Time-strapped men: Outsource your online dating for only $480 a month

June 4, 2009 | Camille Ricketts | Comments | |

These days, you can pay people to do pretty much anything — buy your groceries, shop for your loved ones, pay your bills, what have you. Now you can even hire someone to look for love on your behalf, if you happen to be a man with $480 to burn a month.

VirtualDatingAssistants.com claims to be the first online service that uses “advanced internet dating techniques and strategies” to make perfect matches for its time-crunched clients.

With affluent men spending more hours in the office than ever before — and outsourcing all the rage — it seems only natural that outside help be recruited to handle social affairs. Maybe the company should consider certifying the profiles it creates, tipping women off to prospective dates who shelled out for the premium dating experience — it would certainly bode well for dinner.

Men who sign up with the company receive 40 hours of work and are guaranteed at least two dates a month or they get a full refund. VirtualDatingAssistants agents set up their online profiles on sites like Match.com and PlentyofFish.com. They then manage messages and correspond with potential dates. Implicit in the service is that the field will be winnowed down to only high-quality candidates. Not only will your virtual dating assistant make sure you meet attractive women online, he or she will work to actually make you more attractive to others by tweaking and enhancing various features as time goes on. As the client, you put in no effort until it comes to setting up a first date, at which point you will get a “pre-date executive briefing” on the woman you’re meeting.

The idea for the company came about when its founder, Mark Anderson, then a pharmaceutical sales executive, decided he was spending far too much of his free time sprucing up his online profiles, lining up dates and corresponding with countless women he never actually met. Eventually, he developed a somewhat more scientific system that he applied to successfully win 79 first dates in one year — including one that actually ended in marriage. This is the model the company’s virtual assistants now use to woo for you.

Based in Miami, Fla., VirtualDatingAssistants.com offers a range of other related services, including image consulting and social coaching services. Why the company tailors its services only to men is unclear — but with so many female executives rising through the ranks — enjoying less and less time to meet others and date — it should consider changing its focus sooner than later. The site doesn’t give off a same-sex-friendly vibe either, for that matter (emphasizing the opportunity to meet “gorgeous women” only), which in this day and age is simply short-sighted.

Image courtesy of emwi.net

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About the Author, Camille Ricketts

Camille is the lead writer for GreenBeat. She came to VentureBeat from Google where she worked on its traditional platforms team, particularly in TV. Before that, she was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in New York and London. Follow her on Twitter at @camillericketts, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

With GreenBeat 2009, VentureBeat's all-star conference on all things Smart Grid, coming up in November, Camille will be expanding coverage of this exciting space. Stay up to date by following @greenbeat2009 on Twitter or by becoming a fan of the event on Facebook here.

  • Next VirtualMeetingDates then VirtualMarriages .. VirtualDivorceAssistants
    You don't need to be involved any more, the Assistants will do it all for you virtually.
  • Jose
    really amazing service... it takes the boring and time consuming part out of online dating... great concept
  • Wow, they certainly charge a lot. I guess it's for that guarantee that you'll get a "hot" date. I hope they're compatible! Just seems weird to have only a pre-date briefing about the girls being contacted for you rather than full disclosure throughout the process. Seems like it would be hard for the client to make the leap into the shoes that have been set up for him.
  • Jose
    @geek's dream girl: I read their website and contacted them to actually get a feel on how it works... your "assistants" don't lie to get you a date, they simply facilitate the process of getting to know each other with the real facts, stories and life experiences of the client. (They get this on the phone interview and questionnaire one fills). It saves a huge amount of time on having to narrate your same life story over and over again. They also give consulting on second dating and everything that has to do with outside the virtual bubble. They are not disrespectful about it they know that sorting through possible candidates even within the matches most websites give you is a tedious task.
  • Thank you for the article Camille! I must say it is very well done!

    To explain why we decided to tailor our services specifically for men, I would like to make three points:

    1) By creating a company designed for men, we were able to design the service as well as the site and content especially for our unique target audience.
    2) We know that Online Dating can be much more challenging and time-consuming for men than it is for women since online interaction still mirrors, to a large extent, the traditional protocol of the man approaching the woman and initiating conversation. Generally speaking, women are more reactive while men must take more active initiative. This means that many women are spending their time reviewing their inboxes and screening men by their profile pictures and messages while many men need to filter through hundreds of profiles looking for girls to message and then try craft messages that stand out from the 10-50 other men that messaged her the same day.
    3) We had already solved the equation to successfully taking online dating offline for men and knew that it will take a slightly different bag of tools and skill sets to do the same for women.

    This does not mean we do not think there is a demand among women for this service. We know there is a need and we have been closely analyzing the possibility of creating a sister site for women soon. From the looks of it, it should be in the works before long. We may even create a site with a same-sex appeal a bit further on down the road.

    In the meantime, we will not be rejecting customers based on their sex or sexual preference. We are willing to provide a customized service to fit any profile.

    "Short-sighted"?... Could be right but we like to think that we chose the right model for the initial debut of this concept. We simply started with a niche that we knew we could reach efficiently and service effectively.

    What do you think? Whether you love it or hate it, we want to know your opinion. In addition to posting here please feel free to comment here on the discussion board of our Facebook Fan Page at http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=8791&po...


    - Scott Valdez, Co-Founder of Virtual Dating Assistants
  • freedatingsite
    there is another free site http://www.LiveDateLove.com
  • jessflynn82
    This company is first to market, but Done For You Dating (http://www.doneforyoudating.com) is a close second. They're not a copycat company, though -- their domain name was actually registered a few days before the featured company, and they have a different business model, charging per-date and hiring local representatives rather than outsourcing overseas.
  • ODD
    There is another website that provides a similiar service for only a $19 fee: www.onlinedatedelivery.com.
  • Daydream1
    Hiring somebody else to look on your behalf is, in some ways, slightly deceiptful. Most people, especially women, rely on what you've written yourself to make an initial judgement (although I would admit that men seem to go more on looks first!). If I'm understanding you correctly, and profiles are written for the individual, then it's not the person themself doing the attracting so there is a risk of disappointment when the two parties actually meet. I suggest just using a free dating site.
  • DateMaster
    It's not really any more deceitful than having a hidden agenda behind your response (linking to dating site). Not saying that either one is completely dishonest.