Curiousity Questions

[dansana]

   Up until last October I was a frequent poster to this board. I am married to a Ukrainian woman and our marriage visa process was completed in Oct 2001. She has been here with me since and all has gone well. We have been talking lately about different girls she has known that have come here as a result of a fiancee or marriage visa and we became curious about several things that some of you may be able to shed light on.

      1. Approximately how many "marriage agencies" or "dating services" do you believe exist on the web?

      2. What percentage of these do you believe are reputable?

      3. How many girls does the average American man correspond with before settling for a single one?

      4. Is there any books that have been written recently that is recommeded about this process of dating and meeting a bride?

       Any insights to these questions will be much appreciated.

Thanks;
Fotowrite

[Oatmeal]

... in response to Curiousity Questions, posted by dansana on Mar 5, 2002

I started my whole search by reading a book called "To Russia for love" by Frank Coleman.

It was a decent book and included a lot of info for guys who had never traveled to FSU looking for a wife but left many many questions unanswered.

I also remember briefly reading through a book called something like either "Red Dove, White Knight" or "White Knight, Red Dove"  Which I felt offered much better advice.

[Jack]

... in response to Curiousity Questions, posted by dansana on Mar 5, 2002

Hello Fotowrite,

 I remember the handle and think that maybe we even wrote previously.

 Ok, I will give you my estimates, but of course as an agency owner there might be a conceived bias.

 (1) I used to keep up with the number of agencies in 96, 97, 98 and even 99. In 1996 there were about 170 what I considered marriage agency web sites. In 1997 there were almost 300. In 1998 there was about 450. In 99 I think things tailed off and there may have been a slight decline. Since late 1999, and after I found my dreambride, I stopped keeping up with the different sites as I had no need to know about them anymore.

  Most of all these sites are in the FSU. However, today, as many men marry foreign wifes and bring there wifes back to the states, with the ease and expense of building the small web sites, many married ladies are making there own little websites with mostly ladies from her city back home.

 (2) Again my opinion. 85% of all foreign owned agencies are questionable (nice way of saying scam). This is why when I find an honest, ethical foreign agency I want to latch onto them and send them all the business I can in hopes of helping them to stay in Business.

  I think probably most the American owned agencies are legit, only a few are pure scam. The problem with most of the American owned agencies is that there data base is so big they have no idea how many of there ladies are available, how many have moved or married or lost interest in foreign men. And of course there seems to be a higher percentage of scammers with the largest of these companies. Not that the company is allowing it, they just can't check all the ladies and keep up with them.

  (3) This figure could vary widely. (And I am only talking about sincere ladies here as scammers will respond to hundreds of men) Some ladies only correspond with a very few men, some even one man, before they find the right man. Other ladies may correspond with 50 or more men before they might find the right one. So if I had to guess at an average number of men written by the average Russian lady, I would say around 16 to 22 guys she might correspond with.

  (4) The best one on the market will come out when I decide to, and make time for, writing my own!

[BrianN]

... in response to Re: Curiousity Questions, posted by Jack on Mar 6, 2002

saw your pic yesterday... u 1 big dude, (but definitely not Claire's  whale! lol!!).  (You look more like a maffeeya type I'd never want to meet in a dark alley).  Question... have you ever read Steve Marko's book rwfaq?  (rwfaq.com).  It seemed to be pretty good, just wanted to know your take since most of what was written in this was based on the Ukraine in the mid to late 90's... etc.

tia.

[BubbaGump]

... in response to Curiousity Questions, posted by dansana on Mar 5, 2002

I can only guess at these answers.  The answer to thr first question is based on an article I read a few months back.  

1. I believe there are over 200 agencies dealing with foreign brides just for Eastern Europe.  

2. I would guess that 70% are at least reasonably honest but few are completely honest.

3. I am too lazy to write many women but it sounds like a lot of men are willing to write 20 to 50 women to find a good woman.  I think 30 would be about average.  

4. Don't know.

[BarryM]

... in response to Wild Assed Guess Answers, posted by BubbaGump on Mar 5, 2002

The number may be in the thousands. There are some dating web sites that have 300 - 400 links to Russian sites alone. I think there are as many as 10 new ones popping up each day.

-blm

[Patrick]

... in response to More than 200 agencies..., posted by BarryM on Mar 6, 2002

One of the things I track is domain registration records.  I have data for every site listed here at PL that includes the domain registrant's information.  There may be many sites popping up, but many of them are owned by the same organization.  They're simply going for greater market share by creating several sites that loook a bit different with the same women and services.  Nothing really dishonest about it (I have something similar since I run both PL and goodwife.com) but it does make it look like there's many more services than there really is.  There's one guy who's got over 30 Russian intro sites.

There may be 300-400 sites, but when you eliminate those that are operated by the same people, and drop those without registered domain names, the total drops significantly.  I won't even list a site without a registered domain name anymore.  There's just no way to know who's behind the site when it's one hosted with one of these free anonymous hosting services.  You can change your name and URL every day with those and nobody can ever know for certain who's behind the site.

[BubbaGump]

... in response to Not as many as it seems, posted by Patrick on Mar 6, 2002

I think I actually read to 200 number within the last 6 months.  EC has at least 2 web sites that have different women.  AFA has at least 3, Anastasia has several.  I looked at one web site the other day that was identical to another site except for the name and the background color.

[BarryM]

... in response to Not as many as it seems, posted by Patrick on Mar 6, 2002

I keep seeing a bunch of "mom and pop" agencies spring up all the time. Many of these are franchises of some of the larger data houses but some of them are independant marriage agencies that are localized to a city or area. Most of these smaller independent agencies have 100 girls or fewer on them but some have surprisingly much more.

It's not easy to find them because of the huge saturation agencies now. You have to search specific cities or FSU countries for them to show most of the time. If you search in Azerbaijan for example, you will find maybe 2 or 3 that are specific to Az and are truly independant.

-blm

[Mike]

... in response to Curiousity Questions, posted by dansana on Mar 5, 2002

1. There is a total of 4,789,876 opps 4,789,877 dang now it's 4,789,878 agggggg I can't keep up!

2. Most have good intentions but they can't manage the kind of ladies that sign up, which is where most of the scamming occurs. So I doubt anyone can accuratly answer that one.

3. Again no way to answer, some get one the first try, and some have been doing this for years with no success.

4. No but I'm sure if you want to write one you can search the archives and comit suicide before figuring out the best way.
ok I felt like being a butthead sorry.
Mike