by Rachel Gawith

Created on: January 11, 2010   Last Updated: January 12, 2010

Type ‘internet dating sites’ into Google and over 24 million related websites are found. This is a staggering number, so with all these online dating sites, promising to match you up with your soul mate, can you really find true love online? Nowadays it is not unusual to hear at a dinner party that a couple met online, magazines are full of stories about how couples discovered true love through the internet, movies such as ‘You’ve Got Mail’ featuring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and ‘Must Love Dogs’ featuring John Cusack are based on internet dating.

However, there is still a cliché attached to internet dating and of course with recent concerns over the safety of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo, there are the realistic worries about the kind of person you may be communicating with and could ultimately end up arranging to meet.

But if you use a little common sense then internet dating can be a wonderful way to make many new friends all around the world and possibly find true love. First of course you need to sign up for a few internet dating sites and don’t restrict yourself to just one or two of the more well known ones. There are now dating sites catering for every niche and relationship type from pet lovers to same sex relationships to fetish sites to internet dating sites for country lovers. Before you register on the site make sure you browse a few profiles, check there are people registered in the region you would want to concentrate your search on, check that profiles seem genuine and that most show a photograph and that the internet dating site is well laid out and easy to navigate. Sign up as a free member first and get to know the site before deciding whether to upgrade to paid membership. Any internet dating site worth its salt will enable you to create a profile for free, browse other profiles and ideally interact with other members in some limited form before having to pay. If an internet dating site does not enable you to read the other profiles or get a good feel for the site and membership database without having to subscribe, move on to a different site. For example Match.com, one of the largest and most well known online dating sites, allows you to create and browse other profiles and send ‘winks’ to people you maybe interested in for free but you cannot receive or send any emails without shelling out $34.99 a month. Whereas OKCupid.com allows free members

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