Personal Ads: What's your priority?

[JustAskJulie]

Ok, we've had a lot of discussions here regarding the various personal ads sites... when it really comes down to it what keeps you on a site? Is it the various features the site offers... or is it the number of users in your area?

I know there are many who really don't use the ad sites to hook up so much as to find out what's going on, so I'm guessing for those folks it's more about some of the features.... while for those who use the sites to actually find people in their area, they may be more concerned with the number of users in their area?

[LikeMinds321]

For us it has always been the number of local users.

A site can be HUGE and well-known, but if it has few people in our area there's no reason to sign up.

We use a local site, very small, but it has always provided what we're looking for...people who live nearby.

LM

[socolais]

Without local users, most features loose some value. It's the local events feature on sls that has provided the most value to us. The rest of the stuff is just fluff to us that helps attract other users to the events. Ultimately, it's the quality and quantity of users that attend the events that keeps our attention. We use the sls email a little bit, but if there's an ongoing conversation we'll migrate to a real email account.

Has anyone seen a good example of the new "newsletters" yet?

[good times]

Number of users by far, while we like to be able to see what the local clubs have going on, we primarily use the site to keep in touch with our lifestyle friends we have met at the clubs. So for us we rate the sites by the following criteria from most important to least.

1 - How many people in our area are on the site. This by itself accounts for more than 50% of what makes a site, in our opinion.

2 - Cheap lifetime membership. We hate recurring bills, so the only sites we have memberships on are ones that offer lifetime memberships. We are currently lifetime members of three sites, we have invested less than $200.00 for all three memberships combined. Now before everyone thinks we are cheap, that is not the case, I am just more frugal than most.

3 - It allows you to exchange emails with free members. A few sites we tried don't let free members email, these sites are useless, in my opinion. Probably why they don't have many members in our are.

4 - It has to limit membership to only swingers (it can't be a single, gay, cheater dating site that just has swinging as one of the categories). This was a criteria we added as a result of trying out AFF. They have a lot of members, in fact, their membership numbers are huge, but that is because they lump all of their membership categories (and multiple affiliated ad sites) together as one. In our area, for actual swingers, several sites have many more members than they do.

5 - It has to be relatively easy to navigate. Not fancy, just easy to find what you want and on a decent server so that it loads quickly. It amazes me the number of ad sites that don't meet this test.

6 - The last thing we consider is the rest of the features of the site. If two sites were relatively equal otherwise, their features might sway us a little. The fact is though, most sites we have seen include what is needed.

[Pensacolapair]

Number of users in our area is our Number 1 also. When we lived in Cali, we belonged to a site that we thought was fantastic...any other site we came across probably didn't get a fair shot from us because it just fit us so well. But when we moved to Florida, we found that the nearest member was 300 miles away! We stayed on the site for over a year after we moved, thinking that eventually it might change...it didn't. We had some friends in Cali do a search recently and it's still the same!

We've debated 'features' with a lot of people..and have come to the conclusion that it's pretty much a matter of personal taste. From what we've seen, outside of the basic features (email, search, etc) not many of the other 'bells and whistles' get used by the majority of members. A quick example is what we call the various 'pretty profile' features available on some sites.. full font customization, adding music, slide shows, etc. Yes, there are some who use these features (often to annoying excess ), but from what we've seen most users stick with the basics.

Features tend to be driven by fad... one site adds a feature and members who think it's better than sliced bread begin a campaign to get Tech Support on every site they are on to add it. Then when it does get added, the hoopla dies down and the feature just collects dust.

[alphaplaycpl]

The number of users in the area is so important. Its a waste of money and time if you aren't realistically going to get to meet someone or attend an event. The features are great, as well, though. I especially like being able to monitor profiles of others, and being able to block if I need to. Just keeps things safe.

[cocpl2007]

The number of users in our area is a prime consideration.

While we do not restrict our searches to our local area, it is a prime factor. We have the luxury (or sometimes curse) of living in high tourist area. Tons of folks travel here to play. And many from around the country try to find a "local" couple here to play with while they are visiting.

Personally, we are not looking to be someone's vacation experience. While playing on vacation may be great fun, we are more interested in establishing long-term playmates and friendships. Fundamentally the swinger ad sites exist to make money, however they can entice people to "join" and pay is their main focus.