Do Women Still Get Attention in Online Dating Even If Their Profiles Suck?
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When women ask me (and boy, do they ask me), why do all the WRONG men write to them, I always have a two part response: 1) By your standards, 95% of men are the wrong men. So don’t be too surprised if you’re not enamored with 9 out of 10 emails you receive. It makes perfect sense. 2) Your profile is likely not attracting the small percentage of “right men” out there – which is something that we can easily change.
It’s because we – men and women alike – haven’t truly figured out what makes us unique. And unique profiles not only get more responses, but they get higher quality responses in return.
Yet some women really get indignant – they poured their heart out in their profile, put a ton of effort into saying what they really feel. And when I take a look at it, 9 times out of 10, she did just that. Except Nancy pouring her heart out as a 45-year-old divorcee in Seattle sounds just like April pouring her heart out as a 35-year-old single girl in New York. The lists of adjectives, the lists of hobbies, the lists of bands and countries and books and TV shows, the clichés, the personal philosophy about life and love and honesty and trust. You’ve seen it before. It’s perfectly articulate, perfectly earnest, and perfectly generic because most woman arrive at the same conclusions.
So when every woman’s profile sounds the same, what do men have to write to?
That’s right. Your looks.
And then we wonder why the level of discourse in online flirtation is so abysmal. It’s because we – men and women alike – haven’t truly figured out what makes us unique. And unique profiles not only get more responses, but they get higher quality responses in return.
One of my favorite online dating anecdotes is of a JDate woman I courted in the summer of 2004. She had a wildly entertaining profile, which included this line: “You’re witty and intelligent and consider me fully worthy of the 5,000 gold coins and two camels that my family has offered as dowry.”
My response:
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38 Comments »Filed Under Online Dating Tips & Advice
Steve 1
I have looked at a few websites, and some women seem to not really try to attract as much attention as they could. Blurry pictures, pictures of pets, the dreaded bathroom mirror picture (why do they do that), no information in the profile, the list goes on.
Word!
An online personal ad isn’t a Facebook page. You want to make contact with single people who find you attractive. A good picture of your face and a good picture of all of you will help with that. Pictures of your pets, your trip to the 3rd world and your garden will not.
A lot of people will just move on if they can’t get a good idea of
what you look like from your profile.
Evan’s book on the subject is a good read on how to avoid writing
a generic profile. Everybody likes “spending times with friends,
good music and happy people”. As Evan wrote a million times online daters have an “illusion of many choices”, so if your profile is generic, hard to start a conversation with and you have a hair out of place they will click their next button before giving you a chance.
Diana 2
Oh, if only the guys would read my profile more often. About 98% of the time, they haven’t even bothered. They’ve seen the photo and sent their instant flirt. It’s incredibly annoying; to the point where if someone hasn’t at least appeared to have taken a moment to read my profile, I’m highly inclined to not respond. But I always send the polite “no thanks.”
JB 3
The question of Do Women Still Get Attention in Online Dating Even If Their Profiles Suck?
The answer as we all know is,of course they will.This is planet earth and men will respond to any and all profiles because it takes very little time & effort.Most of these men by the way would never approach 99.9% of these women in public for a myriad of reasons.
The better question may be…. “how come women who’s profiles suck,won’t respond to most men even those with high quality pics and a high quality interestingly unique profile?”
Sadly in the online world, both sexes judge whether a profile “sucks” or is “quality” by 98% photos & 2% rest of profile. Of course for men,we have to have not only good photo’s (be an 8,9,or10)but we have to be educated,have a good job title/income, and of course be TALL…lol Women?? You just have to have the PHOTOS and the responses roll in and always will. It will always be about “options”,”supply & demand”.
Diana 4
I just want to add that while most everyone’s profile could probably use at least a little tweaking, including my own, I have specific details in my profile that make it easy for someone with a likeness to grab on to, but they rarely do. And I promise; they’re not outrageous and bizarre.
Really.
I don’t think the generic emails I receive are due to a total sameness in my profile. I think it’s due to first, copy and paste emails sent to a lot of women, in hopes of their dart hitting a target, and how most people do not have the articulate and creative writing gene, as you do Evan.
For those that struggle, they could have seen your former girlfriend’s profile and have been dumb struck as to what to say to her. I think some men (and women) read a smart and witty profile and much like seeing a pretty woman and feeling too intimidated to say hello, they feel intimidated by her words.
JB 5
What continues to absolutely boggle my mind is these 2 and 3 sentence profiles from “college grad’s” and “Post Grad’s”.
Latest “college grad” profile for “Me and My Ideal Match” we get…
“I always try to look for the positive. I like to socialize and stay home. I’m interested in meeting someone who is happy with who they are. Someone who understands life is short so we need to enjoy it now.” She has 1 cute pic,she’ll get 75 responses.
Latest “Post Grad” profile for the same:
Despite all odds, I believe the impossible can come true. Life has shown me that anything is possible with a little faith, work and courage. She has 1 head shot I’m sure she has more responses than she can handle and we have no idea how “big” she is.
If I told my 7th grade niece to make a profile she could do much better I can assure you even without my help….lol
Honey 6
I had a very funny handle when I was on Match and my first profile I talked about moving across the country by myself, starting a Buffy the Vampire Slayer “club” where I cooked dinner for all my friends once a week, and starting a two-hand touch “club” that eventually grew to 20 or 30 people. I also outed myself as an English major and declared war on adverbs and adjectives in online dating profiles. It was a lot of fun! I am pretty sure that I read a bunch of women’s profiles before writing mine and decided that telling 2 or 3 funny stories was better than listing the most generic version of my interests
Lance 7
EMK, glad you brought this up, this is something I complain about whenever I go through an online dating stretch. Like right now. Gents, if you really want some insight, you might try two strategies. First, do a search on women looking for men and read a ton of guy profiles. You’ll almost immediately see patterns and trends of mediocrity in both the writing and the pics. This will give you ideas about how to stand apart.
The second strategy is a bit more insidious but tremendously insightful. Set up a fake profile with women’s pictures and fake profile text that is poorly written. Track the response rate you get. If you’re really hardcore about it, pay for a subscription to this “scout” account and note the quality of the emails that you’re getting. I draw the line at actually responding to emails and you can debate the ethical considerations of this technique.
I have a pretty good profile, not awesome, and I write great emails. Despite all that, I get about a 10% response rate to my emails. So even if you’re doing everything right, it’s still a massive numbers game.
I feel really lucky, though, because I just met an awesome gal via an online site.
JB 8
Lance is right.Setting up “recon” profiles teaches you sooo much…lol I never stop learning about women this way and they always continue to shock me. I get about the same 10% response to my profile…lol and believe me ….we’re lucky !!
sushiomia 9
Seems like you are a true professional. Did ya study about the matter? *lol*
Jennifer 10
@JB #8- but are you really learning a lot? All of the things you’ve learned (women respond more often to tall, good-looking men with money) you already knew! Shoot, i’ve never set up any recon profiles and I already knew it lol.
I would think looking at profiles of ‘the competition’ would prove to be more useful as you could see what they are doing and be sure to set yourself apart.
Lance 11
@Jennifer: The primary benefit of the scout/recon profile is actually reading what guys are writing to attractive women. You can’t get that any other way. When you read, say, 100 emails from guys, you have a huge database to draw from when crafting you own emails, which of course will need to stand apart from the legions of douchebags you just scouted. I think this info is so valuable for winning at online dating that it’s worth paying for the extra subscription for at least a month, perhaps more.
Jonsi 12
Completely agree about the recon. It is not necessary, but it is insightful. I have not done it because I read other people’s experiences in this strategy, and it did change my emails. And I was never the one liner “you’re hot” variety, I actually put in some effort, but it was helpful to see some examples of “so THIS is a compelling email.” Generic first email writing advice is just that: generic.
Of course, there was the OKCupid analysis where you are more likely to receive a response the longer you write, but given the extra time involved, you are more likely to communicate with more people if you keep your emails short and simply write more. So my strategy is simple: if I encounter an engaging profile, I engage her with a thoughtful email. If her profile sucks, I don’t put forth any effort other than copying and pasting something quirky and random that I expect most of them to think “wtf?,” but the creative, bohemian ones who are my type sometimes engage and then tell me “that was so different, I had to respond.” Then I wear a big shit eating grin across my face as I think to myself “I had to say that because your profile SUCKED!”
Jennifer 13
@Lance #11- I hadn’t look at it that way before, but now I understand and can appreciate that reasoning.
The only reasons i’d heard for having recon profiles before was what i mentioned in my post above or to ‘check up’ on someone- like if you wrote a girl but she ignored you, ‘testing’ her to see if she’d write back to your recon profile. Or if a girl told you she met someone else, ‘testing’ her to see if she’d answer your recon profile. Those are the things I don’t get.
JB 14
@Jennifer:Or if a girl told you she met someone else, testing her to see if she’d answer your recon profile” Obviously it’s to see if she’s lying when she could just say “I don’t think we’re a match”
Or the vindictive side of me could come out and my recon profile can give her a taste of her own medicine.
Sometimes I use them for the same reason Lance does and other times I’ll use them to get women to add more photo’s to their “1 bad photo profile”. You’d be shocked at how fast women ADD new pics when a “10″ tells them to because that’s when they figure out that one bad pic isn’t going to attract a guy with 4 great ones…..lol Then I can see what she REALLY looks like…..Yes,it works.
“like if you wrote a girl but she ignored you, testing her to see if she’d write back to your recon profile”. Well if she’s a “3″ and she ignores me and responds to my “10″recon,Then I know clearly she’s delusional……lol Aren’t we all?….LOL
Jennifer 15
oh JB …even if she’s lying does it matter? if she turns you down but sends recon guy 10 more pics does it matter? I’d just chalk it up to the game
JB 16
Nothing matters….. that’s the point. It’s all part of the fun of the game. She doesn’t “send” the recon 10 more pics. She adds them to her profile for all of us to see & judge. So in essence I’m helping everyone by making these women improve or in some cases make “worse” their profiles.We’ve all seen people who add photo’s and lower their value because the “new” pics are recent…lol Then you go “Ohhh,that’s what they look like NOW”….LOL I’ve seen it go work both ways.
downtowngal 17
I find it amazing how you now have to have a background in creative writing in order to attract a date.
Sarcasm aside, I agree with this advice. But I also find this is the frustrating part of online dating – many people get their friends to help them write profile/letters, but even if they don’t, people who make good writers don’t necesseraly make good bf/gf’s. I realize it’s what you have to do to atract someone but it’s so artificaial – you have to MEET the person in order to tell.
Erika 18
I’m gonna be honest: few people take much time or effort to put up great photos or write an interesting profile. So, the ones that do immediately stick out.
My profile is great. I’m not bragging–it just is. I get lots of compliments on it. I put something like, “message me if you like my special brand of crazy” and a guy (too far away to date) wrote, “You’re my special brand of awesome!”
BUT. On another dating site, where I actively blog, I have a sock puppet profile so that I can blog there anonymously without worrying that my dates will know I am writing about my dating adventures. The profile has almost no text. It simply says, “I’m just here for blogging.” I stupidly put up a VERY attractive photo that I copied from a UK hairstyle site, and I got TONS of email from men. Most of it went something like this, “What an adorable mug…” “OMG, you are SOOOOOO PRETTY” and etc. The difference between the amount of email I’d received before and after putting up the photo was completely shocking. I had to take the photo down because the men just did not understand why I was there. And as soon as I took the photo down, the emails dropped to zero. It was an interesting experience.
downtowngal 19
This post reminds me of a recent one on this site where the guy asked why he should continue to correspond w women on line if they have nothing to say, but their photos are hot. Like, duh!
Joe 20
Wondering: even though your opposite-sex recon profile may get you hundreds of examples of e-mails sent by members of your same sex, what is there to tell you which ones members of the opposite sex would actually respond to? That is, how do you separate the “good” e-mails from the “bad” ones (aside from the obvious ones that no one would respond to)? You can only guess, or select the ones you would respond to.
starthrower68 21
@ Erika,
It is an interesting commentary, no? See, I know I have the intelligence and the confidence. I also have a pretty face. I don’t have the rest of the “physicality” to go with it, and I’m honest about that in my profiles. I never try to hide it. As a result, I don’t date much. I make the effort however. I admit I struggled with being angry about it for a while, but have since grown indifferent.
sayanta 22
#21-
Anger and indifference are such obstacles to finding happiness in dating (I think the latter is a form of sadness, in my case at least)- but for me, they can be nearly impossible to overcome.
I guess the biggest problem is trying to figure out what you should be doing to attract the members of the opposite sex. For me, both online and in real life, the problem has always been that I get the ‘view’ (or when I’m out in real life, a smile, a line), but it ends up into…nothingness. My cousin (whom I look like)- has only one line in her profile and gets thousands of responses- I’ve got a great pic, a well-thought out profile (where I have a literature quote in the beginning), and it’s an empty well online (that is, in getting responses from guys who speak and can write the English language).
ok, time for my yoga class…
A-L 23
RE: Starthrower’s #21
Online dating isn’t necessarily easy for anyone. Maybe it’s their weight. Or their skin color. Or their religious beliefs (or lack thereof). Or their desire to have no children. Anything that takes you outside the “norm” for your area’s dating pool is going to make it harder.
When the guys talk about who they contact on online sites, I suspect it’s the 8s, 9s, and 10s (which is understandable). So if you’re a really nice looking female and nothing else all that abnormal, online dating will be relatively easy. And probably the same for the guys who are 9s & 10s. Either they’ll get lots of e-mails and can choose the cream of the crop, or if they send out an e-mail they have a supremely high likelihood of getting a (good) response back. But if you’re not in the top 10-20% looks wise then online dating is going to be work.
starthrower68 24
I had a lengthy discussion with my guy friend about this just this afternoon. I felt like he couldn’t understand my experience. I don’t know if this is because of difference in gender or if I’m applying too much logic or what. I sent him the link to this blog because he thinks I’m not trying hard enough. I made an effort to write a witty, interesting, and unique essay, and I even put up a full length picture with my others as I will not hide my body type. I had to explain to him that I’m out there but I can only do so much. Men are looks-driven creatures and I have no power to make that be different. He says I have to keep myself out there, which I do. I also had to explain to him that knowing it is what it is, if I spend most of my time being not really caring whether I’m getting dates or not is just how I think a lot people roll. We have lives. We go to work, pay our bills, raise our kids, hang out with our families and friends.
starthrower68 25
@ Sayanta,
I agree, anger and indifference aren’t helpful. However, what I told my friend is, I don’t have the financial resources to be on several different sites on the slight chance I might meet somebody. Many of them require you pay to even see who has e-mailed you, let alone respond to those e-mails.
I’m not sure indifference is the right word; maybe pragmatic is more it. I don’t want to be chained to a computer waiting for contact on a dating site. I know what I can control with regard to a better on-line dating experience (which I have done), and what I can’t. I believe if a man is interested and my physicality doesn’t bother him (and I’m not even fat as in “DAYUM” ala Gabriel Iglasias) I respond, am witty and charming, etc. I’ve done what I can do. The rest of it I can’t get emotionally involved in.
A-L 26
Starthrower: Do you initiate e-mail contact with guys, or do you wait for them to contact you?
starthrower68 27
A-L, I don’t initiate. I thought that was an Evan rule for women but maybe I misintepreted it.
BeenthereDonethat 28
I like A-L’s question: to any women who have dated online; do you initiate e-mail contact with guys, or do you wait for them to contact you?
Personally, I have sent the first e-mail. And while I usually get a response back, it is usually when guys have been the one to initiate contact that things continue to progress.
sayanta 29
A-L, BTDT-
Well, I’ve contacted guys, and gotten responses saying they want to meet up asap. The weird thing is- these same guys were ones that had ‘viewed’ my profile, and didn’t even bother to ‘wink’ (not that I’m a wink fan or anything). Is it me, or does that make no sense? Why, if they are interested (otherwise, I assume they would have ignored my e-mail, and not responded saying they want to chat and meetup asap), would they not make a move first? I don’t know…I hope I’m not going to have to do all the chasing in this online thing.
*sigh*- this is why I always avoid online dating- see? My chill, positive vibe that I’ve (kind of, a little) cultivated in the past few months is cracking already.
EMK- dating hundreds of people…man, how’d you DO it? You’re strong dude. I’m not.
LOL
sayanta 30
Oh, BTDT, #28-
I’ve heard that too- that even if a woman initiates contact, it’s usually when the guys initiate that things will actually go somewhere.
A-L 31
Here’s Evan’s take on women sending out the initial e-mail in online dating.
Starthrower, when you find that you don’t like the caliber of guy writing to you, find the guys you’re interested in. Once you see that you’re a reasonable fit for what he says he’s looking for, e-mail him. Not every guy will write back, but there’s probably at least a 1 in 4 chance of him writing back (according to Cat’s OK Cupid article), and quite likely better. So then if you send out 4 e-mails a week, you’re likely to have 1(or more) good fish on the line no matter how many initial e-mails you get from the “wrong” guys.
As far as how relationships go based on who sends the initial e-mail…I e-mailed my fiance first. He took it from there. He did the rest of the initiations of other e-mails, phone conversations, dates, becoming exclusive, proposing, the whole nine yards. So don’t knock it ’til you try it.
Karl R 32
sayanta said: (#29)
“I’ve contacted guys, and gotten responses saying they want to meet up asap. The weird thing is- these same guys were ones that had ‘viewed’ my profile, [...] Is it me, or does that make no sense?”
It makes perfect sense to me.
As a guy I viewed over 1,000 profiles initially and 100 per week after that. I initially wrote to several women per week, then trimmed it down to 1 or 2. I generally had about 25 women that I considered possibilities for future emails.
If woman was in that list of 25, I would be thrilled to be contacted by her. But since only the top few would get contacted each week, a woman could be on that list for weeks or months before I got around to contacting her.
If I viewed a woman’s profile without adding her to that list, it was probably because I didn’t find anything in her profile to connect with. However, if she found something in my profile that she connected with, that was just as good.
evileddy 33
Why should men put in any effort into the first message if the women they message put even less effort into replying or their profiles?
I send out 1000 emails with the exact same message and only get 3 replies.
Or I can spend 5 – 10 minutes on 1000 really good emails and only get 3 replies.
Same results with more time wasted right?
Women only look at the pics, the man’s height, his financial worth and decide on that to reply or delete the opening email.
Absolutely absurd for us men to spend much time in the first opening email when the majority of them are just chucked aside with zero reply.
Evan Marc Katz 34
Hey Evil,
You’re the problem. Not women.
When I used to date online, I would spend 5 minutes on an email, and get 1 out of 3 writing back to me. You get 3 out of 1000.
That tells me that either your emails aren’t very good, your profile isn’t very good, or you’re overestimating the kind of women you can get. I’m guessing it’s all 3.
Your solution is here – if you actually want to do something different to get results, instead of complaining how much women suck.
Denise 35
#33 and #34
Agreed, it doesn’t take a lot of time to create a unique email. It doesn’t have to be long, a few sentences is fine–something that indicates she actually may be special out of the millions of women out there and you’d like to know about X in her profile.
And also agreed not to bash women because they have ‘criteria’, the same can be said for men–they just look at the pictures and how big her boobs are. Each sex has their own things that appeal to them, it’s instinctual and we can’t help it. Reminds me of the saying: Do you want to be right (women SHOULD look at more than a man’s height) or be happy?
Having said all that, I can feel the frustration in #34 and can also identify with it! Might be good to take a break and come back with a better attitude..
E 36
I think women get looked at even though their profile sucks but at the same time when men see that her profile either sucks, or she starts bringing out the hundreds of “requirements”, her stupid LONG laundry list that men must meet then yes men will look but quickly pass on her cause even with her online profile she’ back to her same huge stringent “requirements”, laundry list. A lot of women think that oh since he’s not out there in the bars, or she can’t find him when shes out and about she will go to online dating but a lot of them reluctant even in the 21st century.
Online dating is how a lot of people that are already graduated from college and into their professional lives date. It also amazes me how a lot of yet college students are online which they should be dating in college. College is easy to find dates. But these young women are usually not on for “long term” relationships. A lot of the younger ladies still want the real casual dating and I don’t think that works too well online. I think online is more for people wanting serious dating and ready for serious relationships and are for the most part over the quick fling.
These days with online dating yet you hear a lot of women still bitch about “oh I can’t find a guy and I have to do this online dating”. On top of her whining about online dating then she think well when I go online with my profile he must meet this and this and this and this list must go on and on and can’t forget about he must under no certain circumstances be this height even though she put a “range” height in reality she’s waiting for that “tall” guy and goes back to her ol routine of rejecting almost all guys cause she thinks since “Mr. Perfect” wasn’t out there so with her being this ultra specific, ultra laundry list, ultra “list” “Mr. Perfect” has to be online and she’s back to her rejecting almost all men.
She then goes off about how she can’t meet a good man, she’s ready for a real relationship but she’s looking for the NON EXISTENT ”Mr. Perfect” (that doesn’t exist). She then get’s all pissy when she reads the online advice that she can’t be too picky, she shouldn’t just reject all the men and completely limit herself and pigeon hole herself to the point that yeah men look at her profile but once they read her profile men realize how either pissed off she comes across (cause she’s salty about the online dating), she talks about all these specific things that he MUST meet or she’s instantly rejects him or her profile is ultra specific then men will pass her cause they are like she’s one of them too picky and all she’s going to do is constantly say no. Then it’s no wonder that she’s constantly single. Also women have to actually GO OUT with men and date. You actually get to know them better online then you would at the bars with him and her all drunk. I like bars but bars suck to meet women and men.
E 37
Contd… I’m not talking about free dating sites… I’m talking about the pay serious dating sites (match.com, Chemistry etc). Yes I agree that both men and women should obviously have some requirements but they can’t be so ultra specific that all she does is constantly rejects all men cause she’s looking for the non existent “Mr. Perfect” that never exists. Also women you can’t just talk and then when it’s the lets go out she says no. Yes you do get to know each other a lot better online, talking on the phone then in the bars. Also I think a lot of at least the more serious daters that are looking for serious dating are really truthful like 97% truthful especially with the pay online dating sites. I
miskwa 38
Sometimes a “bare bones” profile is intentional. I am guilty of this for reasons of safety. Nowadays in order to “see what’s out there” on a site. you have to submit some sort of profile. I am well known in the (rather rough) small town where I live, and do NOT want any of the men here to know I am “looking” and wind up with a major problem on my doorstep; nor do I want to shell out serious money for a site where there are no/very few older men that have similar values.