How Does it Work?

Almost any magazine or newspaper with classified advertising pages will have some kind of 'personal' section, containing adverts for people wanting to meet for friendship or dating. They will usually be split into sections for men seeking women, women seeking men, men seeking men, and women seeking women.

• Traditionally with lonely hearts columns, you either place your own advert or respond to someone else's ad by mail, and letters are forwarded to the relevant box number.
• However, it's becoming more and more common to see a telephone-based service. This allows you to place a free ad by calling a number and leaving a voice message for potential dates to listen to.
• When you leave your voice message, you are also given the option to create the advert that will appear in print. Alternatively, you can ask for the advert to be created for you, based on the details you leave in your message.
• The publication then prints your advert about a week later, with a dedicated phone number.
• Interested readers can then call up the voice mailbox, listen to the recorded message and decide whether to leave their details.
• You will be given a number to call to collect any messages that have been left for you by people, and then it's up to you to decide if you want to respond.

It's a relatively cheap way of meeting people as calls can cost as little as a dollar or so, but in reality you could end up running up a huge phone bill as calling small ads can become very addictive!