Dating sites fall into two basic categories: paid sites and free sites. Obviously, there's an advantage to the "no fee" sites: they're free! But there are also many drawbacks that may not be quite so obvious. On the flipside, paying a fee gets you a little more for your money: they're optimized to elevate your user experience and then they also offer certain forms of general safety for their users.

Whichever you choose to join, keep one thing in mind: not all dating sites are equal. You'll get what you pay for - or don't pay for, in the case of the freebies. You are also putting yourself at risk using a free dating site and opening yourself up to many dangers.

Dating sites are businesses, just like any other service. But if that's the case, how can they offer their services for free? The free sites just don't offer its members the "bells and whistles." That certainly means no webcam chatting or video hosting capabilities. More important, if you have a problem, you won't find customer service ready to help. In fact, looking for a customer support phone line would be pointless on a free dating site.

Outside of having less features and virtually no customer service, you'll get tons of advertising thrown at you when you log on. Expect to swim through a sea of pop-ups and pop-unders. Add more e-mail advertising filling up your mailbox - at least once a week. And maybe worst of all, they often sell your personal information to large advertising companies.

Not enough? You're still thinking about a free dating site?

So, let's pretend you go ahead and sign on with a free dating site. Next thing you know - you find someone interesting. You start by e-mailing each other for a few weeks. Then you move on to phone conversations with this person. Ultimately, you're having a great virtual relationship. But then comes the time to meet face-to-face. But since there were no fees to fork over for site membership, who is this person? He or she could be just about anyone. He or she could have loaded false images and provided false personal information when signing up. Not too mention, his or her personality might be completely designed to lure you into a personal meeting. Disappointingly, this happens quite frequently. It's possible the malicious party does not intend any harm to the person being deceived, but sometimes that is exactly what his or her intentions are.

Look at it like this. You meet up with someone from a free dating site. You're robbed or otherwise assaulted; what are you going to tell the police? How will the police track this person down? There's no credit card on record. In fact, there's no official payment information on file at all.

These kinds of things won't happen with a paid dating site. While these sites will definitely charge you a fee, you'll also get much more in exchange. You won't be sifting through paid advertisements or dumping spam from your e-mail box.

The user interface for paid dating sites lets you do much more, such as performing elaborate search functions. And many offer alternate ways to communicate outside of e-mail. For instance, some sites offer instant messaging or webcam chatting.

The best feature - and perhaps the subtlest one, can certainly only be found on paid sites. If you eventually found someone you liked, and you set a date to meet, you can do it knowing that the site has this person's real information on file.

1. I give honest, shoot from the hip advice.
2. I am a baby boomer, so been there done that
3. I will not send you to your room to clean it again.

... you'll automatically be making a donation to The Acumen Fund, working to solve global poverty.

Doesn't that feel good?