Well as some of you know I found my wife with the help of this forum and a few friends I have made in my travels. I will give a few details about the whole thing here. I spent 4 years traveling to Ukraine 3 times a year. I met a few pro daters two to be exact, and made a few friends also. I used fiance, elenas and a few friends before I met my wife. MORE TO FALLOW.
A little more. It all started when a friend asked me to go to Sumy with him to see his family. I with his advice contacted a couple lady's then went to meet them, unfortunately he could not make the trip but that's another story. with the help of a few of his contacts the trip peeked my interest and I was hooked. I never really set out to find my soul mate but was open minded. I was more curious about the culture, history and traveling around than meeting my wife. I spent most of my time learning the culture language, customs and traveling. I did meet maybe a dozen different women from different city's but nothing serious until I met my wife. we spent a couple years getting to know each other then decided to give it a go.
Professional daters abound in the agencies. I found out how to spot them on some websites. They are ALWAYS online chatting. They usually write form letters and rarely answer a personal question. When I filtered those out, I began meeting the more sincere agency girls.
I like learning about different cultures too. There's no faster way to learn a culture than by dating a local girl. ;)
apal the first couple years I spent learning the different agency scams and spotting the pro daters. I started keeping a list of contacts and put them on the web.
Way back in the day during my first visit, I came back and guys here all wanted me to build a website so we could list the professional daters for guys. You'd have to operate the site here in the West. If those mafia guys in Ukraine knew who owned and operated it and you showed up somewhere, they'd even the score I'm sure.
my site is more of a guide for people traveling over there, I have a few contacts at some agency's on the links page. If you shop around at some of the agency you can get a good price for interpreters. I did find one agency in Sumy that had a good price for an apartment and taxi from the airport.. most agency's rent you an apartment some one else owns so you have to pay more so they can get commission. I make a lot of commission from the dating sites on our dating page but its just profiles sent from web sites. Every so often I get an email to delete a profile. the web sites send us an xml feed with profile's and there loaded to our dating pages. our database is searchable and it will tell you what agency sent the profile. We also try to keep some information about travel to different places and what to see when you get there. we post articles about places we visit when we go. its all quite basic. we even tried a forum for users but it just gets hit with spam. I spend more time deleting spambots then actually working on the site.
Sounds like you got a wordpress site. Its going to be a never-ending battle because wordpress refuses to correct it. ;0
Have you thought about using another CMS? It'll be an investment but time is money and if you get more popular you'll get even more spam.
Forums are cool. This is the only one I came back to just to say hello to the old timers I used to know here.
I will probably leave in a week or so.
I have a WordPress site and a phpbb forum, we seem to have stopped bots for now but driving traffic is always difficult. We have a few sites that are landing pages but the main site is mostly information about where to go and how to get there, it has contact information for services from people I use. we of course have our dating pages for making money. We have a travel blog but my writer seems to have gotten lost.