Meeting a Russian woman - Shortcut

Meeting a Russian woman can be a very complex task, as you can see if you peruse the rest of this site. But there may be a LOT more information on this site than you really want or need at first. You may not want to read comparisons of several different approaches to meeting a Russian woman, along with the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, or a review of all the different agencies and sites I review.

You are sold on the idea and just want a simple list of steps involved in meeting a Russian woman. If so, then this page is for you. I link to a few other pages with more detailed discussion on various topics, but you don't really need to follow those links now unless you want more information.

Before You Start...

Before even looking at any sites for meeting a Russian woman, there are a few things you will need.

First, since you are reading this you already have a computer and internet access. You will need HIGH SPEED internet access (if you don't already have it), webcam, microphone, and speakers. You will need these for online video conferencing - absolute essentials in the process of meeting a Russian woman.

Second, you will need to collect 4-6 good digital pictures of yourself. They should be RECENT, CLEAR, UP-CLOSE, AND ACCURATE. At least one of them should show your whole body (CLOTHED). Don't include any pictures that do not have you in them, or are very distant, or that have you with any other women.

Third, you need to write a good profile about yourself to post on the sites you will use. You can read more about this at Russian Women Dating Sites: How To Write An Effective Online Profile.

But in a nutshell, write 250-500 words about yourself. Include your age (REAL age, not your wished-for age), height (in centimeters), weight (in kilograms), your profession, hobbies, interests, if you've been divorced or have kids, if you smoke (how much), if you drink (how much), if you want children (or more children), if you are OPEN to children or more children ("wanting" children and "open to" children are not exactly the same). You should try to describe your character in general.

If you live near any major body of water (large lakes, seas, oceans, etc.), MENTION IT! It's a major point-getter with a Russian woman.

It is good to say in your online profile that when you meet someone special online that you WILL travel to meet her in person (this sets you apart from the 95% who would never travel to meet).

Even though this is the shortcut version of meeting a Russian woman, I feel compelled to issue an important warning about your profile and pictures. Some men who don't think a Russian woman will like the way they look, or think that women won't be attracted to a man their age, or height/weight, profession, etc. lie or exaggerate or post inaccurate, misleading pictures. This is ALWAYS guaranteed to fail (just as it does with local online connections, except with Russian women you will spend a week of vacation time and thousands of dollars to travel there to be rejected for posting a misleading profile and pictures).

Once you've written your profile, have it PROFESSIONALLY translated into Russian. Since even Russian women who know English pretty well know Russian far better, you'll get extra points for making your profile easier to read. And software translations are OK for some things, but they render horrible translations... usually they are only 60-70% readable.

I have used English-Russian Translations and found that they offer the best service in terms of cost, quality, and turn-around time.

Sign Up on Elena's Models

Since this is the shortcut version for meeting a Russian woman, I'll just tell you where to sign up, not why those sites are the best for you.

Elena's Models should definitely be your first stop. Other good sites exist, but Elena's Models is in a class of its own, and they do the most by far in screening out scammers who will waste your time, energy, and money. It is the most "real" site available.

So go to Elena's Models, sign up, and post your profile and pictures. Note that signing up on this site is free, but you need one of their paid memberships to make any contact. I'd recommend signing up, posting your profile and pictures, then wait till your profile is approved before paying for a membership. This way you aren't paying for time during which women are unable to view your profile.

This approval process simply involves them making sure that nothing in your profile or pictures violate their terms of service and usually takes one or two business days. While you are waiting you can start using the site's search functions to build a list of the women you want to contact first.

Contact Russian Women

Now it's time to contact the women that interest you. I give suggestions on which kinds of women are your best picks and which are best avoided on another page on this site. Read The Best Single Russian Women to Write if you would like to explore that further.

Once you have in mind a few parameters you seek, log into Elena's Models and click "Search" on the top menu bar, and enter your search criteria.

Elena's Models searches provide you the opportunity to enter some especially useful parameters that you may not initially consider. I highly recommend you use them:

• Sort results by "Date of Publication" so that the newest profiles are first.
• Specify a "Last activity" parameter of "Last 14 Days" or "Last 30 Days".
• Specify "Your Age" and "Your Race" parameters so as to eliminate the women who won't be interested in you.

If you haven't yet paid for a membership, you cannot contact women yet, but you can add them to a list of favorites on the site so that you can contact them later after you pay for a membership.

The site does not directly tell you how long a Russian woman has been on it, but sorting by "Date of Publication" implicitly tells you this.

And in quite a few profiles on Elena's Models Russian women say things like "I have a computer at home, mobile phone and I can speak English, so I hope it will be easy for us to communicate..." (I suspect that on the women's side of the site - written in all Russian - they give the girls a little guidance suggesting that if they speak English and have a computer at home, it is good to mention it, just as I suggest above that if you live near an ocean, sea, or lake, you should mention it).

So in addition to whatever preferences you have, I recommend focusing on Russian women who appear in the first few pages of hits, who have been online recently (at least within 30 days), and who specify a preferred age and race that you match (or who don't specify and age or race preference). And I'd give extra points to those who mention having a computer at home and speaking English.

If you have a Gold or a Platinum membership, you can send anyone who interests you an "Expression of Interest" (or "EOI"). That sends a short note to the Russian woman saying that you are interested. The message sent to her through the system simply says you are interested, and it links to your full profile.

Ideally she'll read your profile and view your pictures and then click "Interested" or "Not Interested". This saves a lot of time and money compared to writing each Russian woman directly.

By the way, when you see a response to your EOI saying "Not Interested" it seems SO blunt that you may feel the urge to respond, argue, or whatever. DON'T. If a woman responds "Not Interested", just move on. Others will be interested. If you want to wait a week or two then send her one more EOI just in case she was just rejecting all EOIs to clear out her inbox, that's reasonable, but after that it's time to take no for an answer.

One last bit of advice on contacting Russian women before moving on... Ultimately your goal is to find several women with whom you can start serious dialog, then narrow that list down to one special Russian woman whom you'll visit in person. Serious dialog takes serious TIME and EMOTIONAL and MENTAL energy, so unless you can devote all your time to this pursuit, you really won't be able to handle more than around five serious correspondents at any given time.

So I recommend sending out no more than 10-20 EOIs on your first session. Wait three days to see how many respond before sending out any more EOIs. If you get two positive responses from your first 10-20, maybe send out 10 more EOIs three days later. And so on, until you have your five serious correspondents.

Communicating with Russian Women

Once you begin receiving answers to your Expressions of Interest (EOIs) you will need to have some things ready to say. I would recommend having a few messages mostly pre-written since 90% of the first messages between you and your Russian women are going to be the same... basically a slight enhancement on what you say in your profile.

When sending that first message adjust the content a little for the particular case, interact with things in her profile, maybe ask a question or two. Usually it is best to not ask more than one or two questions in a message, and at least in your first message or two I'd keep the questions "light"... "So how about you... You said you like sport... what kind of sports?... How often do you do them?...", NOT "so why are you divorced? Where is your ex? Does your son live with you? Is he well-behaved? Would you plan to bring him with you if you married a foreigner?" That's all a little to invasive for your first few messages.

And when you start corresponding and asking your questions, the Russian women are going to ask questions of their own. You should store your answers in some way that is easy to find so that when you are asked again by other women you don't have to write the whole answer again... Think of it as your "FAQ" (Frequently Asked Questions) file. Trust me, certain questions will come up again and again... no need to re-think and rewrite those answers every time.

One thing you do want to bring up fairly quickly... On Elena's Models you communicate through the site's mail system. In your first or second message you should definitely ask if she would give you her direct email address and cell phone number (they ALL have cell phones). AND DEFINITELY ask if she uses Skype, and if so, ask her for her Skype name.

Of course ask these things nicely ("My direct email address is... My cell phone is... And I have Skype with a webcam and my Skype name is... How about you, would you mind sharing your direct contact information?..."), but you really need to escalate the correspondence to a real level ASAP, and there is absolutely NOTHING that does this better than regular webcam video chats!

Read Using Skype to Communicate with Russian Women for more information on using video conferencing, but suffice it to say that in my experience the vast improvement in one's ability to really connect with a Russian woman a half world away using video conferencing makes it almost a requirement. I'm not sure I could ever go back to just writing someone.

I have seen some profiles on Elena's Models where women say they are unwilling to "waste all their time on Skype". I'd skip those profiles.

Meeting a Russian Woman

Ultimately your goal in all this correspondence is to meet Russian women online, communicate with them from a distance via video conference (ideally), phone, and email until you can NARROW your list down to one special Russian woman that you will travel to meet.

It is far beyond the scope of this "Shortcut" to explain the reasons for this, but under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you attempt to make a trip to Russia/Ukraine to visit multiple women (unless the others are blood relatives ;-)

It WILL be tempting. You may end up with three women you like and have difficulty selecting just one Russian woman. Maybe two live in Kiev, Ukraine and one in Odessa, Ukraine. You figure "what's the harm in visiting my alternates while I'm all the way over there?".

Well, the "harm" is that all of them WILL KNOW you are visiting others (TRUST ME, they WILL KNOW, even if you don't tell them, and even if you think you have hidden it well with some great cover story), and that will in all likelihood hose any chance that you'll develop a deeper relationship with any of them.

I know all the arguments for meeting multiple women on a trip and all the arguments against going to see only one. Trust me... meeting one Russian woman per trip is the only way that is likely to succeed!

Conclusion

With that I will conclude my shortcut for meeting a Russian woman. If you follow all the advice on this page alone (and the few links to other pages), it should take you at least a few weeks, if not months, and get you up to the point of planning a trip to meet your special Russian woman.

There is a LOT more you could learn, and that's waiting for you on this site when you are ready for it. And when you get to the point where it's time for you to plan a trip to see your special Russian woman, you will then want to come back and review our Russian Travel, and our Dating Russian Women sections.

And if you have any questions about your specific situation, I offer several options for obtaining more specific and personalized guidance at Russian Women Advice.

Good luck!