What To Put On A Dating Site Profile And What To Leave Out
Your dating site profile is the most important tool you have to find love online-and fast. It's the identity that you put forward to other online daters, it's what people see when they're looking for people like you and it's all you've got to make a first impression and pull in the proposals.
It's not an exaggeration to say that all that lies between you and the end of your single days is the skill with which you complete your profile.
The kind of information that you'll be asked to reveal about yourself will vary from service to service. Dating sites put a huge amount of effort into coming up with the right questions to make matching easy without putting off new members. Some sites for example, will ask you to tick just a handful of boxes and write one short paragraph. Others will have section after section that grill you about your personality, your interests, your hopes and your history.
In general, it's a good idea to complete all the sections of a dating site profile however many they may be. You don't have to do it all in one sitting and you can certainly come back to fill in the gaps later, but as long as you have spaces in your profile that remain unfilled you can give the impression of looking evasive and less than completely serious.
The good news is that the bulk of the profile won't take long to complete. Even the most demanding sites don't ask you to write more than three or four mini-compositions about yourself and your ideal date, and the majority of just about any dating site profile is always a series of checkboxes about your likes and dislikes.
Fill these sections in as accurately and as quickly as you can and move on. For the most part, cyberdaters skip right past these parts of the profile. They look too much like shopping lists. Mostly they help the site's matching engine far more than the dater looking for a match. The fact that someone likes jazz more than rock, or comedies more than documentaries, doesn't really tell you whether they're going to like you-or whether you're going to like them.
A few checkboxes though are important. When you come to tell the world the age range of the person you're looking for, it's important to be realistic. Many men in particular like to think that because there are so many women on the Internet, they can use it as a way to meet women half their age. That's not impossible but at best it's going to need a long wait and at worst, it's going to be a compete waste of time.
Internet dating can bring all sorts of people together. It can certainly match people up who are looking for something very specific-and even a little unusual. But when you begin looking for someone online, you want your profile to be as inclusive as possible. Once the emails come in, you can then start to focus on the most attractive responses. If you'd like to meet someone in their early twenties for example but would also be happy with someone in their mid-thirties then it's best to choose a wide age range that casts a big net than focus on one particular group and change when you feel you're not having any luck.
When it comes to describing your own age range though, honesty is always the best policy. There's always a temptation for cyberdaters in their early-somethings to shave a few years off and slip back into an earlier decade. It happens a lot (and it's a good reason to be suspicious of people who claim to be aged 29 or 38 etc.) But it's just not worth it. At some point you will have to spill the beans and spilling them in front of someone you really want to impress is far worse than being honest to someone you haven't met and might never meet. If the passing single really doesn't want to date someone your age, it's best not to meet them at all than date them and get the rejection face-to-face.
Merav Knafo
Merav Knafo is the co-founder of LookBetterOnline.com. LookBetterOnline offers an easy and economical solution to the problem of sub-standard online dating photos. Available in over 6000 cities in the US and Canada, all the photographers they employ are pre-screened, are specially trained and will make you look your best! You get 12 great images that are the perfect size and resolution for your profile - and for no additional charge, their staff will recommend the best photos to use!
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