ContactMeFree is a dream come true for anyone involved in online dating. If you have your profile posted on a personals site but don't pay for a membership, you know how limited you are in terms of being able to send or receive messages. You probably assume that those limitations disappear if you pay for a membership. Guess what? You are far more limited than you realize. Frankly, if you knew how limited you were, you would be furious that the personals site was charging you $20 to $50 per month and still keeping the shackles on you! For example:

• An increasing number of personals sites won't let people who receive messages read them unless the message recipient is a paid member. The person who sent the message might assume that his membership fee gave him or her the ability to communicate with singles on that site, but since 90 to 95% of the listed profiles are from people who have not paid for a membership, only one message in ten or one message in twenty might actually be read by the intended recipient. So what does a membership fee buy on those sites? Not much. If people understood this limitation, how many would pay $20 to $50 per month to waste time writing to people who cannot read the messages they receive? Not many, I'm sure. Perhaps they should give a rabbit's foot for good luck to paying members!
• Other personals sites that are slightly less draconian permit everyone to read received messages, but they do not allow the recipient to respond unless he or she pays for a membership. Those sites often filter any contact information, such as an e-mail address, that the sender may include, thinking that might give the recipient a way to respond without paying for a membership.

 Clearly, personals sites are designed to wring as much money as possible from their users. Striving for profit is not iniquitous, so I won't bash personals sites for trying to make as much money as possible. However, I do think that most of their users would say “to heck with you” if they knew how those sites had stacked the deck against them. If the dating sites were as upstanding as they purport to be, they should be candid enough to disclose what limitations persist even for paying customers. All sites that charge membership fees have limitations that plague even paying members. I don't think this is fair, so I did something about it and created a site (www.contactmefree.com) that is designed to overcome all of the limitations. My ContactMeFree site is free to use, and gives everyone the ability to communicate with people on other dating sites, whether or not you choose to pay those sites, or even post a profile on them.

www.MySpamSponge.com is also a great free tool for Internet dating that allows people to contact others (and be contacted) without paying the membership fees demanded by personals sites. I created MySpamSponge primarily to block spam, but it is useful for online dating and meeting people offline, too (see below).

One of the greatest things about MySpamSponge is that it gives you the freedom to post your handle (contact code) anywhere you want, without having to worry about spammers bugging you. Legitimate users can contact you just as easily as they could via e-mail, but the spammers can't reach you.

MySpamSponge helps you meet people offline, too!

Imagine that you're out in public and see a person you want to meet. What do you do? If you're like most people, you say nothing, walk away, and later regret being so timid. The person you passed up might have otherwise become your spouse, or just a great friend.

Here's our solution: hand that person your MySpamSponge intro card (see below):

Your intro card allows you to communicate with that person without the need for either of you to reveal your e-mail address or other personal information. That makes the person more likely to respond, if he or she is interested.

Learn more about intro cards
Discover even more ways to meet offline