately (i.e. not
have to wait a week for them to be approved by 'admin' staff).
Email/post your photo to us and get us to
sort it out (instead of struggling with scanners/Photoshop).
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POWER:
You need to sort everything out for
yourself as a free members
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POWER:
Find out who likes you.
Find out who has marked you as a
favourite.
View and contact new members immediately
...you can message them ahead of free members
Priority on search results ....you get
boosted ahead of free members
Support: you can email us in and we'll do
our best to help
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Why do people bother paying?
Unlimited*messaging in terms of number of
messages and their length is the main reason. We also have 20 dating features
only available to full members like our compatibility questionnaire, advanced
search, partner matching, etc.
*Unlimited means basically as many as
any reasonable person could want - we do have a spam filter to stop bulk
mailing! ;-)
We are hardworking people and many members
upgrade because they appreciate what we are trying to do. Loveandfriends is a
bit like your local independent pub ...if it were not for the loyal support of
our members we wouldn't exist and the market would be reduced to the more mass-market
dating sites run by big companies.
Some of our members in top jobs take a fiendish
delight in using the site to the max whilst not paying for membership ;-)
Whilst the joy of getting something for nothing is not to be
underestimated, paying members prefer to pay to cut out the hassle and get better service.
Paying members also tend to get more dates.
How much does full
membership cost?
Our rates are
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| 1 month - £19.95 |
3 months £39.95 |
6 months £59.95 |
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Most people go for the 3 months option.
We watch our competitors and these rates are
pretty competitive.
We want to be totally up front: These memberships
are auto-rebilling 'subscription' memberships. This means we keep billing/charging
your card till you cancel. This is the same as all dating sites that we know of.
Cancelling rebilling is easy
peasy. You just have to press a button on our 'Pay' page. You can do this 1
minute after paying if you wish. Cancelling rebilling does not delete your profile - you can still
use the site until your 'Paid for' time is used up.
Auto rebilling is common practice with the
online dating sites and helps us minimise admin and marketing (i.e. sending
emails like 'Your membership is about to expire' every day).
Any plans to get rid of free
membership?
No. We envisage there always being some form of
free membership.
However, we may well fine-tune what you get as a free member.
Our full members keep us in a job we love doing
...so basically the way we see it is we work for our full members whilst our
free member are 'guests' on our site. This means we are happy to give them any
advantage over free members that results in more dating and more happy endings
for full members.
"Internet Dating for Thinking People" - what's
that all about?
We are aimed slightly more towards educated professionals than other sites. We don't want to say 'graduates'
(although most members are) as this has a somewhat snobby/elitist feel to it ...you may well be from the school of life and
be our sort of a 'thinking' person. Our members tend to be a little more likely to read
quality papers like the Times, Guardian, Telegraph than the Sunday Sport. We
have quite a few Daily Mail readers and even if you read The Sun we don't kick you
off ;-)
What makes us different is that we have loads of members in what we would say are
'Interesting' or 'Challenging' jobs - percentage wise more so than other dating sites
we genuinely believe. Some of
these pay well, some not so. These include
- 'High powered' - Directors, Doctors,
Lawyers, Managers, etc.
- 'Creatives' - Writers, Media, Marketing,
TV&Film, etc.
- Alternatives 'n' Hunks - firefighting instructors,
personal
trainers, life coaches, therapists, etc
Loads of members are in decent, 'regular' jobs too
like teachers, nurses, computing and so on. We also have students, the
unemployed and the retired. All in all we think it is a good mix.
The Loveandfriends "Network" - what is that?
As well as the main www.Loveandfriends.com site sitself we have a
number of high quality partner sites that link to us as part of our
'Loveandfriends Whitelabel
Network'
All sites share the same database of members but just have a
different 'Front End'. Some examples include a site for Ecology minded
people, one for animal lovers and one for readers of a national magazine. Having
a 'Network' of sites in this way helps us attract a good mix of interesting
people. If we take the Ecology site as an example - we have lots of members of
our main site www.loveandfriends.com
who are into 'Ecology' so the special 'EcoSearch' facility on the Ecology themed
site will search these out as well as members of the Ecology site itself.
There are other Whitelabel dating networks that run multiple
sites - the Loveandfriends Network has two USPs:
- No Adult/Casual sites/content/affiliation.
- Aimed more at 'Thinking people' / graduates
If you would be interested in having your own partner site for
zero setup cost then please follow the link at the bottom of every page and
contact us.
How do you compare to other sites?
We are not the largest dating site in the UK, nor
do we wish to be. However, the larger sites tend to take a much more mass market
approach and have more 'vanilla' flavour as they need to appeal to everyone.
There are smaller UK sites that focus on even
more specific 'niches' than loveandfriends. These tend to have substantially
fewer members than we have. They may focus on people who are affluent, upmarket,
clever, gorgeous, ethical, etc. ...or who think they belong to one of these
categories ;-)
We like the idea of loveandfriends being a
broader church than that. A place where an actress could meet a banker, a
teacher a train driver or an au pair a millionaire. Checkout our profiles - we
have bucket loads of brainpower and more gorgeous people than you can shake a
stick at but also loads of regular folk as well.
Quantity of members is important. If your
database is small then the service is unlikely to be good - you do need a
certain 'critical mass' of members. We went beyond that years ago. However once
you get beyond a certain point then quantity does not matter so much as the type
of people.
It is a bit like a big birthday party. If there
are only 3 people in the room it's a bit sad, 10 is better, 20+ is good, but
once you get beyond say 150 people adding more people doesn't make it a better
party as guests haven't the time to meet all the compatible people anyway. Much
better to have 150 compatible(ish) people than a complete mixed bag of 500.
What we're getting at is whilst the larger sites
make a big song and dance of 'We have 1 million members' ...loveandfriends'
100,000 members contains far more compatible people than you hope to
realistically contact/meet anyway.
The internet dating landscape has changed markedly since we setup
in 1999. Many sites are now part of larger mass-market 'Whitelabel Networks' and
indeed many (arguably most) are affiliated to Adult/Casual sites as well. At
Loveandfriends we're still very much 'Old school' in this sense and are proud
that we have
- No Adult/Casual sites/content/affiliation.
- A membership aimed at more 'Thinking people'
Many people now join more than one dating site -
so why not join
loveandfriends as well as one of the others?
Where do your members come from?
We are very happy to say that our largest single
source of members is recommendations from existing members ...which shows our
site is working. Our members also bring us the best new members
We top this up with considerable online
advertising through Google and other advertising. A lot of
your membership fees we throw straight back out on advertising to get new
members.
Many members also come from our partner sites - see the section
above on The Loveandfriends "Network". We also have a straightforward affiliate scheme - whereby if you
have a website we pay up to 100% commission on referrals.
Are your members genuine?
'Undesirables' can be broadly divided into two main types on dating sites:
- Spammers/Scammers
- 'Dodgy' people
We'll lay out our stall: Loveandfriends is for
nice regular people looking for a relationship or to make friends. 'Dodgy' people
e.g. married
people looking for affairs or people looking for purely casual sexual encounters
are not welcome on our site. We don't want to come accross as holier-than-thou but our site is simply
just not designed for this. There are lots of sites for this sort of thing -
just Google 'Adult dating' or 'Casual dating'.
We do get some 'Dodgy' people joining - most we
block before their profile goes live the rest (who slip through our net) we boot
these off as soon as they get reported by members. We say to potential members if
you are after this sort of thing then please don't sign up with loveandfriends as you will be wasting both
your time and ours.
Spammers/Scammers are typically people who setup multiple fake profiles and email
as many people as possible. Their motive is usually to get into a
cyber-relationship with members over a few weeks then to ask them for money via
Western Union to be sent to Africa/Russia. Typical stories include: some family
member is critically ill, they are in Gambia on holiday and have been robbed;
they need the money for a visa/flight ticket to come visit the UK.
We particularly spend loads of time and resources on blocking the spammers and
scammers. We zap nearly all of these before they manage to send any messages.
The small remainder that occasionally slip through get reported and zapped asap.
We can also assure you that we have never - ever
- make up profiles to attract members.
What advice can you give me on
online dating?
Invest time in writing a good/complete profile.
Upload a good photo. More than 3 million people
in the UK are dating online - so there is no need to be bashful. Profiles with a
decent photo get a much better response. In fact if you don't have a photo you might
as well be invisible. You could get away with not having a photo in 1999 but not
in 2012 - people will most likely just assume the worst if there is no photo on
your profile and not bother contacting you.
We can work with any size/format of
photo e.g. cropping you from a group shot. Don't upload just any old photo or a
webscam shot! If you haven't a good photo invest in one. At the very least get a
friend to take loads (50++) of photos of you with a digital camera or the
like ...at least one of them will be OK.
Be proactive. Checkout our success stories page
called 'Statistics of Success'. Ok some people got lucky quickly - but you'll
see that most wrote quite a lot of emails before finding their partner. Women -
take the initiative and send some emails or winks ...don't just upload your
profile and expect the world to beat a path to your door.
Take knockbacks in your stride. Not everyone will
want to meet you. Also you probably won't want to meet everyone that shows an
interest in you. Often people don't bother responding rather than saying 'Thanks
but no thanks'. We're sorry about this but this is part an parcel of Internet
Dating.
Use it as part of your portfolio of meeting
people. Loveandfriends is a great way of meeting new people but it is not a
silver bullet. Loveandfriends is more likely to work if you are doing other
interesting stuff as well. Do some other stuff that involves meeting people -
dance classes, sports, evening classes, walking, pub quiz, book groups, speed
dating, toastmasters, charity work, church stuff, etc., etc.
Broaden your horizons. Don't be too specific on
who you'd consider. Remember we are love and friends. There is the chance
you could meet an interesting person who turns out to be a friend or
acquaintance. If you are 21, female and beautiful or similarly eligible then you
can somewhat call the shots. Everyone else: you need to 'get real' with the sort
of people you are prepared to meet. Of course - go for the babes or hunks but
don't just focus on them. Looks aren't everything but they are
significant for most people. Consider that most people end up with someone
within a 2 points range of their own attractiveness. So If you are say 7 out of
10 then 6-8 is a reasonable range of people to go for.
Get your friends aboard: going to social events
with friends or on a double date improves your chances. Also they might meet
someone who is no good for them but great for you and vice versa. It could even
be a friend of a friend. The point is when you add more people to the mix - your
opportunities multiply.
Take a long term view. Don't give up. Evidence
from our 'Statistics of Success' page shows that some members plugged away for
ages before striking gold. Take a break for a few weeks by all means. If you
find someone quickly that's a bonus. However, don't expect to do this as you may
be disappointed. We offer annual memberships for a reason - so you can take
things at a relaxed pace as opposed to trying to get sorted within a month.
Who owns loveandfriends?
Loveandfriends Ltd is a private UK limited
company founded in 1999 by Andy Maccabe and Mary Balfour.
Andy is the full time Managing Director and in charge of running the business. Mary
runs her own very well known personal dating agency "Drawing Down the Moon" as
well as being a published author - "Smart Dating".
The company was founded in 1999 - in the corner of the Drawing Down the Moon office by Andy
using one PC and a book on Internet Programming for Dummies. Andy is pleased to note that he
is now able to employ a number of talented programming and admin staff to
maintain the dating sites.
Do you read all our private emails?
We only access emails to occasionally system check that delivery is working correctly, or if there is a question from you relating to a specific email. We do check random mails from new members to ensure that we catch any spammers or scammers who are attempting to circumvent our systems. Once we have verified the veracity of the account, we have no need to check further unless alerted to do so.
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