Online Dating Guide & Blog

This is a guest post by Kate Houston of trysweettalk.com

If you’re dating online then you have a lot of competition. There are millions of people out there and each one is competing for attention. So how do you make sure your soulmate shows up in your inbox? Take tips from people who know how to get noticed – advertisers. Treat your dating profile like an ad and you can stand out from the competition.

Filed under: dating profiles

Through this blog, from time to time I find myself reviewing profiles. One of the most common problems I see is the tendency for people to share a little too much, a little too fast. Often the extra details are confusing but other times they are damaging. In either case, the profile isn’t strengthened by it. I wanted to briefly discuss the idea of intentionally being aware of what you are revealing about yourself in your dating profile.

Filed under: dating profiles

I’ve looked at my fair share of online dating profiles and I wanted to talk about one of the bad habits I see in many profiles: the plea for contact. There are many examples of this; some good examples but honestly most of the time when I see someone trying to encourage communication it isn’t done in a good way. Here are some of the more common ways people will attempt this:

If you decide to contact me, I’m very flattered.
Please [...]

Filed under: dating profiles, online dating guide

There are some online dating sites that will automatically assign you a user name but most of the popular dating service (including Match and eHarmony) will require that you create your own user name. I recently had some traffic coming to my site where the people were obviously looking for the answer to that question so I wanted to briefly speak to this.

First, you need to keep in mind that your user name is not going to be very important [...]

Filed under: dating profiles, online dating guide

I found myself reading an article recently about professional profile writing and it discussed how Kate Houston, the owner of TrySweetTalk.com, is helping singles find success with well written dating profiles. I’ve worked with Kate some in the past and I think the examples on her site show exactly how good she is at what she does. Plus, at $80 (last I heard anyway – her prices may change) it’s a pretty good deal.

However, the article got me thinking about [...]

Filed under: dating profiles

I see this question come up from time to time. The first question I always find myself asking is: Why? Why would you want to contact someone who had nothing interesting in her profile? I already know the answer as it’s not too hard to figure out: she’s attractive. Even though I wonder at contacting someone who you don’t find interesting, I will still try to answer this to the best of my ability.

First is her profile missing details or [...]

Filed under: dating advice, dating profiles

Recently I was contacted by a reader who requested that I look over her profile because she felt like she wasn’t having an appropriate amount of success. She seemed primarily concerned that she may have written it poorly. Well, I took a look and I thought her text was actually quite good. She described herself well, covered what she was looking for, and so on. However, one thing did catch my attention: her photos. She didn’t smile in any of [...]

Filed under: dating advice, dating profiles

This is a question shy men often ask due to the dilemma of wanting to be as honest as possible when dating online but, at the same time, not wanting to hurt their chances with women who may reject a man who mentions this trait. I believe the answer to this question really depends on the severity of the shyness. Due to this, I’ll discuss different degrees of shyness and then give my opinion on what should be included in [...]

Filed under: dating advice, dating profiles

Writing a profile that stands out is a difficult task for most of us. When asked to describe ourselves, it turns out most of us sound exactly the same. Whether we’re easy-going or fun-loving, whether we love going out or love cuddling up for a movie in, whether we hate playing games or love the outdoors…putting any of this in our profiles make us sound, well, like everyone else. Sounding like everyone else isn’t the worst thing in the world. [...]

Filed under: dating profiles

I’ve been thinking about doing some online dating profile heading testing (that’s a mouthful!). I’m hoping to share the results here as I currently have a theory that weird or hard to understand headings may work as well as any other. At any rate, while thinking of a good profile heading to test out I came up with first in the list below. I thought it wasn’t too shabby and thought I could come up with nine more for a [...]

Filed under: dating advice, dating profiles, technology

First a warning: this article does not tell you how to create a funny dating profile. It explains why trying too hard to create a funny profile is a bad idea. There are many things that should be a part of your profile (which I cover in my online dating guide) but being funny, especially artificially so, is not one of them. I know this isn’t what most men want to hear, trust me. I also know you’re not going [...]

Filed under: dating advice, dating profiles

Recently, when a friend needed photos for his online dating profile, it was a good opportunity for my wife (who is a professional photographer) to get some portrait shots while helping a friend at the same time. The shoot went well and our friend genuinely liked the photos and had them up on his profile very quickly. A few weeks later, I mentioned that perhaps she could offer this service in addition to her other photography services. Interested to see [...]

Filed under: dating profiles, online dating services

Last week, I was contacted with a request to review another online dating profile. Her profile was good although both Kate and I had a few comments. The profile has been shortened to only cover specific areas that advice was offered for:

The Profile

For fun I love going to the city – anything with lots of people and lots to see!I am looking for a guy that is used to a big family and would like one of his own! [...]

Filed under: dating advice, dating profiles

A friend asked that I review his dating profile to see if there was anything he could improve on. In the past when reviewing dating profiles, I’ve always included my wife since I like to have a woman’s opinion. As you’ll see, we don’t always agree! What follows is a trimmed down version of his profile followed by my comments and then Kate’s.

The Profile:

Movies, museums, skiing, whitewater rafting, skating, video/board games, mini-golf. I’d like to try camping sometime. Really, I [...]

Filed under: dating advice, dating profiles