It’s Mother’s Day and Father’s Day is just around the corner. It’s time to honor the single parents who are trying to find love on the Internet.

Being a single parent can be tricky. You should be proud and excited about your child’s school play or graduation.  I personally believe kids, especially in their formulative years while still in the household should rank higher on the totem pole than your date.

Our friends at Sparkology posed the question to 10 relationship experts, myself included. We all chimed in with our thoughts in the latest expert panel, Should Single Mom’s Include Their Kids in Online Dating Profiles?

I’m a big believer that hiding children is a big mistake. You want to attract someone who admires you for being a great parent. I also believe that you shouldn’t post photos of your kids on your profile as it’s exploitative. Put yourself in your kids shoes. Do they really want to know you’re advertising for a new step parent or lover along with their smiling faces?

The boomer market is the largest growing age range for singles looking for love online. Most of them have children. Some have taken on the role as a full-time single parent. Some are interested in blending families and others are not.

It’s important for your date to understand that your children are a priority for you, but there’s still room for them. It’s a balancing act that if handled properly can result in enriching everyone’s life.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the single moms who are proud of their children. One day you’ll have an empty nest and can look back on these days knowing you did the best in your role as a parent, both while married, while alone, and while you were dating for companionship and love.

Wishing you much love and joy in cyberspace, or wherever you may roam.

Julie Spira is an online dating and cyber-relations expert. Visit her at Facebook.com/CyberDatingExpert, @JulieSpira on Twitter, and sign up for the Weekly Flirt for more dating advice.

Photo credit: © Konstantin Tavrov – Fotolia.com

As April is winding down, there’s no shortage of Spring Fever in the air. My inbox is filled with emails from happy online daters, so without further digital adieu, here are some of our favorite articles from the web and on Twitter this week.

First up, our moment of gratitude.  Thank our pal Sofi at Yahoo! Shine who included us in her article, Controversial Miss Travel dating site proves there’s no such thing as a free trip. Thank you as well to FOX News in Charlotte for the wonderful interview on online dating safety. We’ll post a link next week.

Over at CNN, Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz shared some of their favorite online dating sites in Three Niche Dating Sites for Targeted Romance. Their list included SingleFitPeople.com, TasteBuds.com for music enthusiasts and Tawkify, based on Klout scores for social media powerhouses, which we featured last week. On Huffington Post, I featured a story called, Puppy Love: New Online Dating Sites for Dogs. Shouldn’t your puppy find love on the Internet? One out of ten pets do have a Facebook profile. Are you in that percentage?

On Singles Warehouse, our friend Laurel House (@QuickieChick) gave her opinion on who should pay for a first date. Laurel believes in chivalry with the gentleman picking up the tab. What do you think? At Tecca, they posted Geeky Tales: 10  techie marriage proposals that worked. Our favorite pick was Digg employee Matt Van Horn’s “Proposal 2.0 Marry Me Leslie.” Of course, she said yes!

Our friends at YourTango are in the middle of their Online Dating Bootcamp. Our three best online dating tips are scheduled to post on April 29th. Our favorite tip this week was from Janet Ong, 10 Dos and Dont’s Before Meeting Mr. Online In Person.

As always, we wish you much love and joy in cyberspace, or wherever you may roam.

For more online dating advice, sign up for our Weekly Flirt newsletter and like us at Facebook.com/CyberDatingExpert

Follow @JulieSpira

Julie Spira is the leading online dating and cyber-relations expert. She’s the author of the bestseller, The Perils of Cyber-Dating: Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking for Love Online

It was an honor to be a guest on Planet Love Match Radio with hosts Jen Tapiero and Josh Nasar. Some dating advice included what to put in your online dating profile as well as topics to avoid. Learn what makes a profile irresistible with dating tips for singles looking for love online. Also in this episode, Quentin Aaron, from The Blind Side joined the show and talked about his views on dating.

For more dating advice, sign up for our Weekly Flirt newsletter and like us at Facebook.com/CyberDatingExpert

Julie Spira is a cyber-relations and online dating expert. She’s the Editor-in-Chief at CyberDatingExpert.com and writes irresistible profiles for singles on the dating scene.

Follow @JulieSpira

Ask the Cyber-Dating Expert

We’ve all heard that online dating is a numbers game. 122 million worldwide to be exact according to ComScore’s research.

When we created Jerry’s irresistible profile, [winks, emails, and IMs, oh my!] his response was “OMG, this stuff is like crack!” While we want you to fall in love and give you many tools to do so, we certainly don’t want to create a universe of online dating addicts.

Having too many conversations at once or viewing too many profiles doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful with the process. As a matter of fact, it could actually backfire on you.

The first week your profile is active is always the busiest time.  It then settles down to a more manageable pace. Those who winked at you or flirted with you without a profile are probably not paying members or are not serious about the process, so unless you like their profile, you can just ignore them. If you like the profile, don’t wink or flirt back. Be bold and send an email saying hello. You can even thank them for the wink to let them know you’ve noticed.

I recommended to Jerry that he shouldn’t communicate with more than 5 people at a time. Limiting the ongoing communication will give you the opportunity to get to know someone. If the online conversation goes well, then schedule a phone date.  If you feel like you’re at the dentist’s office where someone is pulling teeth, don’t schedule a date.

I shared my thoughts in the ask the dating experts column on Sparkology on how to politely say you’re not interested.

More often-than-not, online messages are ignored. Don’t start humming to the Nick Lowe song, “You’ve Got to be Cruel to be Kind” if you decide to respond. Say thank you, but add that you don’t feel you have enough in common to pursue a relationship, or let them know if they’re out of your geographic location or age range.

Wishing you much joy and love in cyberspace, or wherever you may roam.

Julie Spira is an online dating expert and cyber-relations expert. She’s the author of the bestseller, The Perils of Cyber-Dating: Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking for Love Online. Follow @JulieSpira on Twitter and Like us at Facebook.com/cyberdatingexpert for more dating advice.

Just in time for the spring holiday weekend, grab your jelly beans and bikinis and enjoy this issue of the Cyber Dating Expert Weekly Flirt newsletter.

The Cyber Dating Expert Weekly Flirt is now available for your reading pleasure.

It’s such an honor that CyberDatingExpert.com has been named a finalist for the second year in a row in About.com’s Reader’s Choice Awards for the Best Dating Blog in 2012.

Vote for Cyber-Dating Expert

We are passionate about helping singles with dating advice, writing irresistible online dating profiles, highlighting different dating sites, mobile dating apps, and featuring you in our Cyber Love Story of the Week feature.

“Julie Spira is a bit of a Renaissance woman when it comes to dating: she’s an author, blogger, radio personality, and dating coach, all while having famous folks like Joan Rivers (yes, that Joan Rivers!) applaud her writing style,” said About.com’s Dating expert Bonny Albo. ” Spira is the only second-time nominee on this best-of dating blog list, having lost by only a small margin in 2011.”

From February 22, 2012 through March 21, 2012, you can vote daily for Cyber Dating Expert to win. The voting phase begins Wednesday, February 22, 2012 and continues through Wednesday, March 21, 2012. The winners, as determined by your votes, will be announced on Friday, March 30, 2012.

Cast your vote here daily to help us win.

Julie Spira is an online dating expert, bestselling author and CEO of Cyber-Dating Expert. Follow Julie on Twitter @JulieSpira and at Facebook.com/CyberDatingExpert

Cyber Love Links – Links to love, when you’re in the mood for love.

Now that Valentine’s is a distant memory, we’re taking a digital moment to thank some of those who included us in their dating advice stories for what we called, worldwide romance week.

A huge Shout out and thank you to the Miami Herald who featured my online dating tips in “Dating sites become mainstream and focus on more niche markets.” The article features Matchmaker.com and Jewcier founder Meir Strahlberg, a Miami entrepreneur and friend of Cyber-Dating Expert. Thanks to our new friends at Prevention magazine for “Should you Ditch Online Dating?” and to Rita Watson on Psychology Today for featuring me in her Love and Gratitude column. It was a thrill to be quoted on NBC News: Safely Surfing for Your Sweetheart and to appear on FOX News in three separate television segments.

For the singles dating in college, check out College Magazine’s “Wine and Dine Me: Tips on Being Romantic,” Daily Kansan: “Tips on Virtual Love,” and Campus Explorer for “Rise in Online Dating for Students.”

For your viewing pleasure, our friends at YourTango posted their Ask the Experts Video, “What is Mobile Dating?” Yes, it’s the hottest trend so it’s time to hop on board.

Over at GenConnect, I contributed a guest post, “Still Need a Date for Valentine’s? and gave my two cents worth on Huffington Post in “Experts and Researchers Say Online Dating Has Lost its Stigma,” which has been tweeted 83 times and still counting. Hint, hint. We love the social media love.

Ever wonder who signs on to Missed Connections on Craig’s List? So did The Brooklyn Paper and Digital Trends. Find out how a professor took a deeper look and created a site to help those in search of the one who got away.

As always, I wish you much love and joy in cyberspace, or wherever you may roam.

Follow @JulieSpira on Twitter and Like Cyber Dating Expert on Facebook.

You’ve met that someone special and have great online chemistry. Watch our video to learn the right time to take your relationship from online to offline.

Julie Spira is an online dating expert and online dating expert. Click here for more video dating advice and connect with us on Twitter @JulieSpira and at Facebook.com/CyberDatingExpert.

Want to see our posts? Sign up for our Weekly Flirt -e-newsletter and receive a free copy of The 5 Secrets to Finding Love Online e-book.

Fashion magazine is celebrating with a very special February issue devoted to love. With Valentine’s Day just a few weeks away, I was asked to contribute to their article, Love Among the Laptops.

In this in-depth article, we looked at Facebook, Twitter, BlackBerry Messenger, Google searches, and the high-digital pressure act of friending and unfriending someone you’re dating.

Read how to deal with the new challenges posed by dating in the online age. An excerpt from the article is below.

With appreciation, many thanks to Siofan Davies for quoting me in the story, along with Sherrie Schneider, co-author of the famous relationship book, The Rules and follow-up, The Rules for Online Dating.

Julie Spira, the L.A.-based author of The Perils of Cyber-Dating: Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking for Love Online says the urge to research a prospective date is natural. “Do a Google search, make sure they work where they say they work and that there’ nothing bad about them,” she begins.  This is sensible advice my mother would appreciate. “We also want to make sure their Facebook photos match their online dating photos, and find out if we have any friends in common. The next thing would be, well, let’s friend each other.” Her reasoning. Well no, don’t friend each other. ” Her reasoning: Just as you will be mining his profile for useful or petty information, he will undoubtedly be mining yours. “You still want someone to get to know you,” says Spira. “If everything they get to know about you is because they saw it on Facebook, what’s left to talk about?”

For the full article, pick up a copy of Fashion magazine, Canada’s number 1 beauty and fashion magazine, where you’ll find the story on pages 81-86. If you aren’t in Canada, I’ve attached the .pdf of the article here:  Fashion Magazine – Love Among the Laptops. As always, comments are welcome.

Julie Spira is an online dating expert, bestselling author, and founder of CyberDatingExpert.com. For more dating advice follow Julie on Twitter @JulieSpira and like her at Facebook.com/CyberDatingExpert