This is the “Real Deal”

Planet Love Match: Some Ukrainian girls on an international dating site that *might not* be marriage minded? Gosh. That never happened before. Hold the front page! We must alert the church elders.

Guys who don’t know their arse from their elbow wont be marrying a woman from the FSU anyway. Those who *do* know their arse from their elbow, and seek a wife, will be seeking out more suitable women for their purposes. What many men overlook is that some guys are happy to pay to chat to some hot teenager in Odessa for an hour or two. That’s all they need. Blokes who do know their arse from their elbow can use almost any site and flush out the decent prospects. All that remains then is choice, functionality, tools available and price. PLM is doing well on those fronts.

Can you meet a scammer, pro dater or pro webcam girl? For sure. Could you maybe meet your future wife? For sure. A good site can be all things to all people. Some blokes seriously seek a wife and a proper relationship. Other blokes seek an evening with the hand cream and the Kleenex. A site has no method to determine which user is which.

Remember, this is an international site. That means there is all types of motivations to be found. No site can supply pure and certificated 19 year old virgins hoping to hump Iowa blokes in their fifties. They don’t exist any more. No site can guarantee motivation of the women. What a big site that is well-marketed can do is provide the spectrum of women: marriage minded ones who dream to live in Kansas right through to Odessa teenagers who may satisfy the odd late night fantasy – and everything in-between. All you have to do is sort the wheat from the chaff. Identify the niche you want and use the site tools to drill down to that.

What a site can do is verify that the women are indeed women, and provide communication tools. Beyond that, at this price, you are pretty much on your own. If you cant be on your own and confident of getting it right, I know a Russian chap will be only too pleased to guide you towards a woman who declares love over Skype in exchange for a brick of $20 bills and a plane ticket to hold your hand whilst there. Others will sell you access to a social or a tour for another brick of cash.

There is no right or wrong way. There are merely service providers that offer different services and sites that offer different functionality and price plans. The punter chooses the route that best suits him. Many of the detractors on this topic are merely people for whom the PLM business model is not suitable. That doesn’t make it a bad model; rather, one that is simply not suitable for them, but may be suitable for many others.

Can you speak to real women in the FSU moments after signing up? Yes.
Will they all be marriage minded? No.
Will some be marriage minded? Yes.
Is it expensive to use? No.
Can you exchange contact information freely? Yes.
Are there translation facilities? Yes.
Are there Webcam facilities? Yes – in HD.
Is there live site help? Yes.
Are these “agency” women, or women at home? All kinds of women from everywhere.
Really, do you need much more? Use your common sense, don’t chase unattainable fantasies and think with the big head is all you need to do. Go look around Planet Love Match today – your ideal girl may be from Kansas, Kentucky, London, Moscow or Berlin. Planet Love Match spans the world. Don’t be left behind.

Which Dating Site is featured in J-Lo’s Video Papi? Planet Love Match actually.
Anyone who has watched the new Jennifer Lopez video “Papi” may have noticed at 1:50 into the video there is a guy sitting in a cafe, on a laptop, viewing a dating site.
Right after that, he gets up and leaps through the window. The blogs and forums have been going wild speculating which dating website it actually is that features in the J-Lo video. Well, as usual here at Real Deal, we have the scoop straight from the horses mouth.
Yes, the site featured is indeed Planet Love Match. Here is the still from the video.

Planet Love Match is set to become the worldwide dating site over the next two years. It has already taken off in Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe. It is spreading across the UK already and is crossing the USA like wildfire collecting new members!
How cool would it be to tell folks you met your next love on the site that was on J-Lo’s video?
In case you are one of those who haven’t seen J-Lo’s video, you can watch it right here before you rush off to join Planet Love Match.

Whilst some foreign women are open to the idea of foreign guys, the language issue is a major hurdle to overcome. Many Russian and Ukrainian women surf the internet seeking foreign guys on forums and such in search of them.

However, the thought of a group of foreign guys discussing them en masse is a bit of a turn off for many. Many think some of the conversations are not entirely tasteful or respectful. At least, that’s the feedback I have had.

People on internet forums speak casually, with many errors and with much slang, it is not an ideal place to practice or develop English. There are also many variants of English language (and spellings) here from across the world. Occasionally, Aussies must translate something for the Brits; or the Brits for the Yanks, etc. How does a non-native speaker go on unless they are beyond fluent? And few are.

Our sharp humour and side-splitting repartee (where it exists) seldom translates literally; rather, it requires interpretation. Software cannot interpret; only people can. So the women who read here using a translation programme often read gobbledygook where the English variants, grammatical and spelling errors, slang and second meanings form a jumble of words that are far from what was intended by the respective authors.

Can bad English damage your communications?

It can. Many people try to cobble together a relationship with poor communication fuelled by free software translation. Software makes many errors; but more importantly, software is only as good as what you put into it.

As many will know, my wife does a lot of translation for guys in this pursuit. A few weeks ago, a guy sent her something for translation that she read, and read again, and much of it made no sense to her. The reason? No paragraphs, little punctuation or capitalisation and atrocious spelling and grammar.

She asked me if I would mind running quickly through it with a spell check, putting in a few paragraph breaks, and correcting the big howlers and try to turn it into something in a few minutes that she could comprehend. I did, and from that, she was able to make it in Russian, be what it was intended to be.

Missing punctuation leads to much ambiguity; meaning that one must ask the author what they meant, rather than it being clear in the first place. Get the punctuation right and the message (not to mention the translation) will be clear. Here is a good example of how altering punctuation can change the meaning:

A woman without her man is nothing.
A woman: without her, man is nothing.

I guess the point of the topic is to highlight to guys the importance of using the best English you are able to, when in communication with Russian, Ukrainian and FSU women.

So you are seeking a woman from the former Soviet Union? Likely Russia or Ukraine. Ukraine has no visa requirements, so is easier right? In Ukraine, all the pretty girls seem to be from Odessa and Kiev. Why is that? I think this is one of those topics that is ignored, or the meat hidden away on page [...]

A beautiful, slim, good-hearted woman as a wife is just a dream for most men. How hard is it to marry one from your country? An educated one? One with good traditional family values? One who doesn’t think she is god’s gift? One a few years younger than you? Very difficult. Russian, Ukrainian and FSU [...]

I never knew they existed either. However, on one of the forums I look in on, a guy showed up today from one of these sites.

It seems that guys who have no luck bedding women because they are lower down in life’s pecking order, and thus not very interesting to women, now have another tool at their disposal. Sites that assist them to deceive women.

Now we have all seen the sites and videos for these “pick up artist” type guys. But this goes a step beyond that. This site creates an online identity for you so a girl can Google you and think you are some big shot. The site in question is called ApperanceOfSuccess.com and here is a little of their blurb:

Instead of telling a woman you are in a dead-end job, you can tell them you are an executive in an international company. You will be listed on the company’s executive directory, have your own PBX extension with a greeting recorded by your “executive assistant” that can be forwarded to your cell phone. You will have your own corporate e-mail and we can make it so when people search your name on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc… , they will be impressed with what they find. There is much, much more, but we can’t give away all our trade secrets, now, can we?

So basically, this is a website set up to help those on the lower rungs of life appear as if they are Donald Trump, and the Ferrari just happens to be in the shop for repair I guess. It is alleged that this service will assist the lesser-gifted mortals in society gain access to the pants of otherwise unobtainable women.

Read the topic for yourself, why not go and join the forum and join the discussion?

You can find it here: How I dated a Hottie

Why should I use Planet Love Match to contact Russian and Ukrainian women? This is a question many men who have encountered the new Planet Love Match platform have been asking.

How does Planet Love match protect men from scamming and dishonest local agencies in Ukraine and elsewhere? Some ask.

The Russian, and more especially the Ukrainian dating industry has been plagued with allegations of “women paid to chat” on over-priced platforms. Lack of availability of direct contact information is another problem with the old dinosaur Russian and Ukrainian dating sites.

With the PLM model, agencies are not paid directly for profiles by larger aggregator agencies. With the PLM model, agencies are affiliates; women are under them. You are in direct contact with women and they are free to give you their contact info as they see fit. There is no level of spend to get to that I am aware of. PLM is one-to-one communication without any intermediaries – as Skype would be; but with more facilities and validation both ends. The agency earns by the activity on the site of the women beneath them only.

It seems far more transparent to me. It removes the much of the possibility of corruption in the first place.

The problem the industry has is trying to monetize it for the small local agencies whilst incentivizing them to be honest. Incentivizing people in a poor and corrupt country like Ukraine to be honest is no small task. Everyone was tired of the old business models operated by some of the dinosaur big fish in the industry. It put too many levels of potential corruption between the two main parties. man > big agency > local agency > local agency translator > girl. There are two links in that chain that traditionally are the root of the corruption and dishonesty in the industry: local agency and local agency translator.

Now, Yuri from ABC agency in Dumpsk recruits himself a hundred women. It is easy for him to obfuscate at best; and create fake correspondence if he so chooses at worst. The bad reputation passes to the big aggregator agency and not Yuri because this [the big site] is the site the man paid originally. One bad apple in the barrel and all that…..

The PLM model seeks to remove Yuri and his translators from the chain, whilst still allowing Yuri his profit margin for feeding genuine and available women into the system. This means Yuri has to actually do some work and recruit real women actively rather than sit on his arse and try to fake a few letters using decade old photos of long-since-married women as some did before.

Yuri’s profit comes from a percentage of the activity of the ladies beneath him. If they are inactive; he doesn’t earn. If he has fake profiles; it wont work – he doesn’t earn. His bent translators are effectively out of a job. If a woman doesn’t cough up contact information in a reasonable timeframe, men will write others instead. Thus her activity decreases and Yuri loses out.

What PLM have done is change the flow of the money and removed the possibility for local agencies to be dishonest. You know she is real because you can webcam her. No webcam? Safecall her. No safecall or webcam? No woman on the other end. After a short communication, having validated each other, one would expect direct contact info forthcoming. PLM hope you find their platform useful and cheap enough that you will choose to continue using it because it is cheap and convenient. If you want to wing it alone at that point; that is your choice.

The so-called “mail order bride” industry, which primarily is focused on Ukraine, and secondly Russia, has been changing in recent years. The days of American guys rolling up in any Russian or Ukrainian city, flashing a US passport and being swamped in model-quality girls are long gone. This is 2011, not 1991. Women are not desperate to leave any more.

Men seeking a Russian or Ukrainian wife need to understand the dynamics of the society they delve into. Men fixated on the idea of importing a model-quality wife, twenty-five years younger than themselves are likely heading for disappointment. It has passed into internet folklore the “fact” that any obese, older guy can snag himself a super sexy Eastern European wife with little more to offer than his country of residency and his wallet. He can still do that as long as he accepts that the marriage will likely not last longer than the time it takes her to get a green card or permanent residency in his country.

The sensible guys nowadays need to accept their limitations. This does not mean that a guy cannot delve into Eastern Europe, if he knows what he is doing, and end up with a well-intentioned and beautiful wife. He can. But occasionally, reality checks are in order.

I was recently communicating with a British man who had made over thirty trips to Ukraine in search of a wife. After several years, and all these trips to Ukraine, he is still wifeless. No good prospects on the cards either. In these circumstances, we must examine not only him, but what he is looking for, and ascertain if it is realistic.

The gentleman in question is in his fifties, and has one or more ex-wives in the UK. He has a number of children; some of whom are either resident with, or spend significant time with him. One of these children has some type of special needs requirement. He is a nice guy; intelligent, witty and personable from what I can make out. He is affluent enough to afford the whole foreign wife endeavour (which many men are not).

What is he seeking? A large breasted, yet extremely slim and very beautiful woman in her twenties; that is twenty to thirty years his junior. Is that realistic? No. Here was my advice to him:

Your situation isn’t what local women seek to embrace; they already eschewed it. Why would a two decade younger, beautiful one, with a large chest from a poor country embrace it? Times are a changing. Desperation is fading. Your lack of success is testament to that. A reality check is needed. Late 30′s and early 40′s is the group you should be looking in. Perhaps with a kid or two.

My advice was not well received.

What many men in a similar position fail to realise is that desperation in these countries is fading. Finances are improving and women are less likely to choose self-export via marriage as a life choice as that happens. This is underlined by the fact that the “mail order bride” industry pretty much doesn’t exist any more in the affluent corners of the former Soviet Union (FSU) and proliferates in the more impecunious corners. Scamming also proliferates in the impecunious corners as desperation breeds corruption and dishonesty.

As proof of this, if we look at some FSU countries, we will see that the “mail order bride” industry has vanished altogether. In relatively affluent Estonia, Latvia and the Czech Republic, women are not seeking self-export via marriage as a life choice. There is not a single foreign-facing marriage/dating agency in Estonia any more. There hasn’t been for a decade or more.

Compare that to Ukraine. Ukraine is still bristling with foreign-facing dating and marriage agencies; new ones are opening every day (the honesty of many of these is open to question but that is not the subject here). Russia still has many agencies based there, but fewer in the more affluent corners like Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In Russia, the agencies reside in places that fewer foreigners venture to. Places like Rostov, Samara, Togliatti (Tolyatti), Vladivostok and Barnaul.

The link between women’s desire to export themselves and average income is an undeniable fact.

On the other side of the coin, I was recently communicating with an American man who also complained about his lack of success in the Eastern European dating arena. He told me:

I am good looking, healthy and relatively young. I have a good job and make good money. I know how to treat women very well. I am enjoyable to be with. I am interested in starting a family and having children.

Most women on learning this will think, “What’s wrong with him then?” and will muse on why he can’t find a woman at home. They simply will not believe the accounts given by Americans of the bad dating environment in the US; the “entitlement” attitude they encounter, and the subsequent lack of availability of appropriate and slim women.

His “benefits” of being young, in good shape and of a normal state of mind may actually work against him in some circumstances. I would be inclined to explain to the women I wrote, in a very careful manner, why I was seeking a woman from abroad if in his shoes (without disrespecting my local women). Its like sales training for those that ever had it; overcome the customer’s objections before they are even raised. Marketing oneself long-distance to women is a skill that takes honing and development.

The introduction letter is a vital tool; a first impression that cannot be left to chance. One must hire a competent Russian interpreter and translator to help craft and hone your introduction letter. Preferably a female one, as women understand the target market: Women.

Understanding the society you are delving in is also essential. You cannot rely on the twaddle written on dating sites. Russian dating sites are geared up toward telling you what you want to hear. They will wax lyrical about how these ladies “love to make cosy home” and “love to cook tasty meals” – which may be true sometimes. But not all the time. You will find the same guff written on the profile of many “professional daters” (scammers to you), often from Odessa or Kiev, who entertain a different foreign guy each weekend, and have a Prada and D&G fetish. Preferably at your expense.

To get to the real facts about a Russian or Ukrainian wife, and how, in 2011/12, you can find one, you need to educate yourself. This means learning from those who have spent much time in the former Soviet Union; and who are in a cross cultural marriage already.

The road to a beautiful Russian or Ukrainian wife is still possible to travel; but you must enter the arena educated and with a good idea in advance of what is possible and what is not.

The “mail order bride” industry is changing. Marriage agencies are not the future. As Russian and Ukrainian women embrace the internet at home, social networks are the way forward. Sites like Planet Love Match have recognised this already and are responding to the changing environment. Mix the dating site together with a social networking site, in both languages – brilliant but simple.

Foreign dating is changing. Get ahead of the curve by educating yourself.

Stuart J. Smith is the co-author of the Russian Bride Guide: How to meet, court and marry a woman from the former Soviet Union. He has guested on many radio shows on the “mail order bride” subject. He runs the busiest Russian women information discussion forum on the internet today.

For what it is worth, here is a first impression of the new Planet Love Match dating site and business model.

The first point I’d make is that in many respects PLM, together with its sister sites goes some way toward the model outlined by many industry watchers over the last year or so as the future of internet dating.

What PLM and the other sites in the network are doing, by accident or design, is taking the social networking meme famous from Facebook, Linkedin, My Space and Twitter to the next level, a direction that thought leaders and entrepreneurs have identified as the next step – ‘niches’.

Even the most ardent supporters of using Facebook for dating would agree that it ain’t easy. Many, if not most users of Facebook for dating use ‘helper apps’ which are, in essence, dating sites with an interface to Facebook. The sites attempt to use Facebook as a source of clients rather than using Facebook as the medium and environment.

The problem with that approach is that the issue of data pimping – selling user data to 3rd parties as well as sharing with other Facebook members is not solved.

Planet Love Match is an early mover in the emerging trend toward nicheing and away from data pimpage. Users of the site(s) are expected to pay directly for the privilege. In return they are not bombarded by ads, invitations to prostitute their data and importuned to enable ‘apps’ to post on behalf of the users. User data is, to a much greater degree than with ‘free’ networking sites, protected and private.

Additionally, PLM’s users are all interested in the same thing – finding a new ‘romantic’ relationship. I know that when I go to PLM that the messages I receive will be, almost exclusively, from people with similar goals to myself. If I am more interested in general networking I move over to the ‘MyDot’ niche and if I have interests in star stalking I might wander over to the ‘Starcam’ niche. These latter being two of the niches that I understand will form part of a panoply of linked but separate niches where one can become a member of as many, or as few, communities as one chooses.

When Users join the service they are required to provide proof of identity by displaying photo ID at the same time as a webcam shot of the face. This can be further enhanced by use of verification using credit card purchase. It is not necessary to verify ID with a purchase but I guess that most users will, at some point, take this step.

It is obvious that the personal security of users has been considered in the design of the site. I do not comment about underlying security as I have no way to know about these issues, just as I do not on Facebook ET AL, but the overt systems seem effective. For example, although people verify their id with the site management one’s true ID info is kept private from other users unless it is explicitly shared. To this end, PLM uses a system they call ‘Safecall’ to enable people to talk to each other by phone without the caller needing to know the callee’s phone number.

As far as I can see there are no restrictions upon people’s choice to share personal contact info so one might conceivably make a contact on PLM and then move straight off and onto Skype or similar but, particularly if dealing internationally this might be more trouble than it is worth given features such as inbuilt translation of the site and and many of its communication features. This site is built from the ground up to encourage people seeking international relationships and to ensure that ALL members can interact on a basis of equality.

There are, apparently, some 50 different modes of communication ranging from video chat to the exchange of virtual gifts. Users can run blogs, share videos and photos have chat conversations and customise their own environment. This is not just a site to find a woman to marry but is also a site for true virtual dating and, from what I have seen may be the first best step in that direction. I can envisage spending time interacting with one special person for extended periods before (instead of) meeting in ‘real life’. The degree to which that happens will be up to the choices of those involved.

The site is obviously brand new and is thus a little empty but I can see already that quite a few agencies have taken the move to add the women on their rosters onto the site. My own experience has been that there has been some contact from these women to me, but nothing untoward or distasteful.

On a practical front there are a couple of issues, the first is that the page is very busy and really needs a large screen to deal with the available content. Using this on a netbook is not easy – there is a need for a ‘LoFi’ version where users can customise the content on the page to ease bandwidth and CPU/memory needs. Secondly the site is not in any way optimised for mobile use; this is connected to the first issue. Many people not in the USA use mobile phones as their primary internet access but the experience of dealing with one’s American love bunny from the screen of one’s Samsung Monte Android fone will be painful and frustrating and will encourage overseas users and USAians to migrate to more mobile friendly platforms quite quickly.

On the whole, I think that Planet Love Match is a good step down the path that I and a few other industry watchers identified as being ‘the next step’ for international dating/marriage sites. For sure the boundaries between dating internationally and dating locally have been very much blurred with PLM and that is a good thing

Объявлен официальный запуск Planet Love match ™, новой мощной коммуникационной платформы, которая позволяет участникам легко обратить свое внимание на множество ниш сообществ знакомст; от широкого круга демографических, культурных, национальных. Planet Love match ™ навсегда изменит то, что ожидали от сайтов знакомств. В перенасыщенной цифровой среде, знакомства сайтов мира все более заинтересованны в собственных коммерческих целях. Планета Любви матча ™ предлагает вам не только многофункциональный и конфиденциальный поиск своей второй половинки, независимо от того, где он (а) находится. Planet Love match ™ , но и предлагает расширить свои знакомства по целям и по поиску, где люди могут свободно общаться для изучения любых типов отношений, которые им интересны.

Будучи в развитии в течение 5 лет и проводя закрытое бета-тестирование в течение 24 месяцев, Planet Love match ™ объеденила квалифицированных специалистов, которые использовали передовые механизмы фильтрации и совместимые алгоритмы при увеличении эффективного поиска. Для предоставления членам сайта беспрецедентный уровень настроек и поиска интерфейса управления, Planet Love матча ™ полностью затмевает сегодняшние шаблонные сайты знакомств продвигая интерактивный и индивидуальный подход к онлайн-знакомствам.