The subject matter for this series of posts was initiated by a letter from "felicedate" under the subject title of "Affiliate Agencies of fiance.com: Moldova and Saint Petersburg" Perhaps the moderators will transfer "felicdate's" post here.
While there are many candidates for the "biggest half-truth" in the FSU dating world perhaps the top contender is the "Only five percent of the men actually come to visit" line we've all heard about. Before I get into specifics, I should address "Felicdates" first assumption that I don't understand anything about agencies.
Actually, I started / owned a US based agency coordinating with affiliate local FSU agencies, probably similar to fiance.com's business model. This was an ill-fated attempt to establish a hobby business that could serve as a tax write-off to pay for my wife's (now ex-wife) future visits home to Ukraine and to recoup some of the thousands of dollars I'd spent traveling all over the FSU prior to my marriage.
When I started the business I spent eight weeks traveling Ukraine and Russia recruiting agencies, negotiating commission plans, and photographing select groups of their most beautiful members. Before I ever opened an agency I spent a lot of time with a friend who owned an agency in Kiev before marrying and moving to Canada. I just spent eight weeks in Sevastopol with a friend who I helped start her own agency.....Now "felicdate" do you wish to reconsider your assumption that "I don't have any idea" about the agency business? (by the way the fiasco probably cost me 15K +)
“felicdate” wrote:
“>I assure everyone that not more than 5% of the girls in general saw a living foreigner coming to meet them<“
“>it is “very, very, very, rare” for a woman in an agency to actually get married.<“
Actually, this is absolutely true on the surface, in fact, the figure is probably a little high. But it is also a very disingenuous and misleading statement. You see the fact is, that perhaps only two to ten percent of the ladies get about 85% of the interest, depending on how many attractive ladies are listed by an agency. The reason being is that in an average HONEST agency, there may be a thousand ladies listed and perhaps ten babes. Simply put, very few attractive women willingly join introduction agencies. (felicedate even said as much in the post)
There are two entirely different universes: babes and non-babes. The deceit in the “five percent visiting claim” comes from the agencies lumping both groups together to come up with that figure. Since the majority of men are interested in meeting attractive women, the cold reality is that only the desirable group is relevant.
Fiance.com posts the number of contacts a lady receives and some women have received over 1,000 The Angelica network affiliates used to post address sales figures for each girl and some were over 800 Remember, they are also likely to be listed on multiple agencies not included in those figures. So let’s summarize: Like it or not it’s feast or famine based on appearance.
I’ve met beautiful women from Riga to Volgograd and whenever I ask the ladies about their experience with the five percent claim I get a puzzled look. They are over-loaded with men visiting. There’s no shortage of eligible foreign men waiting in line to meet them. In fact, the real challenge is to find the “Shangri-la” area of the FSU that has yet to be picked clean by hordes of western men.
“felicedate” also made the claim that women get lost in the shuffle and put toward the back of the line as the length of time in an agency grows. Not so with attractive ladies. If you look at agencies such as those in the Angelika network, “Anascamya“, A Pretty Woman, etc., you will see that the sites are set-up to either bring the most attractive women to the front of the website or have a search feature to do just that. Therefore, the babes continue to receive the most exposure.
The relatively few attractive women are certainly “cash cows” and it’s easy to see how they account for a wildly disproportionate percentage of an agency’s revenue. Using the Angelika example, if they have a profile generating 800 address sales at rates from $7 to $10 each that brings in anywhere from $5,600 to $8,000 !!!!! In fiance.com’s case, it easy to see that men are buying memberships to develop an acquaintance with a relatively small group of women among the listings.
buffed, that was a fascinating post. May I ask, why was your attempt to create a faince.com-type of agency "ill-fated?" It seems like a clever idea to me, and something I toy with in mind from time to time, envisioning the same tax savings and write-offs you did. I realize this isn't totally on topic, but i figured I'd ask nonetheless.
Perhaps the source of the disagreement is linked to the definition of "babe".
If you are talking about women who are, nearly literally, "drop dead gorgeous" - I am talking about super-model quality and beyond, with perfect figures, perfect, height, perfect faces, perfect blond hair - A woman that Heidi Klum, or Jessica Simpson might feel jealous of at a party - then I might agree with you. A typical agency might have 10 of those for every thousand women listed.
If, on the other hand, your definition of "babe" is a more modest one. Say - better looking than anyone in your circle of friends, better looking than any woman at any disco you've ever been to, better looking than anyone you've ever gone out with, better looking than anyone at your old high-school or than any woman you are likely to SPEAK TO in your entire lifetime. Not absolutely flawless - but damn near.
If the paragraph I JUST wrote is your definition of babe - I content that at least HALF of the women in the FSU at any disco, at any Romance Social, at any park or at an shopping center, at any AGENCY - meets that definition.
And I know SEVERAL model quality babes (who would wctually fit the first definition) who live in small cities in Moldova and have NEVER been visited by a western man.
Countries like Latvia (especially in Riga), Lithuania and Estonia are entirely different than say Moldova or (I think) Belarus. The Baltic States HAVE been picked over. The latter two countries mentioned above have NOT BEEN.
The SHANGRILA you mention can be found in any relatively rurla area - or among girls whio are quite beautiful but who either don't use the internet frequently, or who have bad pictures posted.
There are still many babes of BOTH DEFINITIONS listed above who have never ever met a single western man - you just have to go off the beaten-path a LITTLE bit.
If a woman, by the way, receives letters from 1,000 men - and eventually 50 of them visit her (a nontypical situation to be sure).... wouldn't that be 5%?
Buffed,
what you write is very tue but dont forget when you join Angelica you get a lot of address for free each month, or you used to do,so they are not making that much out of address's
e-mails is where they make there money,
out of intrest what was the name of the agency you set up in Sevastopol ?
Of course a chap who lost 15 grans in the dating industry can be considered a profi!:-) Are you kidding??? I earned a bit more than this guy lost on this and I draw all my statistics only and solely on the example of my own agency which I consider to be average. Keep in mind that I have no purpose to defend or on the opposite offend dating industry. It is past for me.
A) Unfortunately there is no queue of western men sheduling to visit a woman from an agency. Again it is based only on the 2 years experience with my own agency. Just one girl(and very far from being a "babe") has been visited 3 times by three different people, 2 more girls had 2 visits. That's all, all the rest who had this luck were visited just once.
2) We are talking here only about fiance.com affiliation where there is no or almost no means to gain new interest to a girl after 3 months after publishing her profile. The exception is if a girl is Miss Wow perhaps.
We have never worked with Anastasiya and I don't have any information on them.
As for Angelika, better keep quiet as this damp is trully nothing. We were their affiliates. This is nothing more than an ancient damp with dozens hundreds of outdated profiles hanging there for years. Making 200$ having 100+ girls in their database is a great success.
In general stop talking about the crazy revenues of the agencies. It is far from being true.
3)And for your information the number of "babes" is much higher than you may think. Of course this is my subjective meaning and experience but a half of our clients were very-very pretty, 15% just stunning and only around 15% not worthy at all. By the way not these 15% "babes" were getting most interest. OUr most "interesting" client was a mature woman (33 years) with a child, a bit over-weight and far from being a model.
The girl who was visited 3 times by 3 men is in general not pretty in my view.
And by the way I don't understand what you wanted to "explode"? 5%? telling that the figure is from 2% to 10%? very original way. I bet you are not a matematician. In one figure it will be 2+10 / 2 = 6%.
Ok, I agree to add this 1%.:-)
Well the 5% that show up doesn't guarantee anything. If you are an idiot or anal retentive your success rate isn't any better in the FSU or anywhere else.
As for the Miss Wow's on this site. It doesn't really mean that much except that an agency has went on a massive email campaign. Does anyone remember Miss Martini? If an agency does an email blitz for a lady writes 600 me and she gets 500 thanks but no thanks responses from men, Is she really a Miss Wow. You can search Older profiles here and find more beautiful women than that are currently listed Miss Wows.
Alex I can appreciate your input as a former Agency owner, and it is not right to label everyone as bad, guilt by association. But the industry as a whole created this image and by my own experience the agencies as a whole do not really care about making a match between two people, but that is based on my own experience.
I'm still not seeing anything "exploding" the 5% supposed myth.
What the 5% idea means is that 5% (1 in 20) of the guys who write to FSU women actually ever go and set foot in an FSU country in order to meet those women (whether they be "babe" by any definition, or "nonbabe").
WITHOUT actual knowledge of exactly how many guys begin writing to FSU women AND how many of them actually book plane flight for this specific purpose - it is IMPOSSIBLE to confirm or deny the figure of 5%.
An attempt is made here to try to determine the accuracy of that figure based on the number of visits that popular FSU women listed with agencies get. The two concepts are not the same. And as pointed out above - if a popular Miss Wow girl gets 1,000 letters, or more importantly, if 1,000 different guys are writing to her, and she is visited by FIFTY guys who were inspired to visit entirely based on the correspondence (which would fill ANYONE's social calender!) then the supposed "MYTH" holds true.
You mention that: "They are over-loaded with men visiting. There’s no shortage of eligible foreign men waiting in line to meet them." My experience in Latvia was that guys would visit the country, check in with the agencies, look at photos and profiles and want to meet the most beautiful women. Those guys are not in the population of those refered to when talking about what percentage of guys writing to women who actually visit. They were not inspired to visit by writing - they were there anyway.
Riga Latvia is so "European" now (as opposed to being FSU) that it is totally different than some of the other FSU countries. No visa is needed to get in and flights from western Europe are cheap. I saw incredible numbers of foreign guys there. But in Moldova - barely any. We all know that the opportunities to meet wonderful FSU women will not last forever. As the FSU becomes fully westernizes - the countries will eventually be like any other European countries. Some have gone that way already much further than others have.
But there is nothing in the argument built above that indicates that 5% ISN'T the right number for guys who write and eventually go over.
Its not "just simply a matter of showing" up for a variety of reason. FSU women are not tripping over themselves to meet a western guy neccessarily. They have other criteria they want you to meet as well. But far from al lareas of the FSU are picked over. And there are beautiful babes available all over - if you just know where to look.
Mike. THis is your attitude. Many people even on the forum can witness that I personally made unbelievable efforts sometimes to save the relationship between two people. I am not a saint and I like(well, even love) money but I have soem consciousness left. And anyone who also has will care about other people a bit, not only about their wallets.
I think here you guys really mix priorities. I am trying to tell that not the agencies are the main reason of quite little success rate in International dating. The main reasons are diffrences: culture, language, money and so on. All this bring this damened figure 5% on the stage. Not the agencies. Can anyone tell that girls who are corresponding through web-sites themselves are better in this aspect? Guys I have a dating site with around 1000 girls in the database. 95% of the girls are individual, not affiliated with any agencies. They write not more than 15% off all letters on the site. Women who understand something in internet are very few and most often they manage just to register at the site.
Read my post please! I am pretty sure that the 5% is just a sampling figure and not anything exact. Also, I did state it was my experience with a couple of particular agencies, and not Yours Alex. Touchy, Touchy today!
Money is an excellent servant, but a terrible master!
Jetmba accurately pointed out that my example of a woman receiving a 1,000 letters and getting 50 visitors still equals five percent. I tried to reduce the size of the original post and I edited out the explanation. What I meant to demonstrate was that even if you accept the five percent figure, the more popular women are still are going to have plenty of visitors.
Again, I don't necessarily dispute the five percent figure at face value. However, it implies as QuietCharm stated:
">Made me feel like I only had to turn up to succeed<"
Jetmba wrote:
">....guys would visit the country, check in with the agencies, look at photos and profiles and want to meet the most beautiful women.<"
Absolutely correct!! So add this on top of the 25 to 50 guys a "popular" woman can expect to meet (even using the 5% figure- 500 to 1,000 letters).
Jetmba also raised the issue of what exactly qualifies as an attractive woman. I actually should have used the term "popular" instead of attractive for the purpose of this discussion. So let's just say, whatever that "special quality" may be that most men seem to want, only a fraction of the ladies listed in any agency seem to have it. So it still leads us to the same conclusion which is the thrust of this subject:
THE "POPULAR" WOMEN MOST OF US ARE INTERESTED IN MEETING WON'T BE LACKING FOR COMPANY.
Jetmba, you wrote about Moldova being an area which has still not been over-run. I'm quite interested to learn more about the area. Other western men I've talked with while in the Ukraine have wondered if this Moldova would be an untapped resource. Perhaps you could expand on this subject.
In regard to Felicdate's questions and comments:
Felicdate made a not-so-polite comment referencing my self-deprecating bit of humor inserted in my reference to a loss sustained by my "HOBBY" agency. Another forum member, XOPOWO understood my motivation for starting the agency and asked for further info so I'll provide more details. I had hoped to utilize the number of contacts I'd made from my travels throughout the FSU to start a networking website. I never had any grandiose illusions for the project. I had hoped that the site could simply generate enough address sales to sustain itself and perhaps a little more to cover my wife's visits home.
I exaggerated a bit in saying it cost me 15K since a large chunk of that included a Sony lap top and digital camera set-up which I also make great use of in my REAL business. Another big cost was my business trip over to meet with agencies, which in itself was a great vacation. So in reality, I probably spent less than $7,500 on my HOBBY. It was amusement and I had enjoyed it so I don't feel it was a waste of money.
Felicdate wrote:
">stop talking about the crazy revenues of the agencies. It is far from being true<"
This is a mistaken interpretation to the reference I had made of the revenue a "popular" woman can generate. I had cited the huge number of address sales a few women from the entire Angelika Network received. It has to be remembered that there are dozens of member agencies who slice the pie so it is not really an outlandish amount. I'm the first one to tell you that there's no money in this business.
Buffed: Buried deep in the archives of this forum is my story about how i cam to go to Latvia.
I first attended a Romance Social in Odessa Ukraine in October/November 2003, at which I was VERY IMPRESSED at the number of gorgeous women, 20 years younger than I was (even a few TWENTY SIX YEARS YOUNGER) who were available to me and seemed to act, upon meeting me, as if they had met some sort of movie star.
They were were absolutely giddy. And I was absolutely taken aback.
I ventured to Moldova and spent three week s with one of them. As gorgeous as she was, I was again taken aback by the way that she jealously guarded me, practically refusing to leave me alone for even 30 mintes for the entire stay of the trip. (Neccessity DID require her to leave me alone for that long exactly three times over three weeks - but each time it was done in a way that she knew exactly what I was doing, as I also knew precisely where she was).
"Just showing up" DID seem to be enough at the Romance Socials in Odessa as well as in Moldova. Latvia, however, as described above, was entirely different story.
In Latvia it was RARE to find anyone, a taxi driver, a waiter in a restaurant, who didn't speak any English. Whereas, in Moldova - I spent three weeks there the first time and only accidently heard ONE English converstation (that I was not a part of) during my entire stay.
If you check the archives of this forum you willfind that a seemingly disproportionate number of guys here have ALREADY discovered Moldova. A few of our alumni who report back from time to time have married ladies from Moldova and there are threads dedicated specifically to that, one of the smallest, poorest, and least visited by tourists, country.
Its HARD to even find a marriage agency in Moldova. There are no phone books of course, and they do not seem to advertise locally. (Marriage agencies were ALL OVER THE PLACE in Odessa). Your best bet is to make contact here with one of the agencies recommended by guys in thsi forum. Unfortunately, on that subject I cannot help you out as I have never actually dealt with an agency there.
Check the rchives for more writing here in Moldova. It still is relatively untapped.
I first visited Riga in '99 It was the first place I visited. Met the two girls I'd corresponded with: First one was a scam artist and the second one smoked so heavily her body had been destroyed pulling her outlook on life down the drain as well. Incidentally, in all my travels the number of smokers in Latvia even edges out Barcelona. It's prevalent to the point of absurdity. I'll never forget discussing this with a girl at a sidewalk cafe, just as a six year old boy on a bicycle he could barely reach the pedals on went by with a pair of falling off loose jeans, no shirt and a Marlboro hanging out of his mouth:) There were also a lot of obnoxious, aggressive beggars.
By May of 2001 during what I believe was my third of fourth visit, I teamed up with a British guy I met and toured a several cities throughout Ukraine. It was apparent even back then that a well-beaten path had already been made to the more high profile areas. I was just in Sevastopol / Bella Klava for the last half of the summer. It's a beautiful area but in "my opinion", a real disappointment for women, the quantity and attitudes are lacking. You'd think that given the distance and isolation of the Crimea area it wouldn't be as over-run. However, I met a lot of western guys from all over, the UK, Canada, US.
Many of these guys had bought flats and moved there.
By the way, I'm beginning to think that moving to Ukraine / Russia at least part of the year may be the way to go for those that can swing it. You had related your Odessa experience and it seemed positive. I really like Odessa, I've been there five times. I plan on spending most of my time there this year. Chisinau is a relatively short bus ride so I'd like to visit there as well.
jet-half the women at dicos there are babes. Maybe, but it seems to me, that here and on other sites, the level of the average fsu babe has dropped considerably. Maybe only the honest ones put themselves here now?
No doubt the novelty has worn off a bit for both us, and them.
I'm sure it used to be that the BEST babes were the ones most likely to use this technology. You have to imagine it must have taken a babe who was pretty sure of herself in order to post pictures on the web and hope for the best.
Today this is more common place. In every country EVERY woman most likely has access to a digital camera and EVERY woman has the chance to appear with one or more of the agencies. I don't know if that would make them any more or less honest. I suppose a mediocre looking babe is less likely to be a fictitious entity established by anyone (even a guy) as a vehicle for a scam. I mean, if someone was going to do that - they would use a super-model type babe's picture - wouldn't you imagine?
Maybe the less beautiful babes are now confident enough to post pictures and are therefore mre commonplace - but the beautiful ones are STILL OUT THERE.
Its more a matter of where you look - but they can STILL BE FOUND.
And its still a fact that the average babe over there is a lot better looking than the average babe over here. And women there ARE less likely to disregard you if there is an age difference than they are over here.
ture. Not saying that not being honest mean they are scammers. More like pretty girls just seeing how much interest they can stir. Some have internet and jut put there photos here for something interesting to do as they have just discovered the interent and want to play a bot just to have a look. No real serious intentions. I met one who cannot even remember all the places she put her photo nor how to acces the site. it was just fun. But through that fun I got her attention somehow. Still feeling this one out but having fun doing it
I do get the impression that this thread was started with a misunderstanding of what the "5% of men writing, actually visit" means.
It seems that some have misunderstood that to mean something like "only 5% of the women with profiles ever get visited by western guys" and that, of course, is not what the original "myth" meant at all.