The answer is YES, you should sign up for SOME. I don’t recommend signing up for some of the major sites that are expensive and regarded as way to quickly meet up with the right potential birth mother. They are rather disappointing and of late, have not been successful in generating contacts from women considering adoption for their unborn baby.
One site I don’t recommend is Adoptimist. It is expensive to get on the first page. From the dozens of hopeful adoptive parents I have spoken to who are on it, it’s not worth it. If you upgrade your plan and pay a higher monthly fee, you wind up on page 4 or 5 of the site, buried behind dozens of other folks. It sounded like when Adoptimist first started it was pretty good, but now I don’t hear success stories, only vents from frustrated members who are receiving no contacts or contacts from scammers. They have three plans- the Starter, the Featured and the Premium plan and admit that most matches occur with the Premium plan, which is the highest priced, at $150 a month.
Another site I don’t recommend is Parent Profiles. There are approximately 300 families on the website at this time. The cost is $199 a month for a standard profile and AN ADDITIONAL $299 for an extreme exposure add on. This does not include the $99 set up fee. WHAT? That’s a lot of money. It MAY work if you live in a small state like Rhode Island or Vermont, but the amount of people signed up in larger states is daunting. I hear stories from folks on the site about it being under maintenance, difficulty signing in, and no contacts from potential birth moms. That’s a lot of money to spend every month without getting contacts.
I think it’s OK to sign up for a few lower costs sites, just to have some online exposure, but don’t sit back and expect any hopeful adoptive parent websites to generate a lot of traffic or contacts. I recommend the following:
Going head to head against other hopeful adoptive parents is not ideal. I am an advocate for generating your own traffic to your adoption website through social media or Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
My advice is to do some research and gather some RECENT feedback about costly sites you are considering joining. What worked in 2010 may NOT be working now.
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