The Craigslist Dating Game and women

I recently was listening to the radio and heard a conversation about dating sites and Craigslist was brought up. I never realized that Craigslist even had a dating side to it. Until now I always thought of it as place where people placed ads to sell stuff. I have even posted things for sell on it myself a couple of times to try to rid myself of things that I longer needed.

Everyone has heard of sites like, match, Eharmony.com and the newest one Zoosk.com, just to name a few. But, I wondered how many people actually used Craigslist for a date site. The one thing that CL has over the other sites is that it is free to post and respond. All the other sites demand membership fees before they will actually let you talk or respond to an actual person.

So this was the plan. I would post ads in a couple of categories for a few days to see what kind of response I would get. Also, my ad would be precise in what I was looking for; I wanted women to answer a few questions on using CL. This way I would be able to judge the response by who actually read the ads.

This is the actual ad that I placed on Craigslist with a picture of me playing a guitar.

I am interested in what you have found on craigslist. I am a writer and musician looking for women of all ages on craigslist that would like to take part in a survey. I am writing a new article about dating sites and need your input. I am real, if interested in reading one of my articles just to be sure, just paste this link,hubpages.com/hub/relationshipsforallthewrongreasons?
Thanks

These are actual responses received by email.

First sample

I am real, today is Tuesday please respond back

My Response:

still interested in taking my survey

Response back:

Hey, thanks for getting back to me
> So I will tell you a more about myself. I am kind of shy, I like to get down and dirty though.
My favourite sport is football and my favourite position is missionary.
I have hazel green eyes and light brown hair, I will attach 2 photos for you.
Hope to hear back from you.

Next response to email back: do you still want to take my survey?

Hello again, I am really interested in seeing you
Why dont you give me a ring and we can arrange something.
Im sorry but I dont want to put my phone number on email, I dont really feel safe doign that.
Can you please make an account on __________.net and search my profile

Next sample

INFO LINE: definitely wanna know more‏

Text: i like your recent entry

Response: Thanks,

As you can see, these had nothing to do with actually responding to my post. These are responses from people, I won’t say women, you never know who is actually responding, that are here trying to promote other dating sites. They us the free post on CL to contact people across the country to push their sites and earn commissions. After a little more research, I found that the return emails that were listed in my reply back, were from all over the place, I had one local response out of the twenty that I received, and it was bogus. The above samples are much indicative of the type of response I received back in about a twenty four hour test.

From what I can tell, from my sample advertisement, is that if you’re a guy on craigslist, you pretty much don’t have a chance on meeting a real woman from advertising yourself. The best way to use this site if you are a guy is to respond to other ads only. Placing an ad yourself, only exposes you to predatory marketers’ looking to take advantage of male testosterone levels to sell a product.

Even a lot of the so called women who advertise on the site are promoting other dating sites or adult sex sites. So when you are looking at the ad, it may not be what you think. So if you get a response back check for links in the email to other sites, this is a dead give away that you will probably never get to meet.

Another thing I noticed was the life span of the ad itself. After the first two hours the responses fell off drastically. I did get an occasional response for up to twenty four hours, but basically it was all the same sales pitch.

Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t any real women on Craigslist looking to find the right guy. And if you do happen to get weeded out of the hundreds of response that each girl gets you may have a chance to actually meet. Be cautious, you don’t know what’s out there, that’s true for any site, not just CL. Just remember the old phrase, better safe than sorry. Try to communicate for a while by phone or email prior to meeting and set a date for a public place for your first meeting.

So, for you guys out there checking out Craigslist for dating, beware there are a lot scams out to get your money, not your heart.