Professional Online Dating Profile

General Tips

Online dating has its set of dos and donts, its etiquette which you need to learn and master, e.g. what to write in your profile, your emails, what kind of photo to put, when to give out your phone number, etc. Same as learning a new set of social customs in a new setting, whether you start out to night clubs or make a move to a new city or country, the online dating board also has its own set of rules. And the faster you learn them, the faster you start reaping the fruits-meeting lots of new people, going out a lot, and having a good time.

Numbers game

Even in online dating men are initiating the first contact more often than women. This is probably because male profiles outnumber female profiles (data from Amigos.com). However, for both parties, romance is still a numbers game.

What that means is: get ready to contact a large number of people. People are inundated with virtual kisses and icebreakers, so its your profile and what your write about yourself which will set you apart. After creating an informative and catchy Ad, you can generally start out by sending a simple message to the people you are interested in: Hello, I am xxxx, I liked your profile, and would like to get to know you better. Please write me at *your-email-address* if you are interested. This email is an invitation for the other person to come and have a look at your profile - the profile should do the talking. Long introductory, tailor-made emails are a waste of time - because people are getting lots of emails and will often ignore a long-winded email. You need to send a simple first contact email out to a lot of people, and soon you should get some good responses to your Ad.

Do read the Ads of the people you write to carefully before writing to them, you might be just wasting your time (e.g. religious preferences and smoking habits).

Informative Ads

The importance of clear and informative ads cannot be overstressed. Not to mention that if you just say I am looking around to meet some people, was just curious.. a lot of bored people from Germany will be writing you! In general, the more information you put in your Ad, the less the number of useless responses you receive. An intelligent person should spend a good amount of time looking at other peoples Ads, because selecting dates or a partner is probably the most important thing we do in our adult life. With that, keep in mind that even after you have started meeting people, you may not get hooked up right away. Give it a few months at least before you get some results. Communication should evolve from email exchanges to telephone conversations (for security purposes, just to avoid the offhand lunatic out there, make sure you have the other partys number), and then to a personal meeting for a lunch or coffee-first dates always in the daytime, less stressful for both parties. After that, it is all genes and chemistry. Lets face it-love is hard to find. But at least if you are going out with a lot of people, meeting new people quickly and efficiently (a key advantage of online dating), you can expect to find someone to fall in love with faster.

Dont be shy in your profile, or try to be overly politically correct. If you think you dont want to go out with people with kids, say so. If you have some particular preferences for physical attributes, height, body weight, etc. do mention them clearly. You save yourself unnecessary communication, and so does the other party.

It is a bad idea to be negative, whine, or complain, in your ad, even if youve had some unsatisfying dating experiences or relationships in the recent past. In such cases, maybe it is better to be single and just smell the roses for some time, until you feel really ready to meet new people again. However, mentioning negative details in a matter-of-fact way is fine, e.g. women saying Men who are not looking for a committed relationship please do not write.

Screens and Searches

Use the screens or the searches available on your dating site wisely (How to select a dating site). You can screen for people living close to you, choose physical attributes, religious preferences, smoking and drinking habits, and many more categories. Yahoo even has a screen based on sense of humor type (nothing funny about that...). Learning to use these screens will save you considerable time-by narrowing down the pool of potential candidates quickly.

Photo

It is surprising how many people are still shy about putting their photo online. They are scared that the guy they work with, or another acquaintance, will discover their profile and somehow that makes them uncomfortable. Well, guess what: those other people are the ones who are behind the curve. Online dating is here to stay, and you must be completely comfortable with putting a profile on the Net, with photos, to look for a partner. This WILL BE (it may already be) the most popular way to meet new people. By being upfront about putting your personal ad and your photo on a dating site, you are embracing the future.

The primary photo is a very important part of your personal ad. This is the photo which shows in search results and when people are casually browsing online dating ads. If this is bad, people wont even bother to click and look at your profile! The ideal primary photo is a head shot, or about a quarter of your body height, so you can see the shoulders. It should be bright, your face clearly visible (brightness can be adjusted by software), with you looking straight into the camera.

If the site allows you to put more than one photo, and you have good photos, go ahead and upload them all. For the secondary photos, photos with friends and family are a good idea because they give the impression that you are a normal social human being. This is specially true if you have kids - putting a secondary photo with your kids gives an excellent first impression.

Avoid using sunglasses in photos. Do not be provocative or too revealing (most sites will not even accept such a photo).

Screening out after the responses

After you have some responses from people who you would like to know more, you start the second screening process. Remember that it is likely that the people writing to you are also writing to other people. Therefore, some email exchanges will just cut off very abruptly; this is a part of online dating which people find very difficult to digest at first, but it happens in real life too. It is just that in real life maybe we get clued in a little better when someone doesnt want to communicate with us anymore, plus they are more polite-they will say they are busy with work so they wont be able to go out, etc. Get ready for some rude disappearances on the Internet-but dont take them personally. It is just people optimizing their time and spending their time communicating with people who they feel they will get along the best with. And if you have lots of responses, as I did, you will sometimes act the same way-even if you are not a rude or impolite person in real life.

Once you have started to get to know someone interesting, normally with you exchanging emails with them, you may want to keep an eye out to see if they have been lying. A recent study found that men are most likely to lie about whether they are in a relationship, and women about their physical attributes and how they look. So ask for more photos, and ask directly if they are single or in a relationship.

Online Dating Safety

This section is more for the women than the men.

Your chances of running into an offhand lunatic are not any higher online than they are in real life, but some precautions are new and apply only online. These are just safety measures, and should not in any way make you paranoid or less excited about finding love online. Think of it as just putting on your seat-belt in your car-thats all.

Always exchange phone numbers. When you give him yours, take his. Call him at the number to confirm that he has not lied.

Once you do decide to meet a guy, it is absolutely important that you have the first meeting in a public place. Do not meet a man in a hotel if he is from out of town. Do not have him pick you up at your house; you dont want him to know where you live. Before going on the first date, make sure you inform some friend, roommate or family member that you are going to meet Mr. XXX finally, after having known him through the Internet.

At least single and looking!

Another great thing about online dating is that people advertising on these sites are single and actively looking. Now that may not sound like a big deal, but it is very important! In real life, about 60-70pct. of the people you meet are NOT single at any given moment, or not ready to date anyway (still ending their previous relationships, generally not feeling well, etc.), so your chances of meeting someone SINGLE and LOOKING are 1 in 3. So that guy who works in the office below you has a girlfriend somewhere in New York, and you are getting unnecessarily excited about him. So much energy in this world is wasted on asking out or getting to know people, only to realize that they already have someone! In online dating, the people are single and looking (there are a small percentage of people who are lying-but we wont worry about them....they exist in real life too, we all know too well...) and that makes the process much more efficient. You are better off trying to communicate with these people who are interested in getting involved with someone.

This Ebook covers a wide variety of topics of interest to someone who wants to use the Internet to improve their dating life- A complete chapter on profile writing, a section on Internet dating security, a section on follow-up strategies after you start getting the emails, the screening process, etc. The topics covered on the website are also covered more thoroughly in the book.

The book is a must have for someone who wants to master all aspects of online dating and be completely comfortable with meeting people online.

Dating-profile.com is headed by John G.

John has lived in Argentina, Chile, India and USA, and has traveled extensively all over the world. He holds a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from N.C. State University, Raleigh, NC. He worked in the high-tech industry in the US for 5 years and owned a vegetarian restaurant in Chile for 2 years. He has also studied psychology and finance for several years. John is 33 years old and growing.

Dating-profile.com was founded in Sept. 2004 based on Johns personal experiences in the world of online dating, where he had considerable success. His friends started asking him for advice on writing profiles, and they also had great results. Thanks to the Internet, you can now use these insights to improve your dating ads.

All profile writers at Dating-profile.com are highly trained and have extensive personal experience in online dating.

There are a large number of dating sites on the Internet, and it is difficult to decide which dating site or sites one must sign-up for to make the most of their online dating experience.

The following criteria apply when selecting a dating site:

size (reach) of site-number of active members

ease of use

customer service and help

search and screen capabilities

The most important consideration when selecting a dating site is its size: you want access to a large number of people. This ensures that you get the maximum value for your subscription fee, and the time and effort spent in learning to use the site-you can contact a lot of people quickly and efficiently.

A clear winner is yet to emerge in the online dating site wars, but at present, two sites in the US and Canada, Match.com and Yahoo Personals have the largest base of users. We recommend that you open an account with BOTH of these sites - that way you are sure to cover a large pool of singles looking for partners. The money spent per month on a dating site subscription is less than the of a fancy dinner; and if you can significantly increase the probability of meeting a partner online by signing up for a couple of dating sites, you should consider it a wise investment.

If you need more complete services than the ones offered here, send us a detailed email with your requirements. Example services are: opening a dating site account and getting it up and running with 3-5 photos and a profile (for people not well-versed with the Internet) , flexibility to ask us all kinds of questions (for a fixed period of time e.g. 1 month) on online dating and problems you might have with using your dating site , etc.

Unbiased and candid assessment of your photo(s). Having looked at hundreds of online dating photographs, we rate your photos on a 4-level scale: Below average, average, above average and excellent.

We will send you a questionnaire by email. The questionnaire is designed to stimulate you to think about yourself so we can get to know who you really are and what you are looking for. Based on your answers, we write an ad profile for you and you upload it to your dating site (you will also get an unbiased and candid assessment of your photos).

This package includes a Complete Profile Write and help with your primary photo (this is the photo which shows in search results and when people are casually browsing online dating ads-it is by far your most important photo). You can send us 5-8 photos from your digital camera, and well take it from there- select the best photo and optimize and polish it for your dating site (reducing the size, adjusting the format, digitally enhancing it-adjusting the brightness, contrast, color balance and saturation, etc.) See examples of photo enhancements

Not getting quality responses to your online dating ad Not sure what to write, or find it hard to write about yourself

Youve come to the right place. We can help you fix your existing ad; or write an entirely new ad profile for you.