Gay Dating Sites Guide

September 4, 2009

Gay Dating Offline

Filed under: Offline — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Dan @ 2:31 am

Although online dating gives an avenue for those looking for gay relationships, it is far from the only way. If you do some of the following things you can avoid paying the expensive monthly fees and the issues that come with online dating sites…

Check out the gay and lesbian community in your area. If you do a google search for “(name of your city here) gay lesbian” or just “(name of your city here) gay”, you are likely to stumble upon some sort of organization or community to join. In the gay community there is everything from sports clubs, barbecues, camps, volunteer groups, etc. If you go to a college or university there is likely to be some kind of gay organization or club. Once you start getting involved in the gay and lesbian scene and make some friends, there’ll likely be a snowball effect. Also, once you get into the scene, you’ll find out gay and lesbian events, which you’ve never heard of before. You’ll make some friends, those friends will make you even more friends, and so on.

You can also go about making friends in general (gay and straight). Not only may you stumble upon someone that is gay, you’ll better your social life in the process. It is estimated that about 1 of very 20 men are gay.

Gay Dating for Shys

If you are on the shy side (maybe you don’t go out that often), work on improving your people skills. The more practice you get, the better you’ll be. One site, which I highly recommend in terms of improving your social life is succeedsocially.com. Although this site comes from a heterosexual male who, at one point, struggled to get girls, it gets into the nitty gritty shyness issues that a lot of us have. If you’re someone that is awkward around people, the hardest thing is getting started. If you want to improve your social life you have to have a long term focus. If you don’t, the inevitable rejections and awkward social situations you’ll have in the beginning may make you give up. Being well liked is a learnable skill.

If you are outgoing, your options increase dramatically. Being more open to people in everyday life will increase the chance that you find someone who is gay. A lot of homosexual people go to standard night clubs to meet others gays.

Things will be a lot easier for you if other people know that you are gay. That way, your co-workers or friends may recommend somebody to you. Coming out is not easy for a lot of gays because they are afraid of the social repercussions. What will their friends think of them? How to break the news to your family? Here’s a site, which has some posts from real people who have come out of the closest.

The Internet can not only help connect gays by online dating sites, but by connecting gays to their community in the real world…

lgbtfriends.meetup.com: This site lists LGBT events around the world. Although one group may be over an hour away, it may be worth checking out because some of these meetups have a lot of gay members within them. A cool thing about this site is that you can read reviews about people who’ve been involved in the meetups. Obviously, the larger the city you live in, the better chance that the meetup group has a lot of people.

If you want to get in touch with the gay community online, here are some sites to check out…

www.gayteenforum.org: An active forum for gay teens.
www.chat-avenue.com: Check out their Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual forum.

www.bibble.org/gay/stories/comingout.html

There are national gay organizations, such as the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLADD), which have events in some U.S. cities. At the time this article was written GLADD had events going on in New York City, Palm Springs, Dallas, and San Francisco. If you happen to live in a small town or live in one which doesn’t have much of a gay community, see if you can visit one, which does. San Francisco is one that immediately comes to mind.

New York City has a very active gay and lesbian center, which is known simply as “The Center”. Although you may not live in such a big city, it shows that the larger the city is, the more gay people there are, and the more of a gay/lesbian/transgender/bisexual community there is.

Problems with Dating Sites

Filed under: Issues — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Dan @ 2:26 am

No gay dating site or dating site is perfect. Below are the most common issues associated with them…

Although dating sites will not admit it, they know that a good chunk of users will forget to cancel their subscription after the trial period is over. Some sites word their advertisements awkwardly so as to make people forget to cancel the trial. If you want to be on the safe side, look at the terms and conditions of the gay dating site. You don’t have to read all of the terms, just the part where it talks about their cancellation policy.

There are a lot of outdated profiles out there. Although an online dating site may say that they have over 20 million members, for example, a good chunk of those profiles are likely from users who no longer use the site.

Some of the profiles may be scams in disguise, coming from webmasters who are looking to get traffic to their site. There are also a lot of profiles out there from people who grossly misrepresent themselves.

Although dating sites tend to consist of normal people. There are a lot of unattractive weirdoes using these sites, who have had no luck in the real world. When browsing members its pretty easy to see who to pass and who to check out.

Standard Dating Sites

Filed under: Reviews, Standard Sites — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — Dan @ 2:23 am

Aside from niche sites, you can also take a look at the standard gay dating sites as some allow you to sort by sexual orientation. Even if they don’t, you can say that you are a male looking for a male or a man looking for a man. It’s not like the search options are locked for straight searches. Here’s an overview of the most popular dating sites and how they accommodate to the gay population…

Match.com: The most popular dating site. It allows you to start your search by saying that you are a man seeking men. If you live in a small/medium-sized city, don’t expect many profile results. If, however, you live in a big city, you’re going to get many pages of profiles. You can try out this service for the first 3 days before the subscription kicks in (which starts at $19.95 for 1 month). The main benefit to using this site is that it has a lot of real people browsing it, making it more likely that you’ll find a partner for yourself. It also has a cool keyword search tool. Match.com is a lot more gay friendly than it used to be.

Chemistry.com: It is what its name implies. You have to fill out a somewhat long questionnaire. Once you are done, the site finds matches for you based on your answers. You can say that you are a male looking for a male. It costs $49.95 for one month and $26.65 a month for six months. This site is recommended if you are looking for a long term relationship with someone else that is gay.

eHarmony.com: In the opening search option page, you can say that you are a man looking for a man. However, rather than being taken to eHarmony.com, you’ll be taken to www.compatiblepartners.net, which is made specifically for the gay community. Compatiblepartners has the same price as eHarmony ($49.95 for 1 month, $99.95 for 3 months, $159.95 for 6 months, and $249.95 for 1 year). If you don’t like the results that you are getting, you can cancel the subscription within 3 days.

Perfectmatch.com: You can say that you are a man looking for a man. Their one month subscription starts at $59.95. Although many dating sites have less than perfect reviews, this site had too many of them, making it a poor choice.

Lavalife.com: Caters to the gay population. It even has a web page where it claims that it offers queer dating services. Fees start at $29.95 for one month. The main benefit of Lavalife is that you can reply to e-mails from your prospects at no charge.

Yahoo! Personals: You can say that you are a man seeking a man. Although you can view the profiles for free, if you actually want to contact the person, you’re going to need a subscription, which starts at $29.99 for one month. A lot of the profiles you’ll get are actually just guys looking for other dudes to hang out with, not date.

PlentyofFish.com (POF): This is the best truly free dating site that there is. The guy who started this site made it a mission to provide a free online dating service at a time when every other provider was charging money. If you say that you are a male looking for a male, you’re going to have to browse a lot of profiles of men who are just looking for another guy friend.

OkCupid.com: Of all the sites that I’ve looked at (gay and standard sites), this one has by far the nicest layout and design, making it very easy and fun to use. It is the only standard site I’ve see that, from the very beginning of its use, allows you to specify what sexual orientation you are (straight, gay, or bisexual). Because this site is 100% free to use with no annoying premium membership option, you have nothing to lose by checking out this site. A sample search for a medium sized city revealed a lot of member profiles.

Although there are many more dating sites, these ones heavily used and should give you an idea of what to expect if you are looking for gay dating online.

Of these standard sites, which one is the best? The answer varies from person to person. If you live in a small city such as Omaha, you may have to browse multiple sites to get the amount of real profiles you desire. If you live in a city as big as New York, you can just stick with one of the aforementioned sites because there will likely be enough profiles to satisfy you. If you do get into online dating, fully test a site out before moving onto something else or giving up.

Gay Dating Site Reviews Part 2

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — Dan @ 2:17 am

So, which one of these niche sites is the best to use? Gay.com and Pridedating.com are two options, which you should check out. Although you’ll see a lot of gay and lesbian dating sites in the search engines and in online advertisements, most of them are mediocre. Although some of the worse sites say that they have the best this and the best that, they can’t compare to ones that are already established and have a following, such as Gay.com and Pridedating.com.

Connexion.org: This is a gay and lesbian community social site. A sample search revealed a ton of detailed profiles from real people. You can’t lose if you use this site because it is free. The people you’ll find hear are looking at everything from friendship to long term relationships.

Manhunt.net: This site caters to gay males that are looking for a casual hook-up, not really a long term relationship. If you want something that is a more fun and/or casual, this site will set you back $10 per month.

Manjam.com: According to the site it is “a gay social network for dating work and travel.” Although you can use the site for free, if you want less restrictions (such as being able to send unlimited messages to members), you are going to have to opt for the premium subscription, which costs…

$19.95 for a month’s use
$42.95 for 90 days
$89.95 for a year

Gay Dating Site Reviews Part 1

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Dan @ 1:55 am

Gay.com: This is the first website you are going to find if you search for “gay dating” on your favorite search engine. The premium membership allows you to communicate with other members and view full size pictures. The paid-for plan also allows you to do things such as check out who’s online, who has looked at your profile, and search for profiles by keywords.

The free or standard membership allows you to create a profile, add your own photo, and search for members (without getting much detail of the prospects). Clearly, if you want to use this site, you are going to have to pay for the premium membership, which will set you back…

$9.95 for a 1 Week Trial
$19.95 for a 1 Month Membership
$42.95 for a 3 Month Membership
$89.95 for a Yearly Plan

Seeing that this is the gay dating site (it’s gay.com after all), it’s worth checking out. However, it’s worth noting that a lot of the members here are looking for hook-ups rather than long term relationships.

Ohmojo.com: This gay dating site is completely free to use, so it’s worth checking out. Even if you don’t get many profiles, there may still may still be a person on this site who you hit it off with.

Fbuds.com: You can opt for the free or introductory plan in which you can do things such as e-mail members, create a profile of yourself, and search for members. Or, you can go for the premium membership, in which you can get your profile higher up in the listings, have full access to members’ pictures, have full access to webcams, and have unlimited private messaging. Premium membership costs $5 for 1 month, $12 for 3 months, and $18 for 6 months. This makes it the cheapest paid-for gaying dating site among the ones that we’ve listed.

Requestadate.com: Although I haven’t personally used this site, I honestly don’t think that it is worth using. On a sample search for a medium sized city I found only 1 profile (an unimpressive one I might add). A sample search for San Francisco yielded only 24 members. Without the paid membership, which costs $42.95 for a year, you can view limited descriptions of the profiles and not much else. If you actually want to use this site, you’re going to have to pay for the subscription. But with the small amount of members, I suggest that you pass on this site, unless you happen to have a lot of members in your area for some reason.

Pridedating.com: This site is definitely worth checking out. Not only is it completely free to use (you can view profiles, contact members, etc), but you’ll likely find a lot of members in your area. The queer dating website is very user friendly and lets you view very large pictures of the members, giving you an up close look.

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