Online Dating: Secrets of Success (Part II)

Just in case you missed Online Dating: Secrets of Success, Part I, here’s a quick catch-up: make sure you post photos and the photos you post bear at least 80% resemblance to the way you look (that’s the way you look today, folks, not the way you looked ten years ago – be sure not to get those tenses confused); show rather than tell in your profile (nobody likes a list, but everyone adores an examples); and use an action phrase in your tagline instead of a descriptor (that is to say “let’s take a trip somewhere exotic” rather than “gentle, yet muscle-bound giant”).

The advice in Part I was focused on creating a profile. That’s nice and dandy, some of you may say, but once I have a profile – where should I post it? After all, there are more online dating sites out there than retirees in Florida. How to choose? The key metric, of course, is effectiveness. That is to say – how many people that you might be interested in are likely to be on that particular site. So the first step is to decide the kind of person you might be interested in.

Pretend for a moment that you are in the real world rather than the online world (a stretch, I know). Where would you go to maximize your chances of meeting the kind of girl/boy that you are interested in? Would it be one of those giant night clubs with multiple floors, disco balls, strobe lights, different DJs, several bars, and hundreds of sweaty, gyrating bodies? If you said yes, then get your tush over to Match.com. If a giant meat market is your style, then it doesn’t get much larger or meatier than that.