ADVICE COLUMN – ONLINE SAFETY TIPS

Online dating is the best possible way to meet fantastic people who share your interests and passions. Every year, tens of thousands of people get married as a result of meeting on an online dating service. Millions of people are doing it and, in general, online dating is regarded as a safe medium for meeting potential dates.

Your online dating safety begins with educating yourself on how to improve your experience and be safe doing It. Here are a couple of important tips to being safe during your online dating experience.

Trust Your Gut Instinct

Your instinct is a powerful medium for knowing when something doesn’t feel right. It is also a great way to measure when to move forward with someone and when to turn and run. As you read profiles, responses to emails, have phone conversations, and meet in person your instincts help tell you if something is “right” or if something is out of alignment. The “out of alignment” message is your cue to be careful, back off, or proceed with extreme caution. Trust your gut instinct, it’s the most powerful psychological tool you have at your disposal.

Don’t Provide Personal Information Too Soon

Your home phone number and full name provide easy ways to track who you are and where you live. Armed with just your home phone number, a person can easily gain access to your income information, home address, and even learn the value of your home. Armed with your first and last name, a person can do searches to determine quite a bit of information on you – where you work, what you do, and even what your home phone number is. So in the initial stages of communication, guard your personal information.

EXPERT ADVICE: FILTER OUT UNWANTEDS

Your profile isn’t about getting responses. It is about getting responses from the type of person you are attracted to. Therefore, use descriptions to help narrow your focus to what you want so that you get responses from whom you’re looking for.

Instead of “I’m looking for someone fun and humorous,” say, “I’m looking for a light-hearted man between the ages of 24 and 29 who enjoys the humorous side of life. If you are clean-shaven and can hold a conversation during a 150 mile car journey, then we may be a match. Email me.”

In the above example, you created three filters – an age filter (24 and 29), and appearance filter (clean-shaven) and a communication filter (good-communicator). And you did it without offending. But you also created a response filter (“…we may be a match. Email me.”) You’ve helped tell the person what the next step is if they meet your criteria. You’ve created a call to action, which will help direct interested parties to email you versus waiting.

Chewing Gums & Relationships: Have Your Say

Okay, its time we stopped preaching precious gyaan and listen to what you have to say. Here’s an interesting statement:

“A relationship is like chewing gum – it becomes bland over time.”

Do you agree? Do you disagree? Do you have an opinion? Or do you just not care? Let us know what you think and we’ll put up the best opinions up as a separate post. Go ahead, give us your gyaan.

EXPERT ADVICE: GO FROM TYPICAL TO UNIQUE

Read this profile and tell me if you recognize it:

“I am a fun person who loves movies and music. I like walks on the beach, good conversation, and dining out. I’m looking for someone who is fun and can make me laugh.”

Unfortunately, the above describes most profiles – typical and non-informative. Beef up your profile to be more descriptive and unique. Instead of “I like movies,” say “my favourite movie is ____ because _______” or use a movie character to describe you. “I’m a lot like _____ in ______ because _______.”

Use clever words that are descriptive. Instead of saying “on hot days I like to go to the ocean or on a hike,” say, “on a sizzling day my adventurous side leads me to traversing the ocean on a sailboat or discovering a new waterfall that I can cool off under.”

Instead of “I like to discover new things,” say, “I’m a lot like Indiana Jones in that I love exploring the mysteries of life, while educating my mind to appreciate new things.”

Strive to make your profile unordinary by spicing it up sentence by sentence. Be descriptive, unique, and fun!

MILOJEE EXPERT ADVICE COLUMN – THE RIGHT PROFILE

The competition for attention on online dating services is intense. So intense, in fact, that some people resort to lying or posting outdated photos to try and attract that next date. It’s vital that you are honest in your profile and through your photos so that you don’t meet (or interact) with others under false pretences.

So then what are some important things you can do to build a better profile? Here’s a great profile tip you can use to improve your profile right now.

Avoid Negativity

Have you ever gone out on a first date where the person you were with complained about his/her work, ex, etc? Such negative talk is a major turnoff. Likewise, negativity is a major turnoff in your profile. Being positive is like a magnet. Being negative is like wearing a skunk aroma. Here’s how one person actually began her profile:

“To be quite honest, I have been putting this off as long as possible. I have friends who use Match and have had some terrible dates.”

This begs to ask, “What are you doing here?” Now contrast that to this profile introduction:

“I’ve heard online dating is a great way to meet awesome people and that’s why I want to meet you.”

Which one of these profile intros is more attractive? The one who wants to date “losers” or the one that wants to date “winners”? Psychologically everyone wants to be a winner. Therefore in your profile, avoid anything negative like the plague. Be positive.

If you have anything negative in your profile (“I hate country music,” “the last guy I dated was a liar and cheater,” “I’m sick of being alone,” “I’m sick of the bar scene,” etc.) then go edit it out immediately and replace it with something positive (“I love independent music and artists, like…”). Always be positive; not just in your profile, but also in life.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me A Match

There are certain things that you can’t live without. Friendship is one of them. Love and companionship is the other. What makes a man fall in love with a woman? Unfortunately, science cannot answer this riddle and men of science have given up in frustration. Also, the irony is not lost on them – men of science aren’t immune to love.

So what makes some couples ‘click’? And others not? How can we know from a short profile on a matchmaking website that the person I’m looking at is the one? Chemistry comes into the picture when two people meet, so it can’t be that. A spark happens when two people interact for a considerable length of time, so it can’t be that as well. We think that it could work on three levels, if its meant to be:

1. The initial moments when we stare at the person’s photograph and become mesmerized by their eyes, their smile of just about anything.
2. The gut feeling we get when we read through their profiles and mentally make a note of all the things we have in common.
3. The eagerly anticipated reply to our wink or message, especially when the anticipation does not allow us to sleep.

Again, these are perhaps what most of us aspire for when we sign up on a matchmaking site, and a precious few get to experience it. We at Milojee believe that its never a good idea to give up after one or two false starts. After all, the fun is in the chase, isn’t it?

Yes, We Went Social

Since inception, we’ve been growing at an exponential rate, and very recently, we realized that we are uniquely placed to make so much noise as to wake the dead. Figuratively. So, we did the only logical thing to do these days – we went social.

Milojee.com is no longer just a website. We have spread our reach to all the nook and crannies of the globe through the old crowd favorites – Facebook, Twitter and Orkut – and the have-beens like MySpace and Ning too. Perhaps this blog will give you a clue.

We aim to use this blog space to keep you updated on the happenings in Milojee, news, interviews, reviews and success stories. We have a bunch of experts who will listen to you and help you make your relationship stronger. We will soon launch live chat sessions with the people who matter to you. We are not holding anything back. We want to be and integral part of your lives.

We’ve kept up a strong tradition of being secure, free-to-use and hassle-free. The fact that we just went social in a big way adds to our credibility. Here’s to a fantastic year ahead!

The Milojee Team

Curtain Raiser: A Brief History

Milojee.com was created three years ago by brothers Varun Dhillon & Raj Dhillon of London and ever since the site has been gaining popularity, to meet the needs of South Asians looking to meet someone. The website aims to take a major market share away from existing paid matrimonial sites, offering a full range of features and services.

The brothers themselves were finding it extremely difficult to stay connected with friends as well meet new people and find potential partners. “So that’s how the idea come about, piece of paper, a pen and four key themes, friendship, dating, networking and marriage, that was it. Overall, our aim was to connect people through at least one of the four
categories”, says Varun Dhillon

At that time, there was little competition and generally market share was dictated by a handful of sites, but that was not something that could deter these dedicated brothers and were determined to present something different. “We wanted something more appealing, fresher looking, novel, new, creative but still had a hand in old Indian traditional values, hence the name Milojee, i.e. to meet”, says Raj Dhillon

“Existing matrimonial sites have continued to raise their membership prices, while offering little additional value to their customers,” added Varun. “We think that once Indians realize that there is a viable alternative to paying for what amounts to little more than a high prices messaging service, they will abandon these paid sites and migrate to free matrimonial and relationship sites like Milojee.com.”