PPL means “pay-per-letter”, which is the way of operation of most dating sites offering introductions to Russian and Ukrainian women today. Companies using PPL charge their users for each letter or chat message they send or receive, and per minute of video chat. If you became curious about meeting Russian and Ukrainian women, most services you come across will be PPL dating sites.
Non-PPL websites offer a different approach: pre-paid memberships where all following communication with ladies is free of charge. In both cases you pay in advance (purchasing “credits” in bulk or paying for a membership), however, these two approaches are very different.
PPL dating sites
Features
- Men have to pay for each letter they receive from a woman or send to her
- Usually they are required to pre-purchase “credits” in bulk in advance
- 1 letter or chat message typically cost 1-10 credits to send or receive
- Credits can be also used to pay-per-minute of video chat
Advantages
- You will be receiving hundreds of messages daily
- The quality of your profile and photos is not important – you will get tons of mails anyway
- No need to sign up for membership — pay as you go
- Women’s photos are professionally done
- If you decide to start exchanging letters with someone, usually all letters will be answered every time — responses are virtually guaranteed
Typically, men using PPL websites receive hundreds of messages that appear to be sent by female users daily, regardless of quality of their profiles and photos. As soon as a man registers, he may be bombarded by mails and chats. The messages seem to arrive from very beautiful and young women, which is extremely flattering.
Problems
- Messages may not be sent by women themselves
- No exchange of direct contact details is allowed — you have to continue paying-per-letter
- Exchanging just 10-20 messages may cost more than a 3-month membership elsewhere
- You are actually paying to someone to talk to you — hard to establish how genuine is that relationship
- Even if everything is per service description, each of your letters is being censored to remove personal contact information — your communication is never private
- Women cannot load or remove their profiles themselves — the agent controls the profile, the photos, and the text
- Relationships are hard to move from letter-writing to the real world
Many PPL dating sites explicitly state in their terms and conditions that not all mails are sent by actual users but by “agents”, who are trying to match their clients with men. In other words, letters that men receive on PPL sites can be prewritten and sent in bulk by the agent, or even software-generated.
In a way, it’s similar to pay-per-minute phone services that are happy to discuss your wildest love fantasies, as long as you are paying. If you stop paying, the “relationship” will stop. You have no way of talking to this “person” directly, except for paying to PPL site.
Some PPL websites insist they are charging for “translations”. While women’s command of English may differ, there are free online translators that do the job pretty well, making such interruptions unnecessary.
Read also: The men who go to Ukraine looking for a wife then fly home alone and broke (Guardian, UK)
Membership dating sites
Features
- After purchasing a membership, communication is free and unrestricted with all your contacts for the duration of your subscription
- Various membership levels
- Free use of online translators make communication easy
- No pay-per-letter or pay-per-minute – all messaging and chats are unlimited
Advantages
- Women are contacting you directly without agents
- You are allowed to share your contact details, and move your relationship off the site at any time
- Women include many unprofessional photos in their profiles, where you can see how they look in real life
- If someone keeps talking to you, they are not being paid for that — women are obviously doing that because they want to talk to you
- Ladies can load and manage their profiles, photos, and texts themselves, and able to delete their profile at any time
- Relationships develop faster
While it’s best to still maintain communication through the dating site until you feel completely comfortable to share your personal contact information, you can do it at any time. You are able to chat and talk through the video link for as long as you wish, at your own pace. You are 100% confident that if a woman keeps talking to you, she is doing it because she wants to do it, and not because she is being paid.
Some membership sites (such as elenasmodels.com) also allow you to download direct email addresses and phone numbers of women, so you don’t have to go through the website at all, and have the ability to communicate directly.
Problems
- You will not be getting as many messages as on PPL sites
- Not all women will answer positively
- Your results strongly depend on the quality of your profile — photos and texts
- Some girls have poor quality photos and texts
- No guaranteed answers to your letters and messages
- You actually have to contact women yourself
Because there are no agents trying to “match” their clients with you (and receive commissions for letters), you will not be getting hundreds of mails and chat requests a day, as on PPL dating sites. Some women may answer positively and then disappear without telling you why they decided to stop communication.
Not all women will be perfectly reasonable or answer on time. You actually have to build your own relationship, think what you write and say, nothing is guaranteed. It’s not as easy as reading and writing through PPL, where you only have to keep paying.
PPL dating sites vs. membership sites
For obvious reasons, I cannot claim that I am totally unbiased towards PPL dating sites (Elenas Models is a membership website). I tried to be as objective as I could, however, in today’s world I do not see the need for the PPL model.
- Translations: various online translators do a great job and will be a better option when you are establishing a personal relationship, especially if you chat in real time.
- Protection: having the ability to use video chat without being billed per minute is a better protection than any other from people who are not who they say they are.
- Costs: it’s hard to establish a relationship when you are billed for every piece of information sent or received, and have to always go through the agency. With membership sites all communication is unlimited.
- Reality: moving relationships from online to the real world is seamless and straightforward with the membership model, and can be done immediately. PPL sites only make money for as long as you cannot connect directly, thus they have a vested interest in keeping you as a paying customer for as long as they can.
- Meeting options: usually PPL sites expect you to purchase an expensive tour through them, if you ever decide to visit your romantic interest. With membership sites you choose your own accommodation, plane tickets, dates etc, which allows you to organize your trip 3-4 times cheaper and with a greater flexibility time-wise.
- Reliability: have you ever wondered what are you going to do if the PPL site went down tomorrow? How will you continue the relationship, if you have no direct contact details of your “love interest”? When you have direct contact information, you don’t have to rely on the dating websites.
I believe that generally people who want to find a real relationship prefer direct, uncensored communication. PPL sites, to me, are more suited to dreamers who like to believe they are in a relationship by simply typing letters.
Read also:
- Elenas Models profiles — How women join this dating site?
- How quickly can you meet a girl on EM?
- Is PPL dating a scam? — Truth about PPL dating sites
- Online dating scams – are you being scammed?
>> All articles (in English)
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This really makes sense. I have been paying way too much! Gullible I guess. I am going to be smarter from now on. Thanks again!
I have been a member of PPL sites in previous years and it all ended in disaster both financially and from a relationship sense. Once i found that agencies were paying translators to write letters, even more to chat and then even more to video chat it started to make sense. I was even scammed by one lady on a visit to Ukraine where she would take you shopping and then after you leave would return the goods and get cash and get cut from the shop. How did i find out you might ask? My translators father rang me… Read more »
goofy,
You’re partly to blame yourself that you were deceived. If a woman asks to buy her presents or hints that she needs money, it should be clear that she is a swindler! We immediately see that she needed your wallet but not you! Be careful! Listen to your heart, and analyze her actions!
Presents should be presented when you yourself want, but not when asked by her… this is a cause for concern!
so ,you could spend actually the money on hookers and have real fun .,..plus maybe knowing some interesting lady.Hm.Poor finance management.:-))))).Anyway,jokes apart.When you saw what’s all about(I mean 5000 fur coat buying should have made your sense come to reality)…why didn’t you step aside?
I’ve made my personal experience with a typical Ukrainian PPL site so I can only totally agree with Elena’s article. Joining such sites means ending in the Nirwana of endless letters forward and backward leading to nowhere. While these sites are quite smart keeping you interested they make a fortune. Their only interest is your wallet but certainly not reading your success story….. There can be much more said on these PPL services. Some of their profiles have been taken (=stolen) from serious sites such as EM. Other profiles even are not ashamed to use photos of recognized international top… Read more »
I too fell victim to all the beautiful women and their exuberant interest in me. I wish I had been a little smarter, but it’s hard to deny your desire for beautiful women and their interest in you. Your ego gets in the way of your brain. But then again we all tend to be overly trustworthy and trust in the dating site itself. I had been aware of the potential for a scam and nonetheless continued my communication. I have been a member of a PPL dating site for more than three years. I’ve tried to budget my expenses,… Read more »
I am in 100% agreement with the above posters. PPL sites are, to me, a ripoff. Very expensive, and women are more interested in making money from these sites, than actually finding a relationship.
I am happy to have found Elena’s site. Expectations and communication is realistic, and the prospects here are much more in line with what I had hoped to find.
Have to admit I was enjoying all the attention on one particular PPL site. Unfortunately the experience has soured my experience of eastern European women to some extent. Currently summoning the courage to get a membership here at Elena’s, which after visiting on and off for a while, certainly appears to offer a much more genuine experience.
I like the membership term over the ppl as I have spent enough money on that particular way. I am curious as to why a smaller trial version is not offered as a way to see how this site works?
Nathan, the goal of Elena’s Models site is to meet one special person for a relationship, which is different to regular dating sites that people often use to “hook up” and date different people all the time. This is why our services are designed to enable you to meet this special person. Our experience shows that short memberships don’t work as reliably as more comprehensive membership packages. You usually need to talk to multiple people over a period of time to find the right fit.
The experience on a PPL site can be very encouraging at first, as you receive many letters and appear to have the interest of many exceptional women. But after receiving letters that begin “Dear “, or letters from two different women in different cities that are literally word-for-word identical, it becomes clear that the letters were not authored by the women themselves, but by either a computer or an agency writer. And on the rare occasions when the letters appear real, and you establish an interesting dialog, you learn quickly that it is nearly impossible (or cost-prohibitive) to obtain the… Read more »
I just recently started searching for love in overseas and my first experience has been with a PPL site. Everything on this article is very true. I was about to give up on my search because I had not found a site that I felt comfortable with. It seems like all these PPL sites are a waste of time and money. About two days ago I came across an article that talked about Elena’s work and to my surprise I found Elena’s Model. I’m still evaluating the site but I most says it feels real and I’m feeling very optimistic… Read more »
A typical PPL site and a scam-avoid and save your money! Try Elenas Models then talk direct and write to your lady and go to visit her! NEVER send money to anyone you did not meet !
I had been a member of a few PPL sites also, fortunately/unfortunately I have been doing this long enough to carefully evaluate my responses. While I am quite patient and understand that some of the girls can have problems opening up or responding in English, I figure, after a month of writing, it would be time for them to open up more or at the very least write more. On one PPL site I was writing 5 girls that seemed to fit me almost to a T, but each were different. My letters were always long, and detailed. A good… Read more »
Rod, to me, PPL dating sites belong to the same niche as 1900 pay-per-minute phone lines. You ring, you talk, you pay. It’s entertainment, not relationships.
Rod, I had the same experience on the PPL service. I had tried to get women to communicate on free general email or Skype services and they all gave me the same lame excuse. I even had the unfortunate experience of giving three women my general email by paying for it, and none of them used general email. The overwhelming glaring scam aspects of PPL sites was staring me, no, in fact, hitting me in the face, but the desire for the perfect relationship was an unfortunate motivating force. The PPL service hooks you into beautiful women and “like an… Read more »
It definitely seems more realistic to avoid the PPL sites so that one can actually read the words the other has written rather than a censured message. Its much more genuine.
I agree with much of what has been said here about this type of dating site and been badly ‘burned’ twice. The first time after many expensive messages telephone calls and during the second visit to Odessa following messages of affection and ‘love’ half way through the second trip she could not see me again because “her mother was sick” (an old ‘chestnut’). This followed a particularly successful evening meeting. Of course lots of gifts passed over too. So I had a week of bitter disappointment and nothing much to do during a cold October last year before heading home.… Read more »
Guys, you keep sharing these stories but you are still using the same sites and probably the same selection criteria choosing women. PPL is entertainment. See it as such. You never know who is writing messages, the girl in the picture or someone else on her behalf. Don’t even bother guessing. Just get off the PPL and into the real world. – Good, intense, quality communication that you do NOT pay for (chatting on cam, exchanging sms and phone calls, and lots of emails and photos) is the only key to finding someone who is really interested in YOU. –… Read more »
Elena, great topic!
I had started my search on these PPL sites and visited Ukraine several times and never created a serious relationship. I got to the point where I was convinced that these ladies were being paid to write and meet.
I met my current lady on your site and we have created a wonderful romantic relationship and have traveled to many parts of the world together.
Hopefully this is the year I will bring her to the United States.
Jon
I know what PPL is: IT IS A SCAM!!! Elena, I got another weird question for you: there’s a couple of Eastern European dating sites here in America and they claim to be membership sites, but you also have to buy credits along with your membership, would you consider them PPL sites, too?
I have no idea what you’re talking about 🙂 google them