So you’re single and you decided to give online dating ago. But you have no idea how to be successful at online dating, so start looking around the Internet for help and advice.
You have come to the right place.
The key to writing a great dating profile is to know how to write about yourself honestly, but with enough twists of humour, interest and yes, bending the truth, so that you have plenty of interest.
Successful Online Dating Starts With A Great Profile Headline
Scroll through any dating website and you will see a myriad boring, ludicrous and uninventive headlines.
At one end of the scale you will have people who simply do not bother at all. They will put a series of xxxx’s or a random string of text.
Perhaps it’s not random. Perhaps it’s the language of some small island state with a population of 45?
Anyway, at the other end of the scale you get bitter and twisted. “How much longer can I be on here?” Or “giving this one last go!” Or even “is there anybody normal on this website?”
All of the above are actual profile text headlines, from profiles we monitor as part of our article writing process here at Taxi For Cupid. Unsurprisingly, all of those people have been using that same headline for more than six months and are still active daily on the site we monitor.
I suppose saying everyone else on the site is abnormal doesn’t attract much positive attention!
So however you are feeling inside, be positive. Say something catchy and enticing. Tell people how excited you are about meeting. “Are you up for friendship and adventure?”.
Take Your Profile From Drab To Fab
Dating profile text has to be interesting and captivating. Again, scroll through any dating website and you will see far too many profiles with one paragraph of text and the words “If you want to know more just message me”.
What does that mean?
With nothing on the profile, you actually want to know everything about them, because is nothing you already know. So where do you start?
“Hi, how you? I’d like to know your shoe size and how much money you earn?”
All right, that’s an extreme example but you get the point.
A Dating Profile Is Not Your Ideal Partner Wishlist
Filling an online dating profile with an endless list of ideal partner traits seems to be an almost exclusively female trend, and a damaging one.
This is probably because blokes don’t dare to put their own list of ideal partner traits down in writing, for fear of being ignored as a shallow pervert.
Now while women are equally shallow in many ways, they do tend to gather lists of ideal mate characteristics on their dating profiles which can come across as incredibly picky, or downright bizarre.
One lady I know wants a man with a sense of humour, who is a non-smoker and has a love of traveling.
Okay, that’s pretty reasonable isn’t it?
But then she also wants only a dark haired man, who is ambitious and preferably rides a motorbike.
Right. Slightly less difficult for any decent pool of real men to fulfil all that.
Then she wants a man to have tattoos and who likes a lady who has tattoos. Oh, and they must love pets and not like Coldplay.
And (you didn’t think that was it did you?!) they “Must not be a player.” And definitely “Must be real.”
Seriously.
Now call me a cynic, but if she sticks to that list then she’s going to be dating online for a long, long time. And the emotional trap she has set for herself means that if she doesn’t stick that list during selection, she will feel that she has compromised on her needs.
Also, think about it from the people reading her profiles point of view. Any man who sees that list is going to run a mile unless they can tick off every single thing on it.
Success In Your Online Dating Profile Is About Achieving “Stylised Realism”
Yes, your profile needs to talk you up a bit. It also needs to set out a few minimum criteria that you are looking for in a potential mate. That’s all fair enough.
Your profile needs to have enough in it to entice people to want no more, and invite them to contact you.
Or if you are a man, there should be nothing your profile to say that you are decent human being who is not just interested in sex. Even though the reality is men and women are all interested in sex when dating. It’s just a bizarre unwritten rule you can’t talk about it until it happens!
So the winning formula has to start with being realistic…..but not too realistic.
Simple isn’t it?