For all of the people who are involved with online dating, here’s a quick question for you:

Are you embarrassed to admit to friends and family that you are using an online dating service?

I think this is an interesting question to pose because for whatever reason, online dating still seems to hold some sort of stigma with people. Many people who use online dating and realize the benefits of it are embarrassed to tell others what they’re up to.

It’s not uncommon for couples who meet online to come up with a “story” on how they met, as opposed to telling people they met online. It’s easier for them to concoct a lie about meeting as opposed to just telling the truth. Funny scenario, isn’t it?

This may have to do with the fact that people assume the only normal way to meet other singles is through the traditional channels, such as work, church, social groups or through friends. If someone resorts to alternative methods, friends and families have preconceived notions that the person must have become desperate in their search for others.

Estimates on active members of online dating sites vary, due to the vague nature of the term “active”. Let’s assume active to mean someone who has logged into their online dating account within the past month.

Estimates of active online dating accounts in the United States are around 20 million people, but let’s cut that number in half, to 10 million people. The United States has a population of 300 million people, so 1 in every 30 United States citizens (3.3%) uses online dating. That looks like a pretty small percentage.

Let’s adjust the number to give us a more reflective number of singles. After a quick glance at Wikipedia, we see that approximately 25% of the population (or 75 million people) are under the age of 18. We’ll eliminate the minors from our starting figure of 300 million, to give us a pool of 225 million adults.

Married couples make up approximately 25% of the population (or 75 million people), so we need to exclude them from our figures as well. That now brings our pool of 225 million adults down to 150 million eligible singles.

Going back to our original estimate of 10 million active members of online dating sites and you’ll see that almost 1 in every 15 eligible singles in the United States is using online dating.

The number of people who uses online dating sites has increased every single year, so expect the ratio to decrease over time. Also bear in mind that I estimated my figures on the conservative side with 10 million current online users.

Online dating is a growing trend. As hard as it is for many to fathom, 10’s of 1000’s of people log onto the internet for the first time each and every day. It’s an every growing market place that isn’t going to disappear.

I believe that the stigma of online dating will disappear over the next few years. It’s incumbent that users who have found success with online dating share their stories with others. I know that if I find something that works for me, I am willing to share it with all of my friends in the hopes that they can benefit as well.

Meeting people is a difficult thing to do, and it would be foolish not to look at all of your available options. The more we can get people to discuss the merits of online dating, the quicker the stigma and embarrassment will disappear.

Another state now seems poised to push through legislation in an attempt to protect online dating site customers. Florida currently has pending legislation requiring sites to disclose the security features they provide to their customers.

Following the lead of New Jersey, which became the first state to pass legislation to protect online daters back in January, Florida is hoping to pass “The Internet Predator Awareness and Online Safety Act, HB 411.” This bill would require that all online dating sites to disclose to their prospective and current customers whether or not they provide security checks on their clients.

The Florida bill goes further and requires dating sites to disclose what types of background and security checks they are doing. The minimum it hopes to include in each background check is a search for felony, misdemeanor, and sexual offense convictions.

If the dating service does not provide background checks on their members, the state of Florida wants the online dating site to communicate “clearly and conspicuously” that the site does not provide criminal background checks.

The bill is being pushed through by Rep. Kevin Ambler, who has tried to push this bill through on 4 other occasions. He believes that the main constituency that this protects is senior women, either widowed or divorced, who seem to be most vulnerable to internet fraud.

Widowed seniors tend to be ideal targets for unscrupulous Romeos. They are desperate for companionship after many years of marital harmony. Most importantly, they tend to have healthy savings accounts, which is what online predators are looking for.

“Sweetheart Swindles” are not a new thing, but there appears to be a steady rise in their occurrence within the past few years. These crimes focus on predators focusing on desperate singles who are tired of being alone and willing to try a lot of things to find that special someone.

The National Consumers League began tracking these sweetheart crimes back in July of 2007, and they reported 184 cases to close out the calendar year. On average, the losses reported by the victims in these schemes amounted to just over $3,000 per person.

These are just reported cases, and I think it’s safe to speculate that many victims of these crimes never bother to report them. Once a victim has been taken, they are often too embarrassed to contact authorities and report the incident.

Opponents of the bill argue that this legislation may lull dating site users into a false sense of security. When using an online dating service, it is imperative to protect your personal information. Use your common sense, and if something doesn’t seem right, it most likely isn’t.

Money should never be a topic of discussion when talking to someone online. If someone that you’ve just met starts to open up to you and discuss their financial hardships, it should be an immediate warning that something is not right.

Background checks could be a great addition to any online dating service, but they will only provide you with a small degree of protection. You work awful hard for your money and it would be a shame to see you part with it due to a lapse of common sense.

One of the great things about using an online dating site is meeting many great singles from the comfort of your own home. Using either chat or email, you’re able to get an idea about a person and you can decide whether or not want to meet them.

The goal of online dating is not to meet people and chat online, but to meet face-to-face other quality singles that you would be interested in dating.

Exchanging emails and chatting helps us to determine the people we would like to eventually meet in person. It’s a great tool to weed through the many different profiles on a dating site to find the ones we think are a good match.

How long should you wait before taking the step of a face to face meeting?

I think that you should set up a face-to-face meeting as quickly as possible.

Each single moves at their own pace and you have to be cognizant of someone’s comfort levels. Make sure that in your exuberance to meet someone that you don’t push them out of their comfort level. This will kill a relationship before it ever gets started.

Why such an urgency to meet face-to-face? Here’s a few reasons for you.

• The first date is a blind date.

Regardless of how many emails and chats you exchange, it doesn’t take away from the fact that your first meeting is a blind date. Chemistry is a funny thing in relationships, and you can’t make it happen. You either will have it with someone or you won’t. That’s just the way it is. Why waste your time and effort getting to know someone online if there just isn’t any physical attraction?

• Don’t let your imagination dictate the relationship.

The longer you put off meeting someone, the more you will develop pre-conceived notions on what they look like and how they’ll react. The internet gives us all anonymity, and we are able to answer and respond at our own leisurely pace. Someone may be able to craft a brilliant answer to a question via an email, but in person they may not be able to carry on a conversation. These are things you’ll want to know before getting too involved with someone, because life is full of normal conversation.

• Keep the initial meeting low-key.

Go out for coffee or for a lunch date. You’ll know pretty quickly whether a person is someone you want to know a little better. Don’t invest a lot of time or money on a blind date just to find out that there’s no spark.

• Meet two or three times.

Once you’ve decided to meet someone face-to-face, you’ve officially left cyberspace and you’ve entered the real world. Follow the rules you would use in traditional dating, unless there is no spark. Go out with someone at least two or three times before calling it off.

To give you an example, close friends of mine (Tom & Joan) had a disastrous first date. It involved Tom forgetting to bring his wallet, Tom accidentally locking the car keys in the car, and a five hour ordeal just to catch a movie.

A funny thing happened, Joan agreed to a second date and they are still happily married after 14 years. Through this series of mishaps, Tom and Joan got a chance to know each other a little better and saw first hand how they each responded to adversity.

Chemistry is the key to relationships, and good chemistry will overcome a bad first date. Don’t write someone off just because the first impression wasn’t the greatest.

Once you’ve found someone online, try to meet them in person as quickly as possible. Get out of cyberspace and into the real world of dating. You’ll be glad you did.

Writing an online profile that captures the essence of who you are and what you have to offer is the most important thing you will do in online dating. This is your opportunity to sell yourself and distinguish your profile from the other singles on a dating site.

The goal of an online dating site profile is to entice other singles to click onto your profile, read through it, and make the effort to contact you to find out more about you.

You should not rush through this step. For a few fortunate people, writing is a very natural thing. They can sit down and look at a blank sheet of paper and within 15-20 minutes they are able to write a concise and well-written profile. These people are the exception.

Most of us fall into the second category of people who struggle with writing in general, let alone writing personal information about ourselves. This will be the most time consuming process of setting up your dating profile. It can take people many hours, if not days, to develop a profile that they’re comfortable in posting.

By nature, most people are not good at selling. Sales is a difficult process, and it takes a certain personality to succeed in sales. Yet every dating site you visit tells you that you need to develop a personal profile that “sells” yourself to other singles. This is a tough dilemma for many to deal with.

Generally speaking, most people are modest about selling themselves. From an early age, our parents go to great lengths to tell us what an admirable personality trait humility is, and we are encouraged to praise and extol the virtues of others while at the same time downplaying our own actions. We are not comfortable with “bragging” to others about what our strengths are.

Let’s take a look at this social trend we are taught, and let’s use it to our benefit to develop our online persona. This will require you to step outside your normal comfort zone, but the benefits you receive from it will be quite substantial in the long run.

• Ask your closest personal confidents if they could take a few minutes of their own time to write down what it is that they like most about you.

Explain to them why you’re asking them to do this, and you’ll find that they’ll be more than happy to help you out. Once you ask a few close friends, siblings, or even your parents to do this, you will find reoccurring themes that will continue to present themselves.

This will be embarrassing process for a many because it requires you to put yourself out there a little bit. You’ll be letting others know that you’re planning to use an online dating site. This might stop a few people from following my advice, because the anonymity of using an online dating service is a big selling point of the process.

Single people don’t like to have discussions on why they’re still single (again back to the issue of drawing attention to ourselves). If this describes you remember that you have little to lose. You’ve chosen a person who’s gotten to know you really well and they like what you have to offer.

Remember, you are joining an online dating service because you want a change in your life. Your current model for meeting singles isn’t working as you would like. You are tired of being alone and you are looking for someone to share your day-to-day activities with. A few minutes of what you perceive to be “embarrassment” with a friend who values you for who you are is really a small inconvenience.

The benefit of asking two or three people to do this for you is that the majority of your dating profile will be written for you. It will portray who you are and how people perceive you. It will be an honest representation of who you are, and research shows that honest online dating profiles tend to be the most successful.

Experienced online daters will tell you that the game begins once your inbox starts filling up with emails or notifications of interest. Depending on the online dating site you’re using, the notifications will have different names, such as a wink or icebreaker.

You’ve gone through a lot of hard work to get your online dating profile set up. This is done for one specific reason; to get your profile to stand out among all the other profiles on the site. You’re hoping that others will want to get in contact with you to find out a little more about you.

The culmination of all of this effort materializes in your email inbox. You should start getting unsolicited emails and notifications from people who are hoping to get to know a little more about you.

You open up the email, and you click the link to take a look at that person’s profile. You try to decide if this is someone you may be interested in getting to know a little better. If so, I recommend you craft a response back to them in a prompt fashion.

That’s the best case scenario; however, what is the proper etiquette for responding to someone that you’re not interested in?

This question is up for debate among dating experts, with the schools of thought pretty evenly divided.

Option #1: Don’t Respond

Some experts suggest that there is no need to respond back to someone that you just aren’t interested in. They feel that you are under no obligation, and that this is one of the perks of using an online dating service. You can get to know as many people as you like, without having any strings attached.

Option #2: Respond

Put yourself in their shoes. If you found someone of interest you would send them an email (or wink) over to them to show your interest. You’re not expecting this person to drop everything that they’re doing to respond to you, but you are hoping to hear something back in a timely fashion.

We’re all grown ups, and rejection is a part of life. We don’t enjoy it, but in dating it’s just a part of the process. I would rather be told no than to than to not get any response at all.

I think it’s just as easy to take a few minutes of your time to respond back. Although I’m a big fan of personalizing each correspondence I make, in this instance I don’t see the need to do so. Just come up with a set response, save it as a file, and copy and paste it into emails as needed.

Here’s an example that you can use:

“Thank you very much for your interest. I’m flattered to hear from you, but after taking a few minutes to read through your profile, you don’t seem to share many of the interests that are important to me. Good luck with your dating search and best wishes!”

You’ve given the person the common courtesy of a response while at the same time you’ve let them know that you’re not interested. If they decide to respond back asking why, I think at that point you’re not under any obligation to respond.

How difficult is that?

For those of you who are just getting started with online dating, here are a few tips to get you started without offending others. In our everyday lives, we try to live by the etiquette of society, so the internet should not be any different.

Let’s start off with the negatives and get them out of the way before moving onto the positives. Since most initial conversation takes place through either an email or chat, let’s start with some basics.

• Don’t type in Caps. This is the internet equivalent of screaming. TYPING IN CAPS IS FROWNED UP.

• Don’t use “text talk” when responding to others. Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about: LOL, BRB, TTFN, CYA, OMG. There are too many people out there that just don’t understand what any of the abbreviations stand for. Take the time to write out each word and make sure to use proper punctuation. Remember, you are trying to entice the person you’re communicating with to want to learn more about you.

• Don’t use offensive language. Keep your initial discussion clear of colorful language. Once you get to know someone a little better, you’ll get the idea on whether or not they find this type of language to be appropriate. The last thing you want is for someone to lose interest in you early in the relationship because you let your language slip.

• Don’t force someone to proceed quicker than they wish. You may feel you are ready to move from email and chat conversations over to a telephone call, but don’t assume your partner is ready for that step. If they refuse your invitation, don’t badger them. When they are ready for that step, they will let you know.

• Don’t maintain an active profile if you are seeing someone else. This behavior is frowned upon in the online dating community.

Now that we’ve gotten those out of the way, let’s take a peek at some things that you should focus on. Follow these tips and you will be a highly regarded citizen of the web.

• Tell the truth and be yourself. Even little white lies will eventually come back to haunt you. The foundation of every relationship is trust.

• It’s OK to be in discussions with many different singles. In fact, this is one of the main benefits of using an online dating service. You want to be exposed to as many options as possible. As long as you’re not in an exclusive relationship, this is not seen as being sleazy.

• Listen to what people are telling you. Take the time to read their email or chat responses before formulating your response back to them.

• Personalize each response you make. It makes the recipient feel that you value your discussion with them.

• Respond back to people as soon as you can. It’s common courtesy to do so. Put yourself in their shoes. When you send out an email, you expect a response in a timely manner. One other point of note, if you wait too long to get back to someone, you may miss out on your opportunity to learn more about them. They may just move on to the next person that interests them. You just never know.