Question: A male reader in his early 40’s asks: “I recently made a profile on a dating site, sent over 30 messages to the women I thought looked attractive and interesting, and haven’t heard back from even one of them. Why do you think no one responds to my e-mails?”
PH Answers: Obviously it’s hard for me to know exactly what the problem is in your situation. However, getting results requires a combination of having an interesting, compelling profile, flattering photos and messages that are interesting and which stand out from hundreds of other message that every half-decent look girl receives.
All of the above elements are essential.
If you have a great profile, but all you do in your message is say “Hi… I like your profile, how are you?” It’s not going to work. It looks too generic and lazy, and it also looks like a mass e-mail. No woman wants to respond to that kind of message. And the longer any girl has her profile up, the more lame messages she gets, and the more frustrated and impatient she gets with every next weak message she gets. Recently, during one of my dating profile reviews, I looked at a few e-mails that my client was writing. He started every message with “Hi, Love”. I seriously doubt that any woman in her right mind, read pass that. I hope it’s obvious why.
If, on the other hand, you write a good message, but your profile is poorly written, full of typos, or just boring, then this is not going to work either, because a girl always checks out a guy’s profile after reading his message before she would consider responding. You profile needs to be interesting and different from others. If it recites your biography and your travel destinations like every other profile, what incentive does she have to write to you and not to those other hundred guys that say exactly the same thing?
Finally, if you profile is great and your messages are well written, but your pictures make you look cheesy or otherwise lame, you are again unlikely to get a response from women. It’s just as important to have good photos up as it is to avoid posting bad photos. Ask a trusted female friend to look at your dating profile photos with her, and encourage her to be honest and open with about which pictures add to your profile and say good things about you and which photos have to go. Women are used to calling men superficial, but they are just as concerned about looks, at least in the online dating world.
lame advice. This writer should try to login a guy’s profile, clean it up, clean up the pictures, write what she believes to be a well-written message to at least 30 women the guy would find attractive but not ‘out of his league’, and watch how there will be zero replies. Sometimes the chips are just stacked against you and there is not much you can say or do about it.
That’s only the case if the guy is extremely unattractive or short (or both). Unfortunately, life is cruel that way and at some point no amount of personality will make up for what’s missing in appearance. Otherwise, there is plenty any guy can do to get more responses than they can handle from women. The writer has helped hundreds of men (and women) and speaks from actual experience.
Statistically, you are incorrect. Anecdotally, you are also incorrect. The bar for a guy getting response from a girl that he likes online, who falls between an Adonis and short or unattractive, aka most men in society, is much much higher than anyone would care to admit, especially not the writer of this column. I wouldn’t be surprised if girls don’t read all the messages in their inbox. That’s the natural consequence of one sex receiving a horde of messages from the other, particularly when the bulk of messages being crude and disrespectful. Any decent guys tend to get lost in the mix. But neither you nor the writer need take my word for it – the writer should try to do exactly what the reader did – with all of the suggested improvements implemented. Im always wary of any dating advice person that claims they know how to get more responses for OLD – I would say such advice is logical, But looking at it in practice – which is where it actually applied – it makes little or no difference. Sort of how you may hear about a guy get a lot Of numbers in one night –
The vast majority aren’t going to even answer their phone – a phone number in itself isn’t even an indicator of interest anymore.
I know where you are coming from. However, relying on statistics is not helpful or effective. Sure, statistically nothing happens for most guys. So, what’s the solution – give up? You always have that choice. A tougher but more rewarding solution is making yourself/ your profile / your messages more interesting and more compelling and the results will come. Will there be plenty of flakes? Sure, but not all of them, and that’s just part of the process. A phone number is definitely not an indicator of anything, and so is one message or even one date, or even a date where the girl says that she had a great time and she can’t wait to see you again. Yes, girls don’t read all the messages they get. It’s impossible, but they do read the good ones. So… the choice is yours – rationalize inaction or take action, while trying to enjoy the process. And, of course, I am the writer of this article.
More very powerful assumptions you make without any evidence of any kind to back up that trivialize what happens in reality – probably because it would render your advice null and void – ‘results will come’. ‘Will there be plenty of flakes? Sure but not all of them’ ‘girls do read the good ones’
How do you know that? You are just preaching on the sidelines. Show me one decent looking guy that was able to get replies from girls he liked off your response after he made his profile and messages more compelling. Show me a girl who says I will definitely read the messages that don’t mention sex or anything crude – again, that would imply OLD is merit-based.
Or accept my challenge – you won’t because you know I am right – you should help this guy out who wrote in – that’s the only way I’d be convinced of your advice actually yielding results.
Reality check – a girl does not have to get to every good message in her inbox – if she is average looking and up – the messages keep coming, and coming. Girls have the luxury of passing up on perfectly good matches online – just like they can do in real life – because they can. Girls have openly told me that many times – they look at dating way, way differently from guys. They could pass on a perfect match in every respect over and OVER for very arbitrary reasons – because they can, since so many guys are willing to line up. Again, none of this merit-based. And who am I to say that’s wrong? If I had tons and tons of girls approaching me, I’d probably become that way too. Forgive me for the crude analogy, but it aint the employer running around town, picking the best suit, the best haircut, the best lines, the best resume, the best shoes – its the employee. That’s the dynamic of dating that continues to vastly grow in that direction thanks to technology. In the 1950s, being fit and a good job, having respectable values, made a man a good catch for a lot great women who were marriage material. That is less and less true as time goes on. Again, the bar has been raised exponentially over the decades.
A friend told me ones ‘play by the rules’ and i said ‘what about girls?’ and he said back’ they don’t have to play by shit’. It’s the truth.
I used constantly practice my profile, my messages and over, and over, short, long, witty, quick to the point, showing them to female friends before I clicked send, my photos, I know I’m not bad-looking, not supermodel, and i realized, there’s no point in doing this – the bar is so, so high its kind of arbitrary. Rewarding? In what sense – thanking my lucky stars a girl replied or showed up on a date? Screw that, I’m off to work to generate some mad chips at work buddy buddy – that’s the advice i’d give to guys – work your ass off at your job, and if you can, at the gym too – not at ALL for attention, cuz girls don’t give a shit, but at least you will be something relevant in the real world – because its merit-based – unlike this OLD garbage where its just a bunch of guys jumping through hoops like clowns for a reply while girls hold up a score card like judges at a diving competition. OLD has pretty much rendered the vast majority of guys sexually invisible and unnoticed – only way you can counter that is be relevant where it counts and you have control over it.
Looking forward to your reply.
Johnny, I am not here to prove anything or convince anyone of anything, and I don’t want to violate the privacy of the many guys I worked with who have the opposite problem now – they go out with and have more girls interested in them than they can handle – mostly from okc and match.com, facing similar problems as girls do. One guy agreed to take a random screen shot of his cellphone just from the few days after this pat holiday (below)
Most girls get garbage messages over and over, are frustrated and are yearning for something decent that rarely comes. Sure, some don’t have the time and energy to go through every message, but others do and they pretty good at it.
I do not solicit my services and I would not be pushing my work on anyone who simply complains or asks a question.
I have been on a dating site or two that keeps your profile up even after you have closed your account. I get messages all the time from two separate closed accounts. I actually feel bad for the guys but I think sites keep a profile active to play the numbers game. ‘Thousands of profiles’…sadly just not active profiles.
I have heard this happen before too. I believe that the larger, reputable sites are on top of this and exclude non-active members from their pool.
Yes it is true to get good responses in online world your profile plays an important role. It is very necessary that you should create your profile on social media as you are in real world. Great article!