Online Dating Tips for Men

How do you look and sound in the Internet dating scene? Don't post anything else until you read this.


The Bar Scene is Dead. Long live the Web.
Need proof? Research shows that Americans now spend more than a billion dollars a year on Internet dating services. That's a lot of clicks, so it's no surprise that 20 percent of new couples claim to have found each other in the digital ether. Not only is the Internet setting up encounters, but it's speeding them up, too: Prescreening dating partners evidently helps guys out so much that a third of female online daters have sex on the first date.

But in spite of all this potential for romantic success, a staggering 97 percent of men give up the game after 3 months. "They quit before figuring it out," says Scott Valdez, head of Virtual Dating Assistants, a company that helps users perfect their online profiles. "So a very small percentage of men are seeing all the results." By that, of course, he means that the other 3 percent of guys are scoring all the hot dates. But here's the good news: With the right photos, profile, search parameters, and messages, you can be one of those men. Use our tips, culled from the vast troves of data at key online matchmaking sites, to turn your virtual profile into a virtual shoo-in.

Picture yourself perfectly
We like to think that women are not as shallow as we are, but that doesn't mean they're blind. "The vast majority of online daters, women included, look at profile photos to decide whether to read your message," says online dating coach Laurie Davis, founder of eFlirt Expert.

Go with your best face.
Use OkCupid's My Best Face application, which lets you upload photos for the free dating site's members to vote on. Use their input to select your top four to seven shots. "You're only as good as your worst photo," Valdez notes. That applies to picture quality, too; high-quality images outrank cellphone photos of the same people.

Make a scene.
According to OkCupid's research, the strongest photos of men are ones in which they're doing something interesting while neither smiling nor looking at the camera. And choose a noteworthy environment for your shot. "My boyfriend and I met on JDate, and his picture was taken in front of a Jackson Pollock painting I like," says Carly, 27. "That really piqued my interest."

2. Tell her some stories

Dating sites are clogged with men who pile on the adjectives, likes, and dislikes. But women respond more to stories, images, and emotions. So to stand out ...

Be anecdotal.
That's the advice of Kate Houston, an advertising copywriter who runs the profile-writing service trysweettalk.com. She penned this for a musician client: "When I was a boy, I picked up the trumpet and played Louis Armstrong's 'What a Wonderful World.' It made my mom cry. I was that bad. Today I play trumpet for a living." See?

Be specific.
Dan Abelon, cofounder and president of SpeedDate.com, suggests hinting at your itinerary on nights out. "Write, 'On weekends I like to hang out at Crobar,' instead of 'I enjoy clubbing on the weekends,' " he says. "It's an instant icebreaker, especially if the woman shares this experience."

Be genuine.
Don't kid yourself into thinking women are any less crafty than you are. "The first thing a woman does is Google you to get a fuller sense of who you are," says Eva Ritvo, M.D., a psychiatrist and relationship expert. "If your Facebook and Match.com profiles aren't consistent, she's gone." Speaking of which, women also play the profile-cooking game: A University of Chicago/MIT study found that the average female online dater says she weighs less than the average U.S. woman of the same age. The discrepancy is about 6 pounds for women in their 20s, 18 pounds for women in their 30s, and 19 pounds for women in their 40s. Women who post photos taken from odd angles or ones that focus on a single area of their body, like cleavage, tend also to be less than forthcoming about certain details, Dr. Ritvo says.

Be brief.
A 2007 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that online daters tend to fill gaps in their own profiles with details that they think will attract their desired mate. So keep it pithy, lest you misrepresent yourself. "Your write-up should be like a woman's skirt — long enough to cover the essentials, short enough to be interesting," says Robert Epstein, Ph.D., a psychologist and creator of the compatibility test at AreWe-GoodTogether.com.

3. Game the systems
There are three big reasons to regularly switch up your photos and info. First, the various shades of your profile will appeal to different types of women. Second, an update may give you a second shot with a woman who didn't previously write back. "You might look like a totally new guy, and she'll be attracted to you," Davis says.

But the third reason to regularly refresh your profile is the most important one: It games the system. Every time you update your profile, it climbs back to the front page of female users' browsing results. "We started doing this, and our clients received four times as many 'winks,'" Valdez says. "It's like being on the top of a Google search." Making little changes may seem tedious, but attracting eyes to your profile is huge. Virtual Dating Assistants found that messages sent to women who'd simply viewed a client's profile were 78 percent more likely to draw a response.