Oftentimes ladies ask whether Elenasmodels.com is a marriage agency. We tell them it’s not a marriage agency, but a dating site. What’s the difference?

The main difference between marriage agencies and dating sites is the absence of mediators

Marriage agents sign an agreement with women where it’s stipulated who is doing what. The marriage agency is providing a service to the woman who wants to find a partner for a committed relationship. It’s not the woman herself that is doing the search but the agent.

Dating sites simply offer men and women a place where they can publish an ad (a profile) and contact each other. It’s a piece of software, which purpose is to make it possible for users to communicate with each other. Direct contact vs. mediated is the essential difference between marriage agents and dating sites.

Traditionally, there were no dating sites before the age of Internet, but there had been marriage agencies and agents, called ‘matchmakers’ (‘svakha’ in Russian).

When a possibility to meet someone online appeared, many women didn’t own computers and people who had them started companies offering to help ladies to contact males posting ads on dating sites. This is how the first online marriage agencies started operating back in 1997-2000.

Remember, there were no smartphones with Internet access at the time. The first smart phone was released in June 2007 and it was an iPhone. This gave rise to dating apps and revolutionized the whole industry of seeking a partner for a relationship.

The difference between matchmakers and marriage agencies

In its essence, a marriage agency should be a type of a matchmaker. But not in today’s Ukraine.

The fact that Ukrainian women didn’t speak good English, in addition to the absence of a convenient access to the Internet, gave the need to have a translator, when ladies came to agents seeking help in accessing foreign dating sites. At that time the online translation software, so typical today, also didn’t exist and wasn’t incorporated in browsers and chat apps.

It was the need for the translation of letters between people who spoke English and the ones who didn’t — the job, which at the time could be only done by a human, — that gave rise to payment for letters. The payment was for translations.

How marriage agents began to scam men

But with time, marriage agents realized it was too hard to be the mediator and move content from men to women. It appeared much easier to simply have translators correspond under the identity of the woman, telling men all the nice things, making promises, and encouraging guys to talk more. This was profitable to the translator, since he or she was paid a certain amount per letter, as well as the agent, who was getting a large cut. More letters could be written, since there was no time lost to translate back and forth.

It was a simple business decision, but it led to a whole different concept of an industry that masked itself under the name ‘dating’. It became an online entertainment in writing.

The pay-per-letter dating scam

Then some men figured out that letters they were getting were fake, so agents got some women who were writing under their own identities, although they were still paid for letters and chats.

This is how the whole PPL industry works today: Women are supposed to be the ones writing letters and chats to men with the purpose of finding a partner, and they are not supposed to be paid for it, and only do it to meet someone.

But this is not what’s happening in pay-per-letter scams, where women are either paid for working as a ‘bride’ or they are impersonated by letter-writers (aka ‘translators’).

Unfortunately, this is what basically every agency is doing today and ‘dating sites’ that employ agents and try to say that they are clean from pay-per-letter scams are either lying or extremely naive. Any payment of commissions to agents makes them very hungry for more money and willing to do anything to earn big bucks.

The key difference now between sites where pay-per-letter scams prosper and the ones clean from these problems is whether there is a payment for every mail or message.

• If each message attracts a charge, then the pay-per-letter scam can prosper, because agents can be paid from that amount.
• If there is no charge, then the per-per-letter scam is not possible, because agents cannot be paid — there is no charge for communication.

Ukraine is absolutely ridden with pay-per-letter structures, while Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan have much stronger law enforcement systems and control over the Internet. If you have any concerns, avoiding females who reside in Ukraine will reduce your risk of exposure to nearly zero in regard to this particular trick of fraudsters from the dating industry.

Matchmakers

There are some genuine matchmakers who do not charge for communication and do not use any agents in Ukraine, such as Elena’s Models Matchmaking.

But the majority of structures that offer matchmaking services rely on the network of agents and in case with Ukraine, it is the marriage agencies working for pay-per-letter companies.

Matchmakers charge rather high fees for their services, while offering some kind of guarantee of success in the form of the number of matches.

Read also:

• A losing strategy in dating Russian girls
• 20 tips for dating in Kiev: Ukrainian women vs. western women
• Would you like better quality women to write to you?
• VIP Dating Coaching program by Elena Petrova: Expert tips and advice for men who plan to visit their girlfriends in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus