Online Dating Tips
This is where I collect all my online dating tips and Internet dating advice. Together this is quite a lot of information about how to get your online dating experience right and which mistakes to avoid. This is regularly updated with new advice posts, so if you’re confused, disillusioned or disheartened with your dating and lovelife, this is probably the best place to start.
As you may or may now know, I have a couple of very active threads on this site discussion online dating scams, in particular soldier dating scams. Here’s a comment one helpful lady identifying herself as LilyRose posted the other day. Please read this one and save it somewhere safe. It gives very important information about the difference between real American soldiers serving in Iraq or anywhere else and dodgy African (or other) scammers pretending to be them to scam you out of money.
Continue Reading September 2nd, 2010
New research suggests online daters have a false sense of security when dating online. But is the increasingly popular trend of pushing for intrusive background checks the way the online industry should go?
Continue Reading June 30th, 2010
You can try to ignore the FIFA world cup, but chances are that if you are in the UK, you won’t be able to. Signs, flags, big screen TVs and the eternal sound of the dreaded vuvuzelas are everywere and online dating, too, takes its traditional hit, with a small but significant slump during game time.
Continue Reading June 18th, 2010
I seem to have blinked and missed the global day of action against online scams, but if you’ve been a victim of online fraud of the online dating variety (and, of course, any other variety, but this is an online dating blog) and are a UK resident, you are encouraged to report it to the UK’s National Fraud Authority where each complaint is taken very seriously.
Check out the press release.
This is good news in a way, but the fact that “millions of Britons” are losing a total sum of 3.5 billion pounds a year to online scammers is pretty worrying.
June 9th, 2010
An Australian online dating company has recently come out with some useful safety tips for online daters, including a very handy reference guide for the ten most common online dating scams. It’s a good site to check out if you want to educate yourself about the dodgier side of online dating.
Australia has been hit quite hard with online dating scams and online scams in general, so it’s good to see people doing something about it (even if it does get their sites a bit more publicity along the way).
Continue Reading June 9th, 2010
Yes it’s that time of year again, at long bloody last. The flowers will soon be out, as will the sun and everyone is feeling a little bit like a good, old-fashioned spring clean.
There’s no better time to take a look at your online dating profile and see whether it too needs a bit of a spring makeover. This is especially true if you’ve been dating online for a while (maybe since your new year’s resolution?) or have been losing interest and hope in your online dating adventures.
So think – is your picture up to scratch? Would a fun new picture of you looking at your best make you feel better about putting yourself out there?
When was the last time you looked over the text in your profile? Does it still represent who you are? Have you done anything exciting recently you’d like to include? Is there anything you’ve learned about who you are and who you’re looking for in the course of your search you think would make an interesting read? I mean positive stuff, of course. Nobody wants to hear you vent about bad dates! 
It could also be time to expand your search criteria on sites that run the searches for you, especially if you’ve been online for a while and not getting enough suggestions.
Either way, taking stock of who you are, where you are and what you want to get out of your online dating experience can be a really good thing, even if you decide all is well with your profile and nothing needs updating.
Think of it as a checkpoint on your quest, just at the point where, say, a new year’s resolution may start to flag.
Just like the new year, spring is also a time of new beginnings, so what better reason do you need to help the seeds you planted previously grow into something beautiful?
March 21st, 2010
CNN ran a weird article recently, about people who lie on online dating sites. The article details research done by a professor in the University of Kansas, looking into people’s lying habits on one “big long-term relationship dating site” (unnamed, but I have my suspicions).
The researcher spoke to over 5000 people and asked them whether they would lie on a dating site and why.
The results seem to imply that those people who said they would lie are the type of people who want to please people and tell them what they want to hear. They don’t lie out of malice, but because they want people to like them.
Both the article and the research seem to blatantly ignore things such as scammers, married people passing themselves off as single and players passing themselves off as serious.
All of these are, sadly, a big part of the online dating industry, which people should be told about and taught how to spot and avoid. Unfortunately, I doubt any of those types of online dating liars would take the time to answer the good professor’s survey and share with us the reasons why they choose to lie and cheat.
On the other hand, we’ve learned that people who are lonely, looking for a serious relationship and willing to take a (most likely lengthy) survey for no personal gain are apparently keen to please. Who’d have thought?
And… get this!
“Online daters shouldn’t be concerned that most people are presenting a false impression of themselves,” Hall said in a news release before Thursday’s phone interview. “What influences face-to-face dating influences the online world, too.”
The fact that the professors conducting this survey tell people that they don’t have to worry about people lying to them online just shows me how out of touch they are with what’s going on out there. The only worthwhile conclusion of this so called “research” is what everyone in the online dating industry knows already and has done for years:
the people who would lie to you online are the same people who’d lie to you in the real world, be they scammers, compulsive liars, cheats or just “self-monitors”, to use a term from the article itself.
Did someone actually pay for this research? If I were paying taxes in America I’d be well pissed off.
You can read the full text of this, frankly rather lame, article here.
March 8th, 2010
It’s that happy time again. Forward thinking to Valentine’s day, Parship.co.uk are letting you use their site for free until Sunday. Hurry up and give it a go if you want to see what it’s all about.
On a site that won’t let you view pictures before you pay, being able to see who you’re talking to for free is a big big plus, I’m sure you’ll agree.
February 5th, 2010
How do fate and luck factor into online dating? What can we do to improve our chances when dating online, to prevent ourselves from falling for the wrong people?
Continue Reading February 3rd, 2010
Online dating is all well and good, but limiting your social life to online interaction will do you no favours. For many people, it takes a while before all those profile searches, winks and messages turn into actual dates. So in the meantime you should be looking at additional ways of getting yourself out of the house and into social situations where you will meet new people.
Continue Reading November 25th, 2009
A weekly roundup of some online dating stories and offers from around the Internet and the world, as well as my own commentary, of course. This week – an offer from eHarmony, a new iPhone app and some new online dating research.
Continue Reading November 20th, 2009
A good profile in itself is not enough to make your online dating experience successful. The truth is, with the right advice and support it’s not very difficult at all to come up with a profile that portrays you as someone most men or women would want to date. But if all those things you take out of the profile were originally put there because of your state of mind, baggage, fears or bitterness, then the thin screen provided by the profile won’t be enough to carry you through the whole dating process.
Continue Reading November 12th, 2009
If you want to get anywhere with online dating, there are a few things you will need to get over. Finding love online is a lot easier if you allow yourself to use all the resources at your disposal. Here are 5 common difficulties you will need to overcome in order to get the most out of your dating experience.
Continue Reading October 19th, 2009
I get a lot of people asking me how to spot a scammer online and the truth is, spotting a scammer is at once very difficult and very easy.
Continue Reading October 7th, 2009
Online dating sites are certainly the most direct way of meeting other singles online, but as much as online dating professionals hate to admit it, they are not for everyone. If you’ve given online dating a good try and have decided it’s not for you after all, then it’s time for a bit of lateral thinking. You can still use the Net to meet new people, for both friendship and romance. It may not be as direct as going on a dating site, but for many people, that is actually somewhat of an advantage.
Continue Reading October 2nd, 2009
If you hate being single during the holidays and are looking for romance, rather than just a casual fling, now’s the time to start thinking about preparing your lovelife for winter.
Continue Reading September 22nd, 2009
New figures released by dating site OKCupid reveal some interesting things about online dating response rates and important information about sending your first message to someone online.
Continue Reading September 12th, 2009
If you are struggling to write your dating profile, here are five tips that will help get you started. Take your time, and remember everything is a work in progress.
Continue Reading August 20th, 2009
Writing an online dating profile is not easy. Maybe that’s why many people end up relying on cliches in theirs. As an online dating consultant, I’ve seen my share of profiles (thousands) and there are definite trends when it comes to writing them. In fact, the majority of profiles I come across read more or less the same. When I provide dating profile writing services I try to get people out of the trap of stating the obvious in their profile, but if you’re looking for dating profile examples to help you write yours, here are five dating profile cliches you’ll want to avoid.
Continue Reading August 11th, 2009
I recently read one of those annoying articles about online dating and what a great disappointment it is.
I often wonder what people expect from online dating to be so unpleasantly surprised by the reality of it.
In my experience, such disappointment is often a product of unreasonable expectations. Yes, some sites are better than others and some people are more easily suited to online dating than others, but ultimately, if you expect online dating to solve all your problems, you will most likely be disappointed.
Here are some things you shouldn’t expect online dating to do for you:
Continue Reading July 23rd, 2009
For most people, the online dating profile is a work in progress. It changes as they use the site(s) they’re on and it adapts as they get responses and learn more about the type of people who contact them.
Sometimes this is a good thing, but all too often I see people, obviously fed up of getting the wrong type of responses (or being in the wrong type of relationships), who decide to address the issue in their profile… with terrible consequences.
Continue Reading June 22nd, 2009
If you’re here then you probably already know that uploading a picture to your online dating profile is a must. Most people won’t even bother looking at your profile without one and many will make snap judgements about you based on the photo you upload.
Unless you’re comfortable and natural in front of a camera and already know your best side, this will have undoubtedly caused you some concern by now. In general, women tend to overdo it, whereas men are notoriously bad at picking unflattering photos. There are, of course exceptions…
Here are some tips for helping you choose the right photo:
Continue Reading June 11th, 2009
Much has been written about how to handle rejection. Being rejected on the Internet can be just as painful as being rejected in real life. Remember this, because this post is actually not about handling rejection, but about doing the rejecting.
Continue Reading May 21st, 2009
It’s no secret that many people are put off by online dating because they think so many people on there lie about stuff like marriage/relationship status. While Internet dating players are not any more or less common than their offline counterparts (and then to appear more often than not in the lives of those online daters who turn to attract bad apples wherever they go), it’s true that it lends itself to milder cases of people bending the truth.
Continue Reading April 18th, 2009
A while back, I warned about a common online dating scam involving an Iraqi soldier.
Now news has come out about a British woman who fell victim to a very similar scam, losing £10k in the process. The scammer pretended to be an American soldier serving in Afghanistan.
Continue Reading April 11th, 2009
If you want to increase the level of responses you get on dating sites, here’s a handy tip: make sure you’re smiling in your photo!
This is especially true for men, but women, too, can give up the whole aloof image thing – it only makes you look silly.
Continue Reading March 14th, 2009
Even if you put the effort in and message people, getting people to reply to your messages on online dating sites is not always easy. Men, especially, have to contend with plenty of competition online and can sometimes struggle to get noticed.
Here are a few ways you can make yourself stand out from the crowd:
Continue Reading March 8th, 2009
Here’s a handy tip if you want to increase your chances of finding someone to love (or date) online.
You probably already know that it’s worth trying out a few sites before deciding which one to sign up and pay for.
But once you’ve chosen one or two you think are definitely worth your time and money, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t add your profile to some other sites as well. It’s a more effective way to date online and the closest thing you can get to being in more than one place at the same time.
Continue Reading February 26th, 2009
Real life dating is not always fun. Depending on the sort of person you are and your state of mind, it can be frustrating, depressing and confusing. Sure, it can also be fun and exciting, but many people shy away from having to go out there, meet new people and kiss many frogs.
Such people might turn to online dating as an alternative, hoping to be able to just sit back and find “the one” without any conscious effort on their part. Bzzzzt WRONG! A bit harsh, I know, but the truth must be told.
Continue Reading February 19th, 2009
If you’re in the UK and are looking for a big, reputable dating site to try, there are a few much publicised options. Everyone’s heard of Match.com
because of the TV adverts and it’s definitely a very well-designed, easy to use site. But is it the best site for you? How does it compare to other similar UK sites?
Below is a quick table I knocked up, showing how the top rated sites in the UK* compare on the feature front. They are all extremely popular sites with hundreds of thousands (or millions) of members.
Depending on the features you want in a site, some sites might be more suitable for you than others. Just remember that the most important thing is the people on the site and not just the features!
Continue Reading February 8th, 2009
Fact: a significant number of people who use online dating are already married or otherwise attached.
MSNBC claimed recently that up to a third of those dating online in the US are married already. I don’t have the figures in the UK, but I would assume they’re not far off.
As much as I disagree with this form of premeditated cheating (to clarify: I see all forms of cheating as inadvisable, but it’s one thing to be swept away by someone you met at random and a totally different one to go actively looking), I do approve of cheater sites and sites that let you display the “married/in a relationship” option. Why? Because this way less people get lied to and less people get hurt. There are people out there who don’t mind seeing married people, so let them dig their own grave.
Unfortunately, some people don’t bother telling you, so you have to figure it out yourself.
Continue Reading January 26th, 2009
When you’re trying to decide whether or not to sign up to a particular dating site, the natural thing to do is to scout the Internet for reviews. After all, you don’t want to spend money on a site that might turn out to be a waste of time. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to accurately review dating sites.
Some things, are easy and obvious. If a site has hardly any people dating on it, for example, it would be easy for any reviewer to pick up on it and warn potential members. Listing a site’s ethos, list of features, design and ease of use are also easy to discuss, as well as any entry requirements for members. It’s also often possible to discuss whether a site is particularly full of scammers and spammers. Beyond that, though, is where it gets a bit more difficult.
Continue Reading January 24th, 2009
This is a public service announcement. If you want to get yourself a date for Valentine’s day, now is when you should be starting to really make an effort. If you haven’t signed up to a dating site yet, you’ll need to hurry up and do it, set up a profile, upload a picture and start contacting people as soon as.
Continue Reading January 20th, 2009
Online dating is big business and there are always people out there who’d take advantage of people who are willing to pay. Online dating companies have a whole arsenal of tricks up their sleeves aimed at getting people to pay and stay on their sites. Here are a few secrets of the trade you may have not been aware of.
Continue Reading January 12th, 2009
Struggling to come up with the right stuff to put in your personal description? Need someone to help you pick a good profile picture? I am now offering personal online dating help by email.
This is your chance to get your profile checked out by someone who’s seen thousands and thousands of dating profiles and knows what works and what doesn’t.
Click here for more details.
January 2nd, 2009
Online dating site subscriptions come in many shapes and sizes (and prices!). Knowing which one is the best for you can be as confusing as choosing the right site. If you’re struggling to make a decision, your troubles are over! Take my quiz below to find out which type of online dating site membership suits your lifestyle best.
Continue Reading December 23rd, 2008
OK, there’s actually a lot of stuff that dating sites won’t tell you, hence I marked this post as #1 of many. But rather than talk about the shadier side of things, I want to talk about something totally different, that is actually quite positive in its own way.
Dating sites always advertise themselves as the way to find the right person for you and encourage you to keep dating on the site and meeting new people. But in reality, many people who date on dating sites end up finding someone in completely different ways, once they’ve been dating online for a while. In many cases, it is the online dating experience that made this possible, albeit indirectly.
Continue Reading December 19th, 2008
Christmas is a time for making lists, so I thought I’d use this opportunity to talk about the makings of a good dating sites. Whenever I review a dating site, I look for particular features to determine how good it is. When you evaluate a site in terms of whether it’s a good place to go and spend your money (and/or your time) it’s good to have an understanding of what you can expect from a good site so you can make a more informed decision.
Here’s a checklist of things you should look out for. Good dating sites will offer you all these and more.
Continue Reading December 18th, 2008
The current financial crisis has done nothing to deter people from searching for love, but if you want to use online dating during these hard times, you’ll want to make sure you’re doing it within your budget. It’s not as hard as you might think to save money while dating online, all it takes is a bit of planning and a bit of a changed mindset.
Here are some handy tips to help you save money while looking for Mr or Mrs right (or right now) on the Internet.
Continue Reading December 13th, 2008
When you’ve met someone online who seems normal, it stands to reason that you’ll want to speak to them on the phone sooner or later. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want just any person to have my mobile number and I sure wouldn’t want them to have my landline number unless I had good reason to believe that person isn’t a freak.
Continue Reading November 27th, 2008
This one is new to me, but has apparently been around for a while. A friend of a friend was communicating with someone on a big free dating site who claimed to be a soldier based in Iraq.His profile picture had him wearing a uniform and holding a gun, but he described himself as “shy”. He asked her for a relatively small sum of money (for a scammer) as a deposit for a service that would allow them to speak on the phone. Once paid, he disappeared. Turns out he was doing the rounds on the site, conning lots of women out of cash.
This serves as a good reminder to be careful while dating online. Especially on free dating sites. Never send money to anyone you meet on a dating site!
Here are some more handy online dating safety tips.
I have now started a forum dealing with this topic as well, but I suggest you still read the comments below before posting there. At some point I may close comments on this page. The forum sits at: http://www.onlinedatingbook.co.uk/forum. You can use it to ask about people you think you are scammers or warn others about scammers you’ve come across.
November 3rd, 2008
Looking for the Match.com free trial? Here’s how to get it. They are now offering a 7 day free trial, rather than 72 hours free trial.
Here’s how to get your Match free trial:
- Click here to go to Match.com
- Sign up with your details
- Go to the subscription page by clicking on “subscribe now” on the top left
You will need to put your credit card details in as if you are paying for your subscription, but (and here’s the cool part) the first 7 days of each subscription period are absolutely free! You will only be billed after 7 days, so if you don’t like the site, you can cancel within 7 days and you won’t get charged.
Click here to go to Match.com now
For the USA Match site, you can use the link below for your free trial instead:
Try Match.com – 3 Days Free
If you’re after a Match.com (USA) discount, rather than a free trial, read my other post instead.
October 12th, 2008
I’ve managed to get my hands on a promotional discount code for Lavalife. I’m going to be collecting discount codes/special offers for various online dating sites on this blog from now on.
Lavalife is huge in the US/Canada and is now big in Australia too. They claim to have over 15 million members worldwide.
They’ve handily separated out their members according to what they’re looking for. This means you’re less likely to come across someone looking for casual sex when you’re looking for love and marriage. They also now have a specific community set up for mature daters. I
As with most sites, you can sign up, look around and flirt for free, but if you’re looking for the good stuff (actually communicating with people) you’ll have to pay.
So if you want to try out Lavalife for less, here’s a discount coupon code to save 15% off any subscription. Follow the link, sign up for a free account and then, if you like what you see, go through and pay using the code and you will get your 15% discount. Click the link below to make use of this offer:
Save 15% off any Lavalife subscription! Use Coupon Code 780121.
October 10th, 2008
One question I keep getting asked is “what is the best dating site?” The short answer is, of course: there is no such thing.
Where is the best place to meet the love of your life? Ask any person who’s happily married and they’ll tell you the place where they met their husband/wife. This could be a particular club, the supermarket, the chess club, a resort in Ibiza, or practically anywhere else in the world. If you went to the same place as person X, would you meet the love of your life too? Who knows? There is absolutely no guarantee.
All we have going for us are statistics: increasing our chances of success. Sure, you may well meet the love of your life on the bus or on the beach, but you are far more likely to meet him/her somewhere a bit less random. While miracles obviously do happen, you can’t live your whole life sitting at home, passively waiting for one to happen for you.
So the first step is to put yourself out there, go out, date online, etc. Doing this increases your chances already, so how do you increase them further?
Continue Reading October 17th, 2007
Looking for help with writing your online dating profile? I am now offering personalised profile writing help by email. Click here for more details.
This may seem obvious, I know from my own experience how hard it is sometimes to forget that you are writing to an audience that may not know anything about the subject you are writing about.
I’ve seen quite a lot of profiles where people seem to almost write in code. They seem to almost be writing for themselves without clatrifying potentially ambiguous points.
When you are writing about yourself, then you are writing about a subjet you know a lot about, so it’s easy to forget to fill in the details you think are pretty obvious.
While sometimes it’s OK to not over-elaborate (If you’re into house music, for example, there’s no need to spend lines upon lines explaining what type of music that is) some things may require a bit more detail to be properly understood.
Saying you are into “travel” or “dancing”, for example, would not make you stand out from the crowd and will definitely not tell your readers that much about you. Most people would say they enjoy travel but one person’s idea of the perfect holiday could be another person’s total nightmare.
Remember that what is obvious to you (‘travel” meaning adventure travel to exotic places or “dancing” meaning ballroom dancing for example) may be completely misunderstood by others unless you elaborate.
Think about all the things you would like to know about your potential mate and come up with a list of questions (you can even write them down if that helps). Then answer all those questions in your own writing about yourself.
Looking for help with writing your online dating profile? I am now offering personalised profile writing help by email. Click here for more details.
October 16th, 2007
I run into a lot of people who tell me they tried online dating and it didn’t work for them. When I ask for more details and get the full story, it usually turns out they’d tried one dating site and when it didn’t meet their expectations assumed all dating sites are the same and quit trying altogether.
In my opinion, you’ve not really given online dating a proper chance until you’ve looked at 5-10 sites and properly tried (as in, signed up for the free account, ran a detailed search and maybe even joined the free trial) at least 2-3. There are literally thousands of sites out there and while there are things that are bound to be similar, there’s also plenty of differences in everything from features to audience. a Ford Fiesta and an Audi TT are both cars: they both have wheels and seats, etc. but driving one would not necessarily tell you all there is to know about driving the other. If it’s driving itself you don’t enjoy, the differences may pass you by, but until you’ve tried a few different cars, you may not be able to pinpoint exactly what it is you dislike.
If you’re on a dating site that isn’t delivering you the results you want, try a different one and try to make it as different as possible – bigger, smaller, more niche, more generic – whatever can give you a broader taste of the industry. If you’re short of inspiration, there’s a detailed list of (mostly UK-based sites) in my book or for a quick list of good sites to try, take a look at my list.
You may discover that what you dislike is common to all dating sites, or you may well discover there is more to online dating than you thought.
August 19th, 2007
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been in and out of London, enjoying the Great British Festival scene. As a result, I’ve had a chance to speak to a lot of new people from all over the country about “the whole online dating thing”.
I had a number of very interesting conversations with people who all raised the same problem they have with online dating. They all felt that dating sites made the whole process of introduction seem too much like a job application, making it unromantic. They all preferred the old method of going out there and running into people by chance, trusting their heart (or “fate”) to make the right decision for them.
I know online dating professionals often like to talk about how superior the online method is to traditional dating exactly because of the fact that it’s focused and involves making decisions with your head first and then the heart, but personally I feel that this is a matter of personal preference. Some people are always going to be ruled by their heads, while some are more intuitive by nature. Throughout the centuries, people have found love using both of these methods, so I don’t care to fault either one.
Continue Reading August 5th, 2007
If you are not used to writing about yourself (which, let’s face it, most people aren’t), the thought of writing a personal description can be pretty scary.
What I’ve discovered, though, is that there is no need to be a professional or even a particularly skilled writer to come up with a personal description that would make people want to get to know you.
After all, you want your profile to be a good representation of who you are, not a novel or an epic poem.
Some of the best profiles I’ve seen in the line of my work were written by people who were obviously not professional writers but had simply sat down and written from the heart.
Rather than think too hard and try to be overly clever, there are a few simple things you can do that can make your personality show through.
Continue Reading July 26th, 2007
There is a huge difference between dating sites in terms of the features they offer. Some are pretty basic, while others offer a whole array of impressive-sounding features like video-chat, automatic matching, gift-giving, etc.
The important thing to remember when choosing a site, is that the most important thing the site could ever offer you is the person you will fall in love with. The people dating on the site are the most important feature and should come above all else.
Continue Reading July 2nd, 2007
Most online dating sites offer some feature or other meant to make contacting people “easier”. The generic term for these is icebreakers and they are known on individual sites as winks, pokes, kisses, flirts, etc. These features are generally free to use, making them the preferred method of communication by people who have not yet decided whether they want to subscribe to a site. They are also favoured by people who want to contact as many people as possible without putting any actual effort into it.
Is it worth it? You can probably guess from the title of this page that I think they are pretty much a waste of time.
Here’s why:
Continue Reading July 1st, 2007
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