The eHarmony dating service this month has celebrated five years of matching singles. This month is also my one-year anniversary of dating online using eHarmony to find a match. So far this has not happened. This is one of the reasons I created this site. In writing about dating online, I could learn more about it and how to use it best all while helping others improve their prospects also.

A free cruise for a lucky couple is how eHarmony celebrated their fifth birthday. No matches for me to celebrate yet. I want to emphasize yet. I think it will happen, possibly with the help of the eHarmony dating service. Or, maybe some other online dating site as I am thinking about trying out more of them. The idea behind eHarmony makes the most sense to me at this time. But, if I am going to be writing about dating online, I should probably spend some time on a few different sites in the online dating realm.

Before I do that I thought I would talk a little about my eHarmony experience. In the one-year I have been on the service they have provided me with about 315 matches. Since eHarmony shows matches with anyone that has filled out the Personality Profile. Not all of these matches end up signing up to the service. My educated guess is that as many as a third of these matches are of this type. This is based on the number of matches with introductory pages with incomplete info. Also, the numbers of matches that never answer a communication request and never close off communication. If they are active on the service and don’t want to communicate they usually seem to close things off.

This puts me in at around 210 real matches. I, as eHarmony suggests, have attempted to communicate with every match. Not everyone does this for whatever reason but that is a topic for another post. These are matches from my area (Seattle, WA). I chose to only receive matches within 120 miles of me. You can go smaller (just your city) or wider (just your world). So I could have many more matches in the system if I were to go wider in my search.

Of these matches I have ventured down the guided communication path with maybe half of them. Not always making it that far. I reached the open communication stage with 18 of these matches. Communicating outside of eHarmony with 5 of them. Leading to the meeting of two of them in person. The ultimate point of dating online is to meet offline.

One of these I went out with a few times but nothing came of it. With the other there was just no chemistry on a romantic level. You may say only a handful or so of dates after a year of dating online, what is up with that? It may not seem like a lot to you. I refer to it as the hot streak!

City folks just don’t get it!

That is the tag line for FarmersOnly. The dating site for farmers, ranchers, agriculturist, cowboys, cowgirls, animal owners, outdoor enthusiasts, small town and country folks or those looking for them.

Jerry Miller, the founder says:

There are basically two groups in America. Group one, their life revolves around four dollar cups of coffee, taxis cabs, blue suits, high heels, conference rooms and getting ahead at all costs in the corporate world. If you fall into this group you’re probably in the wrong place. Group two, enjoys blue skies, wide open spaces, raising animals, appreciating nature and are generally friendly to everyone. This group makes up Americas Heartland. This is not a geographic area, this is a slice of America with traditional values, that all started with the farmer.

So he started an online dating website geared for Group Two. There are plenty of dating and matchmaking websites for Group One. Trying to meet someone is hard enough. Working the hours a farmer does and probably being out in the middle of nowhere has got to be even tougher. I would guess that the dating pool in small town America is just that, small. That is the beauty of the Internet, the ability to meet people from just about anywhere.

FarmersOnly was launched on May 15, 2005. Presently there are 253 women and 161 men with postings on the site. As of now membership on the site is free. So if you like your towns small and your farms big, you might want to check it out.

It just seemed like the right place. Most of the other online dating services all seemed more about getting a date. Having some fun. Not that I don’t want my dates to be fun. I was just looking for Fun with a Future. Still am!

When looking for someone to date, shouldn’t there be some consideration of the future possibilities. Not just the right now. The eHarmony system said to me, we know what is needed for a lasting relationship. We will match you with others that this can happen with. You go about seeing if there is any chemistry and build from there. Made sense to me. The idea of knowing that if you clicked with someone, you had a high likelihood of a long and fruitful relationship.

Yes, you get less of a selection, because you are only matched with those that you are very compatible. Some don’t like this aspect of eHarmony. They feel they might be missing out on someone. You may miss out on someone, someone that you had less probability of having a solid relationship with.

Besides most of us miss out on many who could be good for us when using other dating sites. We think we know what we want in another and we proceed by narrowing down the field of prospects. We use the dating sites search feature and select others based on their education level, body type, hair color, income level or height. Just imagine how many possibly great people you could miss out on over an inch in height or cause their hair isn’t blonde. This all seems silly to me. But this is how we use online dating sites.

Not that this is any different than real life. We make judgments on others we see all the time based on these same types of criteria. Instantly putting them in a datable or not datable category. The Internet has just made it easier to do on a wider scale.

It is not that this doesn’t happen at a site like eHarmony. It does. You just do it on a small scale because of the fewer matches. But the matches have some substance behind them at eHarmony. Matches at other dating sites are all about criteria we think we want. Not the criteria that we probably should be using. If this were the right criteria then we probably would have already found someone offline.

It just seemed to me that if I could overcome these preconceived notions of what I wanted in a relationship partner, eHarmony would be the right place to do it. An online dating service that tries to take the long term worries off the table. A site, that if you can let go of those surface level dating type criteria we use everyday, where you could find that special someone. At least that is where I am right now.

I think that this idea has some validity. Since a year ago when I signed up other dating sites like PerfectMatch have emerged that are built around a personality test for compatibility. Even Yahoo! Personals, the biggest in the online dating market, have added what they call a Relationship test for Premier members of the site.

Well, they say that: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Or, is it that: Success breeds competition. Either way they sure talk a lot.

In my travels around the web I have come across many interesting dating sites. These sites are geared toward a specific niche. Online dating sites geared to different segments of the population. Recently I have seen more and more of these types of matchmaking sites popping up. Turns out there is a good reason for this.

According to some resent articles I have read at RedHerring and CNN/Money. The growth of the online dating market is slowing. It is still growing just not as fast this year as the last couple. It seems that the mega sites like Match.com and Yahoo! Personals have just gotten to big. Choice is good. Too much choice can be overwhelming. So singles are looking for smaller ponds to fish in. Dating sites built around a certain status, type of job, political affiliation or particular interest.

Even the dating sites eHarmony and PerfectMatch are considered niche sites, that being people seeking serious long-term relationships. Other online dating sites have drilled down even smaller yet like FarmersOnly and CowboyCowgirl. Both attempting to match singles that like a more rural or country lifestyle. Well giddy up! I am sure that more will follow. So I will keep a lookout.

I am thinking this may be a new feature of the eWooing online dating site. Well as of now everything about this site is new. Niche Dating. I will now try to put the spotlight on interesting Niche Dating sites.

For a quick look at the Top 10 online dating sites from a growth perspective, check out:

Top online dating sites: Yahoo! Personals, Match.com, Spark by ZDNet’s ZDNet Research — The US online dating industry is expected to grow by 9% YTY with revenues of $516 mln in 2005 coming from consumer subscriptions alone, said Jupiter Research. That’s slower than the 19% growth in 2004. There are 86 mln single adults who control annual spending of $1.6 trillion, according to Date.com. Online dating sites reach […]