Only 5% of men who contact women in Russia/Ukraine ever get on a plane?

[andrewfi]

* Mod Note -- Split From Another Topic *

Hmm, so 95% of men are keyboard Romeos? 

That is a number from Elena's Models. It is a number I would agree with. Of the men who contact women in the FSU, only about 5% get on a plane it is claimed. Of those, far fewer end up being married.

I wonder how they came up with that statistics. EM is mainly a dating site (not a marriage agency), so they are not able to keep track of all the users of their site and find out how many of them eventually jumped on the plane to Russia, Ukraine, Philippines, etc. I hope that 5% is not based on a number of men visiting their romantic tours.

Those are not statistics at all. I doubt very much that there is any proof of the 95% solution. As I mentioned earlier, it is a number that has been "thrown" around for more than 10 years with no corroborating evidence.

Muzh, actually Elena's models, years ago published that only 5% of their female clients ever marry a foreign guy through their agency. This figure was derived from their own records and. over time, probably represents a fairly good handle on the proportion of women.

I'd be willing to bet that the number of men who actually marry is somewhat smaller as I understand that there are actually more guys who say they are looking for a woman than the other way round and that'd be consistent with what we see in on-line dating and relationship sites everywhere.

The other day I shared an article by a bloke from OKCupid who demonstrated that the chances of a man in the US using a site such as Match.com had only about 5% chance of contacting an active female client - scary.

Bottom line: different sources seem to all point in the same general direction

[RG]

I wonder how they came up with that statistics. EM is mainly a dating site (not a marriage agency), so they are not able to keep track of all the users of their site and find out how many of them eventually jumped on the plane to Russia, Ukraine, Philippines, etc. I hope that 5% is not based on a number of men visiting their romantic tours.

Those are not statistics at all. I doubt very much that there is any proof of the 95% solution. As I mentioned earlier, it is a number that has been "thrown" around for more than 10 years with no corroborating evidence.

I'd love to see the proof of that 95% as well, if it exists.  What would be more interesting is how the numbers broke down, assuming they exist at all, based on the different venues available to people.  I would bet that far more than 5% of Eds clients get onto a plane, but of course, that number is infinitesimally small compared to the number of users a mega-site/agency has. 

What about those that jump on the plane, to be met by a pro-dater or other less than desirable sort, to never be heard from again?
I suspect those make up quite a large percentage, and that more than likely includes thousands that never make a single post on any of the RW forums.

I would also wonder about the percentages of women that are contacted.  If a majority of men are only contacting the top 10% of women appearance-wise, whether by believing the "myths" and hype, or failing to evaluate themselves honestly, apply common sense, etc. - is that number of 95% all that far off?

I obviously don't know the actual numbers.  Based on behaviors I've seen from forum postings, contact and discussion with a fair number of RW, some of the "scammer" and similar postings, I wouldn't be too surprised to see that number borne out, or close enough to it.  How many of you have communicated with FSUW that have had hundreds (more?) or men writing to her, yet you were the only one to visit, or with those that have had prior visitors, what do you think the number of contacts were compared to the number that ever met in person? 

Of course, I think the most useful numbers would be per method or agency - as a percentage of men and women out of the total membership that did meet someone in person, followed by the percentages of marriages.  I have no doubt that even the worst intentioned agency with 100k users or more could produce a handful of weddings, but seeing how those numbers held up to others would be very interesting.

[Manny]

I remember reading the 5% "statistic" on Elena's some time ago (if it is still there, and anyone knows where it is, do post a link).

As stated in the quote box above, I understood it to mean that of the men who contact women in the FSU, only about 5% get on a plane it is claimed. Of those, far fewer end up being married.

About three years ago, when I was doing some research for our book, I made some "back of the cigarette packet" calculations based on married forum participants compared to members, and contacts compared to marriages of guys my wife had worked with. It seemed to me that around 1-2% of those who enter this end up married. That is about 20% of those who are reputed to step on an airplane.

For me, the 5% on a plane theory holds water. Lets try the vote and see. Members reading this, please vote in the poll.

[erudite]

I only answered two questions because I am not married YET, but I am engaged and have filed the K1 Visa application.  By the time all was said and done from my trips to Ukraine, I had three viable candidates that wanted a serious relationship leading to marriage.   It was a difficult decision to select one because I cared about all three and the attraction was mutual.

In each situation I was the first Western Man that any of them had met.  After knowing each of them I believe they were telling me the truth. Two speak fair English and the other knew some.  ALL of them have friends who want to meet a Western Man who is genuine.  I do not buy into the logic that Ukraine is "over fished" and there are not many genuine women.  That is all a bunch of hearsay from my experiences.

If a guy like me can find the woman he dreams about and still have other options, Ukraine is the place to go in my book. All you have to do is try and be a decent man to these women.  Treat them like your mother taught you to treat a woman. Use your big head, common sense and just try.  Get on a plane and don't give up. There is no reason to give up. It's ridiculous to give up for any other reasons than not having the money or time.

[andrewfi]

Manny, I think that this forum is a good place to find people who are already more than usually committed to the process. Whilst we have our fair share of fantasists and dreamers, I'd bet that whatever result you get here will show a greater number of people who have gotten on the big silver bird than the general population of soi disant Russian wife hunters that does not ever visit here and are satisfied to look at  the pictures on Elena's Models..

[RG]

Erudite - and would you know how many of your wife to be, her friends or your previous contacts have had some amount of interactions with foreigners, and the results?  I know I've heard more than a few times some amount of exasperation from women that I judged to be "serious" about the lack of follow-through or perceived seriousness of men.

I think we are somewhat stuck here extrapolating numbers though, as I alluded to previously when mentioning all of those who never make a post, and Andrew mentioned again - I don't necessarily believe RUAs posters percentage-wise to be a representative sampling of all that may create an account somewhere or contact an agency about the possibility of International romance, etc.  I don't think it would be surprising if we found out, for example, that perhaps only 10% of all "seekers" have ever posted on an FSU related forum.  If we exclude the web spiders, what's the usual percentage of anonymous versus logged in users, or versus those who have ever posted?

It seems there are roughly 30,000 K1s issued per year(US), and ~10,000 K3s, plus or minus a few percent, unless I'm misreading here:
http://travel.state.gov/visa/statistics/nivstats/nivstats_4582.html

It also seems that the FSU comprises roughly 5% of those at best, ~2,000 per year. 
http://www.travel.state.gov/xls/FYs97-09_NIVDetailTable.xls

If we assumed Manny's 1%, that would seem to imply there are some 200,000 US citizens yearly engaged in the FSU seeking process, 10,000 or so jumping on planes (at least once?), and some 190,000 "Keyboard Romeos." 
Then we get to add in the rest of the world (anyone have the equivalent stats for their country?), roughly another 330,000 or so "seekers" based strictly on EU/US relative populations, then again perhaps at least a similar number for "everywhere else" (sorry folks, if someone can provide better numbers, feel free, we would still have to account for roughly another 6 billion people in the world ).

Sites like EM seem to have ~60k female profiles, with some others having similar.  freepersonals around 16k, mamba has roughly 3 million "women" to 9,000,000 men. 

Do these numbers seem to hold up?  Does anyone have any larger agency member numbers for both women and men?

[ptgarner1]

impossible to know for sure...I can tell say I have access to the figures  in the smallish town of Yalta. Even at this modest agency with only 4 computers, I personally know of two other men who are in the K1 process..I am sure there are more but these girls are friends with my wife...and the men have contacted me with questions. Just for fun I will try and find out the total number of women at that particular agency...I know there is more than one agency in Yalta so it is not as simple as doing a search at RLM and counting...also I should be able to get a fairly accurate guesstimate of the number of men per month who visit...some percentages so play with.

[erudite]

Erudite - and would you know how many of your wife to be, her friends or your previous contacts have had some amount of interactions with foreigners, and the results?  I know I've heard more than a few times some amount of exasperation from women that I judged to be "serious" about the lack of follow-through or perceived seriousness of men.

RG, I mentioned in my post that NONE of the three women I got to know very well had ever met anyone from the West. No one had ever come to meet them.  As far as thier friends are concerned, I doubt they had met anyone either because none of the friends seems to know what to do to find a man other than go to an agency. In one case I know the woman (friend) quite well and she has never met a Western man and wants to very much.  She is a lawyer by education but does not practise law and is damn nice looking.  I referred her to a reliable person who can help her. I wrote about this in another thread the other day about my experiences with available women that I have crossed paths with.

I really cannot recall how many women I met in my trips, but I had filtered them fairly well and almost all of them had not met any man from the West.  So they said, but they had no reason to mislead me either.   I saw lots of Western men in Ukraine (lots of them do not really blend in), but there are so many more women being contacted through the internet and other means that the disparity is quite surprising.

These women are genuine and motivated to find a "normal" man from the West and they have no idea other than an agency to help them.  They do not know anyone to help them on a personal basis to make the contacts and present them to suitable men. So they are just as much at a disadvantage as the men who seek women through agencies. It is the blind squirrels trying to find one another and share an acorn syndrome.

There are billboard ads on the streets of Kharkov thanking Anastasia for helping the woman pictured in the ad. So these agencies advertise locally for more than obvious reasons.   I liken it to having a medical doctor treat you for an illness that you can do nothing about. 

You go to the doctor because he/she is where you have to go to find your solution.  He/she does his/her part to help you but also gets paid a good fee in return.  Yes, you are cured and your problem is solved, but the doctor got paid a fair sum of money just for doing it not because of a genuine desire to "help" you in most instances.   Show me a doctor who charges patients a reasonable fee and I will show you a genuine honest agency tit for tat. Somebody's gotta get paid, they cannot do it for free and keep the doors open.  Greed is the ultimate factor as we all know.

[2tallbill]

IMO there is a learning curve and not more than a little
dumb luck involved. The lessons you are not willing to learn
for others that you must find out for yourself that indeed they
apply to 2tallbill [enter your name here] as well as some
other bloke.

Udachi

Bill

[RG]

Erudite - and would you know how many of your wife to be, her friends or your previous contacts have had some amount of interactions with foreigners, and the results?  I know I've heard more than a few times some amount of exasperation from women that I judged to be "serious" about the lack of follow-through or perceived seriousness of men.

RG, I mentioned in my post that NONE of the three women I got to know very well had ever met anyone from the West. No one had ever come to meet them.  As far as thier friends are concerned, I doubt they had met anyone either because none of the friends seems to know what to do to find a man other than go to an agency.

Yes, you did mention that.  I was just wondering if you had any idea of how many contacts or how much contact they'd had to date.  Those numbers I suspect vary quite a bit, anywhere from perhaps a dozen to hundreds of contacts per month.

I really cannot recall how many women I met in my trips, but I had filtered them fairly well and almost all of them had not met any man from the West.  So they said, but they had no reason to mislead me either.   I saw lots of Western men in Ukraine (lots of them do not really blend in), but there are so many more women being contacted through the internet and other means that the disparity is quite surprising.

This is something I haven't seen, although I have no reason to doubt it (the numbers of Western men in different areas).  There are relatively few flights in and out of Minsk, and while I've spent months there, a good amount of it was buried under snow.   I expect we'll be visiting Ukraine in the not too distant future for vacation, however, and will definitely be on the lookout.
The planes are fewer and smaller in and out of Minsk, and natives certainly far outnumbered the Westerners, in Passport control and luggage/customs as well.  I only saw a pair of couples at the airport, one actually on a transfer through Germany, which seemed a little awkward - the tram was full of Byelorussians, families mostly, except for myself and one man and a woman.  The woman was 35 or so, dressed stylishly/nicely, the man I would place at 50+, in contrast to the stereotype not overweight, but dressed much more casually than his "partner," wrinkled shirt and jeans, no nice shoes.  She was chattering away with the FSU folk while he looked out of place. 

We did come across a few EU citizens out in Minsk over time, but relatively few, and some business dinners.  I only remember one other couple, who jumped into a cab at the airport.  Even out over New Years, we were among locals. 

These women are genuine and motivated to find a "normal" man from the West and they have no idea other than an agency to help them.  They do not know anyone to help them on a personal basis to make the contacts and present them to suitable men. So they are just as much at a disadvantage as the men who seek women through agencies. It is the blind squirrels trying to find one another and share an acorn syndrome.

That last sentence is sad, but great. 
New Years Eve saw far more women out than couples, tables of 3 or 4 nicely dressed young women sitting by themselves, another with half a dozen women and 2 guys, and some of course with couples, but odds certainly would favor a decently dressed single guy with some manners and style.

You go to the doctor because he/she is where you have to go to find your solution.  He/she does his/her part to help you but also gets paid a good fee in return.  Yes, you are cured and your problem is solved, but the doctor got paid a fair sum of money just for doing it not because of a genuine desire to "help" you in most instances.   Show me a doctor who charges patients a reasonable fee and I will show you a genuine honest agency tit for tat. Somebody's gotta get paid, they cannot do it for free and keep the doors open.  Greed is the ultimate factor as we all know.

I suppose that brings up the question of if you have the choice of getting competent medical care for free, would you then intentionally pay for the same or similar services elsewhere?  But that would be a different thread.

BY has made "marriage agencies" illegal of course, so no similar advertisements existed such as you mentioned.  A cross section of Bs friends and acquaintances range from a few approaching the "myths" (cheating, drinking, selfish husbands) to happily married.

[Paul]

5% seems rather high, I would bet it is closer to 1% or less. The internet is a very large place and trying to gather statistics from Elana's, this forum, etc., is a bit foolish.

I wonder what the women of AD would have to say about the subject.

[msmoby]

5% seems rather high, I would bet it is closer to 1% or less. The internet is a very large place and trying to gather statistics from Elana's, this forum, etc., is a bit foolish.

Certainly as you and andrewfi have said.. as this forum is populated by many guys who HAVE been and even married FSU W it will be unrepresentative .

The keyboard romeos aren't going to ADMIT to being 'KRs'

I wonder what the women of AD would have to say about the subject.

Now THAT would be interesting ..

[Muzh_1]

Refry this.

Studs Smith decided to look to the former Soyuz for a bride and starts doing a search. He settles with a few marriage agencies in addition to EM. Of course this is sacrilege since EM is the ONLY IMB available but for arguments sake we will go along. Studs finds Alla Hotsmokingnova in AWeb and marries. Cats and dogs live together in harmony.

What happened to all the other agencies where Studs was a member? Um, part of the 95% solution?

One more time, there is no real proof of the 95% number.

[Paul]

Don't forget about the millions of men from countries like Turkey, Pakistan, India, etc. that would love to be with a FSUW and hound them across the net but could hardly afford to visit them in their home country. It isn't just guys using agencies that contact women from the former Soviet Union.

[Vinnvinny]

Don't forget about the millions of men from countries like Turkey, Pakistan, India, etc. that would love to be with a FSUW and hound them across the net but could hardly afford to visit them in their home country. It isn't just guys using agencies that contact women from the former Soviet Union.

There seems to be more Turks in Kiev 'hunting' than any other nationality and some are successful. They use mamba and VK extensively so I've been told a few times.

[2tallbill]

The 5% number doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
I have only anecdotal knowledge. There is a chatroom
on LL. I would estimate that 80% of the men who go to
the chatroom are keyboard Romeos. I would guess that
the American men are more so than the closer European
men.

[skiingandrunning]

I feel the 5% number is low because for each man that goes to the FSU, he has probably communicated with multiple, if not dozens of ladies before narrowing his list to one or just a few. 

So the question I would ask for those who got on the plane, what is the number of FSUW you contacted and did not end up visiting?  Depending on how you ended your communication, this could lead to a lot of ladies thinking they were dealing with a keyboard romeo when in fact they just came in second place.

[JeanClaude]

The 5% number doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
I have only anecdotal knowledge. There is a chatroom
on LL. I would estimate that 80% of the men who go to
the chatroom are keyboard Romeos. I would guess that
the American men are more so than the closer European
men.

Totally agree))

[andrewfi]

Skiingandrunning that'd make no difference in the long run which is the case here. If EM says that only 5% of their female clients get married then it does not matter how many women a man contacts, it is still 5% of women get married. Same for the men, it matters not if I write to one woman or a thousand I still a part of either the group who goes or the group who does not.

[Muzh_1]

If EM says that only 5% of their female clients get married then it does not matter how many women a man contacts, it is still 5% of women get married. Same for the men, it matters not if I write to one woman or a thousand I still a part of either the group who goes or the group who does not.

This is not the same as 5% getting on a plane. 5% of women get married of their total database? 5% women of what? Of women in communications with western guys? Still, this does not gives us any number of men, percentage wise, getting on a plane.

[andrewfi]

EM said that 5% of their female clients end up married. Last time I looked that meant that in number terms an equal number of men got married to 'em.

So, we know that only a small proportion of women are successful.

So, we need to make one further guess, assumption, whatever.
Is the number of men using agencies to find, or claiming to be finding a wife greater or smaller than the number of women?
Every other on line dating environment I have seen suggests that there are more men than women so assuming that EM was not lying when they gave their figure we might safely assume that the number of men actually getting married as a percentage of the client base is smaller than for women. It can not be an order of magnitude smaller because we know that SOME men do get married so the low side can not be lower than 5% of men getting married.
If we go the other way round then what upper level is conceivable if we understand that the figure for women getting married is not far off the mark? I don't know but I'd find it hard to imagine that there are less than half as many men looking as there are women so that gives us a maximum of 10% for men getting married.

Lastly we can look at the number of men who get on a plane, matter how many times they go, who don't get married, to anyone in the FSU. Maybe twice the number of men who DO get married, meaning that one in three who get on a plane get married and two do not? Seems reasonable to me.

So, then, what kind of range might that give us for men who get on a plane?
First lets us assume that 5% of men get married, the same proportion as women and thus an equal number of men and women in the marketplace, then we might suggest that 15% of men who use an agency to find a wife get on a plane. (5/1)X3=15%

Next let us suggest that there are 4X as many men as female profiles seeking to match up. That means we have (5/4)X3=3.75% of men who do get on a plane. I can't imagine it being more than that proportion of men coz I find it hard to imagine more than 4X as many men than women, but it is possible. The more men there are than women the smaller the proportion of men who get o the big silver bird.

Lastly, let us imagine that there are twice as many women as men looking for marriage. So the numbers will be (5/0.5)X3=30%

This gives us a range of approximate but feasible results from a high of 30% if there are the same number of men as women in the market. (not likely) down to a low of 3.75% of men if we assume 4X as many men as women.
lastly to give a sanity check I went to Mamba.ru to see what the ratio of men to women was in their database. My assumption here is that as the site is largely free there will be a more even distribution of men and women as usually in ALL forms of on line dating more men than women pay money to be members.

Here I found that the ratio of men to women was about 1.5 men for every 1 woman so we can infer that in an MOB setting it is still likely that there will be more men than women.

If we use the ratio of me to women and take the 5% for marriages from EM and my guess for the ratio of fliers to marriers as 2:1 then we get something like this:

(5/1.5)X3=10%.

Sanity checked numbers suggest that about 10% of men claiming they are looking for a foreign wife might get on a plane. If the ratio of men to women increases then the percentage of men getting on a plane will fall away.

Bottom line: anything between about 3 and 10% of men getting on a plane would float my boat as an estimate of 'action takers' and I already know that no more than about 10% of people will take action in a long term endeavour requiring effort to get a goal so that sets my upper bound anyway.

[erudite]

Do we get a medal? 

[Manny]

EM said that 5% of their female clients end up married.

Wasn't it 5% of guys ever visited? Or did I disremember?

[andrewfi]

EM made the claim that only 5% of their female clients ever got married to a foreign guy.
Coincidentally, I think, an accepted truth as to the proportion of American male clients who get on a plane is 5%. I have never seen a primary source for that number. I am however pretty sure that it is likely to be not too far from the mark and a useful number to work with.

[skiingandrunning]

EM said that 5% of their female clients end up married. Last time I looked that meant that in number terms an equal number of men got married to 'em.

So, we know that only a small proportion of women are successful.

So, we need to make one further guess, assumption, whatever.
Is the number of men using agencies to find, or claiming to be finding a wife greater or smaller than the number of women?
Every other on line dating environment I have seen suggests that there are more men than women so assuming that EM was not lying when they gave their figure we might safely assume that the number of men actually getting married as a percentage of the client base is smaller than for women. It can not be an order of magnitude smaller because we know that SOME men do get married so the low side can not be lower than 5% of men getting married.
If we go the other way round then what upper level is conceivable if we understand that the figure for women getting married is not far off the mark? I don't know but I'd find it hard to imagine that there are less than half as many men looking as there are women so that gives us a maximum of 10% for men getting married.

Lastly we can look at the number of men who get on a plane, matter how many times they go, who don't get married, to anyone in the FSU. Maybe twice the number of men who DO get married, meaning that one in three who get on a plane get married and two do not? Seems reasonable to me.

So, then, what kind of range might that give us for men who get on a plane?
First lets us assume that 5% of men get married, the same proportion as women and thus an equal number of men and women in the marketplace, then we might suggest that 15% of men who use an agency to find a wife get on a plane. (5/1)X3=15%

Next let us suggest that there are 4X as many men as female profiles seeking to match up. That means we have (5/4)X3=3.75% of men who do get on a plane. I can't imagine it being more than that proportion of men coz I find it hard to imagine more than 4X as many men than women, but it is possible. The more men there are than women the smaller the proportion of men who get o the big silver bird.

Lastly, let us imagine that there are twice as many women as men looking for marriage. So the numbers will be (5/0.5)X3=30%

This gives us a range of approximate but feasible results from a high of 30% if there are the same number of men as women in the market. (not likely) down to a low of 3.75% of men if we assume 4X as many men as women.
lastly to give a sanity check I went to Mamba.ru to see what the ratio of men to women was in their database. My assumption here is that as the site is largely free there will be a more even distribution of men and women as usually in ALL forms of on line dating more men than women pay money to be members.

Here I found that the ratio of men to women was about 1.5 men for every 1 woman so we can infer that in an MOB setting it is still likely that there will be more men than women.

If we use the ratio of me to women and take the 5% for marriages from EM and my guess for the ratio of fliers to marriers as 2:1 then we get something like this:

(5/1.5)X3=10%.

Sanity checked numbers suggest that about 10% of men claiming they are looking for a foreign wife might get on a plane. If the ratio of men to women increases then the percentage of men getting on a plane will fall away.

Bottom line: anything between about 3 and 10% of men getting on a plane would float my boat as an estimate of 'action takers' and I already know that no more than about 10% of people will take action in a long term endeavour requiring effort to get a goal so that sets my upper bound anyway.

Nice WAG analysis!   

With such solid figures it becomes apparent why you often resort to attacking any person with an opposing viewpoint on minor technical points as your years of reading RW forums and running up high post counts, writing on line opinion pieces, and chasing young FSUW has made you qualified to make interesting comments, but has lead to no more solid numbers to support your arguments than the next armchair expert.   I think you claimed another RUA member was pulling things out of his "arse", but it seems like yours has far more capcity to generate s&!+.