Dating, particularly online dating thanks to the technological revolution that is the internet, is a numbers game. It is sort of like what people in marketing call “cold calling.” This is one of my internet dating rules. I formulated it after meeting John the Lawyer who informed me that in his real estate law practice he paid marketing assistants to make phone calls to drum up business. They would randomly call big property owners to see if the owners were looking to buy or sell something. Out of 100 calls, their efforts would net on average only three possible positive responses. He said online dating services have about the same success rate.
I should have added another rule at that point that stated, “Do not date lawyers,” but alas there were six more attorneys after him, so I didn’t read the proverbial writing on the bathroom wall. But his point still stands.
With online dating sites, as in cold calling, your success rate is determined by your number of attempts. You have to date a lot of people to find a few that you like. You don’t have to date a lot of people a lot of times. In fact, it’s best to just go out once with each person because you’ll know within three hours or so (I generally know within fifteen minutes but I’m being generous here) whether or not the person is “second-date worthy.”
Now all of that is assuming that you’ve already whittled it down to the most compatible matches. You can be very, very picky during the selection process offered by the screening systems of the major online dating services, which is the topic of an upcoming blog. That is how you can eliminate the lawyers! However, even once those bad boys are gone you will still actually have to go out on a lot of dates before you can find the ones you like. But just think of all the restaurants you get to try!
copyright © 2009 Tiia Jones
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