I am a firm believer in the old truth that your results are directly proportionate to the effort invested. When it comes to online dating, there is no point in writing a mediocre profile. If you put yourself out there, you might as well do it right, and make sure that you put your best foot forward, because there is no reason not to.
After reviewing hundreds of profile, we have identified five common reasons that so many of these profiles are not great, to say the least. You should make sure that your dating profile is free of these flaws, if you want to make the most of it:
1. Cliché, Boring Profiles, Full of Overused and Trivial Statements
“I like to work hard and play hard”, “I am as comfortable in my jeans as I am in my dress”, “I love to travel, laugh and eat”, “I enjoy life to the fullest,” “Life is short…”, “I am always happy”, “I like to work hard and play harder” – these are just a few examples of cliche things people say over and over in their online dating profiles, apparently not realizing that this makes their profiles look like boilerplate forms. This statements should have no place in your profile.
2. Autobiographies & Resume-like Profiles
Another common way to bore a reader to death is to make your dating profile sound like your biography or a resume. “I was born in X, then moved to Y, went to school in Z, then went back to live in Y, and work now for this company that does this and that.” Remember – you are neither applying for a job, nor writing a book about yourself. No one needs to know your life story before they even meet you, and we all know that it’s so much more fun to get to know someone in person than getting their “file” before you even meet them.
3. Weak Intro’s
A sure way to make the reader skip onto the next profile before they even finished reading the first paragraph of yours, is by starting your profile with “I didn’t want to do this, but my friends insisted …” or “I am not good at writing about myself, but…” There is no purpose to these introductory statements, and they certainly won’t capture reader’s attention the way your first few sentence should. Your dating profile is not an actual, live conversation, so you can safely skip the pleasantries and preliminary explanations. You don’t need to “warm up” the reader, and you are much better off saying something interesting, funny, or thought provoking in your very first line.
For instance, starting your profile with the typical “I am new to online dating” is weak, boring and doesn’t add anything to your online persona. However, the following example from an actual profile is so much better and more interesting: I hate the obvious and love the absurd. I get a tsunami of emails of people just writing me,”wow, you have a long list of requirements.” Well, no shit, captain obvious. If
anyone has half a brain, those are characteristics that I value and can’t be without.
4. Cheesy / Cliché Pictures
You have seen them all – photos of shirtless guys with beer, girls drunk at a bar posing as if they were pornstars with their friends, rock-climbing and sky-diving photos, as if they were submitting photos to Discovery Channel or the Fear Factor. Contrary to what some people may believe, posting normal photos, even simple portraits or office photos, might be more flattering to you than the more extreme shots, where there is too much going on in the background, drawing the viewer attention away from you and toward the location where the picture was taken. Also, for some mysterious reason many people think that hiding half of their face with their sunglasses is a good idea. It’s not.
5. Profiles that Only Contain Pictures
Some people, and especially women, believe that no one reads profiles and that people only look at pictures. Therefore, they decide to only post their photos and write absolutely nothing about themselves. This is simple not true. Many, if not most, people do read profiles. More important, writing that first message to a person who didn’t write anything about themselves is so much harder, because there is simply nothing to respond do, except commenting on photos, which will hardly be exciting. An attractive woman, who doesn’t write anything about herself, but who only post sexy pictures of herself (and her friends) will only get the wrong kind of attention – inappropriate, sexual comments from lame guys. The better kind of men will likely not bother to write to her, because they will assume that there is not much to her beyond her looks, if she didn’t write anything at all about herself.
Visited 1 times, 1 visit(s) today
