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Online Dating: How To Avoid Being Perceived As An Email Pest!

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If you’ve been dating online for any length of time, you will have come across a few people that are too eager, or too persistent, or even over familiar. It’s not about restraining your eagerness, or not pursuing someone, or avoiding building a rapport.

It is about striving for a balance because the reality is that, if you don’t keep certain things in check, somebody, somewhere, may be describing you as a pest, desperado, or even stalker. Here are three actions that are likely to rub someone up the wrong way or have you marked in the pest category.

1. Sending a flurry of winks and emails based on seeing a profile (no response yet)

I’m delighted for you – you’ve found a profile that excites you and you want to stake your claim before someone else does, so you send a flurry of emails and winks to bring yourself to their attention.

The trouble is that regardless of whatever wonderful qualities you claim to have and the wondrous message that may be contained within those emails, they may never get opened because you seem a little desperate, over eager, and are actually behaving a little disproportionately to what has actually happened.

You have seen a profile! Send an email with a great catchy title or something and do the job of fifteen emails with one!

2. Sending terse emails after not getting a response to an initial email

I know it’s annoying not to get a response but I want to bring you back to reality with a bump. You saw a profile, you liked it, you got in touch. Don’t assume that by sending an email that you are entitled to a response. If you’ve been building sandcastles in the sky and fantasizing about a fairy tale ending with the recipient, you’ve set yourself up for a fall because so far, this whole thing is in your head!

Sometimes people are busy but intend to respond. Sometimes people are so overwhelmed with responses that they don’t even get a chance to reply. In an ideal world, people would respond to every message but it’s a bit like sending rejection emails for job applications, and to be honest, isn’t a rejection email a bit unnecessary?

Slow your roll. If you get a response, great. If you don’t, move on! Unless you’re on a teeny tiny dating site, there are other people! Don’t bank on one horse until you know there is a horse!

3. Making a flurry of communication after exchanging emails

Great, you’ve actually made contact with someone, exchanged email addresses and mobile numbers. The worst thing you could do right now is to send text after text, or emails trying to downplay your eagerness and desperation but actually seeming even MORE desperate! You know the emails I’m talking about:

“I know I’ve sent you several emails already but I’m not being a pest and I don’t want you thinking I’m desperate. It’s just that I sent you a couple of emails but I haven’t heard from you. There’s no pressure for you to respond….”

For a start, just because YOU decide you’re not a pest doesn’t mean you aren’t. Just because YOU decide your actions aren’t desperate does not mean that they aren’t!

Sending several emails and texts, or even leaving voice mail messages when you’ve had no response yet from someone you hardly know is borderline, if not full on pest behavior. What if they are out? What if they are nursing their sick grandmother on their death bed? What if, they see all of these emails, texts, and voice mails and feel a bit scared that they have unleashed a bit of a psycho?

Always remember the 3 P’s of avoiding being an online dating pest:

Patience, Proportion, and Persistence Control.

It doesn’t kill you to wait for a response to your initial contact – whatever you do, don’t send more than one email until you have a had a response.

Don’t get this online dating lark twisted. There are potentially thousands, if not millions of people on these websites and whilst I appreciate that you want to get a date, you need to keep things in perspective and proportion.

Don’t inflate the fact that you got in touch with someone into more than what it is because nobody ‘owes’ you a reply and if you get carried away every time you make contact with someone, you won’t get very far!

And whilst I admire some people’s very thick skin that’s comparable to hide of a rhino, there is persistence in terms of staying the course with online dating even with some negative experiences, and then there is persistence in the form of not knowing when to back off, or refusing to take silence for answer.

How To Get More Hits To Your Online Dating Profile

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I’m going to premise this by saying that I can give you some tips for helping you get more ‘hits’ on your profile but I make no promises that if you write the most amazing profile on earth, you’ll find your soul mate.

A lot can happen after some winks and a flurry of emails! But until then, here are some quick tips for a more attractive online dating profile.

Use a photo!

Everyone should use a photo and it should be one that is representative of you, shows you in as flattering a light as possible, should ideally have just you in it. and should be in focus. Obviously it goes without saying; it should be YOU!

Start on a positive note

I would steer clear of saying anything that makes it sound like dating online is beneath you or that has been forced upon you. It sends the wrong message. Avoid saying anything that makes you sound like a prospect to avoid because you need to captivate them in the first couple of lines. That’s right, captivate, not scare or turn off. Be confident.

Easy on the length

They say that size matters but in this case, it’s about striking a balance between so short it seems like you don’t care, and so long, it seems like you want the person to be overwhelmed with boredom. People don’t read web pages in the same way that they read books or magazines, and are quite likely to skim, so writing the longest profile in history will hinder chances.

Leave a little mystery

Yes the profile is for telling a prospective date about yourself but if you roll out everything in the profile and tell them ever itty, bitty, little piece of info about yourself, what’s left to ask? Write enough to create curiosity and have the prospective date wanting to find out more.

Be careful of stating the obvious and suffering from ‘Those who doth protest too much’ syndrome

It’s better to be funny with your profile rather than state “I’m really funny” because…well that’s not very funny! Convey and prove your personality with whatever you write because quite frankly, I glaze over when I read “great sense of humor” and “great guy”.

And purlease steer clear of trying to ram ‘qualities’ down people’s throats. I’m really nice; I’m really honest; I’m really caring – People who are nice, honest, or caring don’t make a point of stating it, they just are these things.

But…convey your personality and qualities

There’s no point trying to make out like you have one of the greatest sense of humors if you don’t convey this. It doesn’t mean that you turn your profile into a stand-up, but if you want to come across light and humorous, you don’t write a serious, potentially cold profile that is more likely to trigger depression…

Be descriptive

“I spent a year traveling through the luscious jungles of South America, living in a tent, and living off the crops” creates an instant picture as opposed to “I love traveling”.

Be positive

If you sell yourself short and are down on yourself, why do you expect people to be attracted to you? It’s best not to go around stating negatives about yourself, particularly since we can sometimes be critical of the wrong things. You are selling yourself here – not literally obviously!

Don’t do the ‘Poor Pathetic Me Whine”

Sorry guys but this is mainly a male error in online dating profiles. If a woman wrote a profile and said “I’m recently divorced, I’m feeling quite lonely and I wonder if I’ll ever find true love again”, guys would label her ‘needy’ and ‘too emotional’.

When a guy says this stuff, he knows that women out there lap it up and think “Ooh, I can change him! Let me be the one to make him feel whole again”. But women are getting wise to this and it’s not exactly a glowing reflection of your wonderful traits to whine about your problems!

Don’t lie

If you’re married…well you shouldn’t even be writing a profile unless you’re both looking for kinky couples….But that aside, lies are why I am very cautious about dating online. Stick to truths and remember that if you lie, at some point you are going to be caught out.

Don’t boast

Trust me, if you spend your profile boasting about what you own or who you know, or what you do, you’ll sound like a seven year old bragging to the neighborhood kids. You’ll have an audience temporarily and then they’ll go off and laugh at you. Either that or you draw in someone who will take advantage of whatever you have boasted about.

Online Dating – 10 Tips for Effective Communication

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So you’ve signed up to a dating site and it seems like one big people market. How do you approach prospective dates and how do you ensure that you don’t cross the virtual line?

Here are my tips!

1. Remember the online/offline rule.

Whilst I recognize that it can be difficult to be noticed in the crowd that it is the virtual dating world, do give a thought to whether you would behave this way in the offline world.

Saying or doing things that are considered at best inappropriate or over-familiar in the real world, are still the very same things in the virtual world!

2. Don’t be a pest

So you like them. This doesn’t mean that you should bombard them with emails, IM’s, winks, and demands for attention. You may think that it shows how interested you are but the recipient of your ‘affections’ is likely to think that you’re too persistent, needy, over-familiar, and a bit weird…at best.

3. Introduce yourself

Don’t just charge in like a horny bull in a China shop! What would make me take a second glance at an email? Polite, friendly, introduction where he expresses an interest in getting to know each other a little bit more and even injects a little humor.

What turns me off? Anything with the remotest hint of sex or them being suggestive about my exterior, over-familiarity, and being too assumptive – sending an email doesn’t make us a couple!

4. Avoid the Poor Pathetic Me Whine (PPMW)

This is a cornerstone of male behavior online. Basically the guy broadcasts whatever difficulties he’s having; how down/sad/lonely/depressed, etc he is and women flock to him in the hope that they will be able to ‘fix’ his problems and be the one to make him feel better.

Some of these guys even say flat out that they are no good which only serves to make them more attractive! If women told men that they were down/sad/lonely/depressed, men would run in the opposite direction! Don’t tell prospective dates about your problems, talk positively about yourself!

5. It’s an opportunity

It’s not just an opportunity to meet someone and get to know them further, it’s an opportunity to verify information you read in their profile. I’m not saying that you should turn into Columbo but instead of building sandcastles in the sky, discuss things that were mentioned in the profile.

If they’ve been lying, you’ll find out veeeeerrrrrrryyyyy quickly! As an aside, if you don’t take things too seriously and recognize it as an opportunity, you will manage your expectations better.

6. Stick to email contact initially.

Sometimes when it comes to dating online, people are in too much of a hurry to give out their digits! If you dive straight to giving out your number, you’ll regret this if things don’t actually take off. Email contact is a good starting point but always remember that if things progress, it should NOT be your primary form of communication! When you do give out your number, just give one to start with.

7. Either create a new email address or use the sites messaging service.

I know someone who gets emails to her work address from men that she met online several years ago. Until you are pretty sure that things are going somewhere and you’re going to actually start dating, use the site’s messaging service or create an email address specifically for dating. Trust me, you’ll thank me in the long run.

8. No unsolicited X rated pictures!!!!

They say a picture can say a thousand words but sending someone an unsolicited picture of your penis or vagina says one thing – pervert. It is the equivalent of following someone, opening up your coat, and flashing them. Yeuch!

Remember that even if it is solicited…it is likely to send your ‘relationship’ down the wrong path if what you are looking for is a relationship. To be honest, I always wonder why people do this – When I met men in bars, I never wanted them to show me their penises before the end of the night!

9. Ask open questions in your emails

Very basic rule of sales is that if you want to find out more information, you ask open questions – who, what, where, when, how questions that you can’t just say yes and no to. As an extra tip, if they are dodging answering a question when you are speaking by phone or face to face, ask a closed (requires a yes or no answer) to get an answer!

10. End emails and calls in an open manner

If you end emails or even phone calls in a closed manner where there is no action expected of either of you, you may not get a response or you’ll spend a lot of time wondering what is going to happen next. It’s as simple as suggesting something that requires an answer or stating in the call when you’ll both be in touch next.

9 Tips for Better Online Dating Profile Pictures

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One of the best ways to capture someone’s interest when dating online, is a great picture.

One that is blurry, outdated, is of you and your kids, or a group of people might not be the best choice.

Here are nine tips for choosing the best picture to get their attention.

Start by having a picture in your personals profile

When your photo is absent from your personals profile it says that you’re scared of something.

Now it doesn’t matter that you may be scared of someone who knows you discovering that you meet people online; the lack of photo may be interpreted as:

  • too scared for people to see what you look like
  • you’re hiding something

Pictures will give you a far higher rate of success. Rather than go through the rigmerole of not putting up a photo, them asking you for one, and then giving them one, and then maybe hearing from them, maybe not hearing from them….jeez, I’m exhausted just typing that. Just put up your picture.

I beg you to choose a decent photo

Let’s cut the BS. Online dating sites are like a marketplace full of…products…some would say ‘cattle’. Now, much like in the supermarket, eye-catching and attractive products that market themselves well, rise up the shelf for people to see them.

If you fail to choose a photo that represents you in the best light, you are adding extra work to a prospective pursuer because they end up having to ‘visualize’ what you may look like when you’re not clowning around/obscuring your face/making dumb faces/fading into the dark. They may read the finer detail (your profile) but coupled with a decent photo, you have a higher chance of success.

Choose a photo that is representative of you

I’m not even going to let you read between the lines of this – Do not under any circumstances use a photo that you borrowed out of a magazine, royalty-free image service, or the photo frame you just brought. This is the dating equivalent of a violation of the trade description act.

Opt for a photo that has you looking relaxed/happy/friendly

You may think that pouting or setting your jaw makes you look hot but other people may think you’re a bit scary. People don’t want to decipher whether you are mean and moody like your picture – let your photo reflect the positives about you that you should have been mentioning in the written part of the profile.

Don’t be obscure or abstract

My brief foray into dating online had me being confronted with pictures of the sun, churches, trees, and pets. I don’t want to date the sun, church, or a tree, and I don’t want to mess with any pets!

All these photos show is that you like pictures of the sun, you’ve been to a church, you’ve hung by a tree, and you like putting up a picture of an animal more than you do of yourself. As an aside, showing a pet doesn’t prove that you’re caring and sharing. Ladies in particular are no longer fooled by that little trick.

Accentuate your best features

Look at yourself in the mirror and pose as you would for the photo. Now let’s say that all you see is a mirror full of gum and the back of your throat – is this what you want prospective dates to see? Practice smiling until you either find a photo that makes you look attractive or, you discover that big wide open smiles aren’t for you and go with a ‘candid’ photo. It would be a wise idea to ensure you look well groomed in the photo as opposed to ‘just got dragged backwards through a bush.’

Make it a close up

Of your face that is. If the person needs to squint or try to get you on zoom, you’re not close enough. It goes back to – what are you trying to hide?

Be careful of other people

If there are several people in the photo, choose one where you are the dominant person in the photo – you need to be the focal point. If the photo is too busy or you’re fading into the distance, they won’t even know who you are.

Remember that if there are only two of you in the photo, people may draw conclusions. Obviously, don’t post a pic of yourself with your ex!!!!

I love kids…but not in profile pics

If you are successful in meeting someone, they have plenty of time to meet your kids. Until then they really don’t need to be in the photo with you on a dating site, whether they are yours or someone else’s.

Ten Tips for Blind Date and Set Up Survival

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It’s bound to happen if you’re single. Some well intentioned friend or acquaintance will come to you full of excitement and want to set you up with the perfect person.

You may balk at first, but then you think, “Oh why not? What have I got to lose?” and you agree to meet Mr. or Ms. Perfect.

As the big night approaches, keep an open mind  and follow these ten tips to make it an enjoyable experience.

Enter the date with a blank slate approach

It is best to apply the pinch of salt rule here – Whatever information you think you know about them or how much they’ve been bigged up by your friends, don’t get carried away.

People LOVE to exaggerate and they tend to tell you about qualities that the person fails to exhibit on the date but leave out crucial nuggets of information.

Always remember: people have their ‘date version’ and their ‘friend version’ so unless these people have actually dated your date, they really just don’t know half the time! Which brings me to…

Don’t be toooooo familiar

I know you’ve been set up and may know a little info where some of it can be used for conversation fodder…but proceed with caution. You may get carried away and repeat something that wasn’t intended for consumption…

Manage your expectations

This is a dating opportunity. You don’t have to get married, you don’t have to see them again after this date if you don’t want to, and you certainly don’t have to like or sleep with them. It’s a date like any other date except for that you got set up…and they know your friend.

I know, I know, awkward sometimes! It is a good idea to draw a line in the sand before the date with your friend so that they manage their expectations too. This way you can find out if they’re the sort that will take offense if you don’t come back with glowing praise.

Remember that your friend is the introducer not the facilitator of your date

Think of it like using a free dating agency. Would you phone them up and cuss them because your date wasn’t what was expected? Would you expect the agency to run interference between you both? From the moment that you arrange the date, three is a crowd.

You also don’t want to get into high school territory with the whole getting your mate to find out what the score is. Do your own dirty work! Oh and obviously if things go sour, the last thing that your friend will want to be accused of is having any part in it!

Be positive

There is a reason why I mention positivity a lot when it comes to dating and it’s purely because your attitude and mind-frame have a lot to do with how much you will enjoy the date.

Be negative and you’ll find something negative to say about them. Avoid being hyper-critical – you are not Simon Cowell and try not to start mentally comparing them against your checklist and focus on engaging with your date.

Get over the fact that it’s a set-up

Some people really struggle with the whole ‘I’ve been set up by my friends’ thing – It’s not always ideal…but it’s an opportunity to have some fun.

Worse case scenerio, you have Another Bad Date Story to laugh at and stone cold proof that the person responsible for the set-up should stick to their day job.

Best case scenario – you meet someone you really like, have a few dates, or even end up starting a relationship.

Choose an open, neutral spot

I don’t care if your date knows your brother who knows your friend who knows your Aunt May –  don’t use the fact that your date has been referred to you to jump a few stages and invite them to your place. For totally blind dates, make sure you let people know where you’re going.

Don’t knee-jerk out of the date too soon..but have a back-up plan

There is many a date of mine who has been victim to the emergency phone call that I just have to take. You can however take the pressure off both of you by being up front and honest.

Tell them that you know that set-ups/blind dates can be awkward and agree that if you’re still uncomfortable in an hour, you can go your separate ways. But, make an effort for the whole time you’re there and give the person a chance.

No sex!

People will find any ‘ole excuse to leapfrog the formalities on first dates but remember when Carrie shagged the best man at Charlotte’s wedding to Harry in Sex and the City? Aside from him committing the cardinal sin of shagging like a teenage jackhammer on crack, he couldn’t handle being ‘used’ and blabbed to everyone.

Now this is an extreme, fictional, situation but my point is that normally when you shag around, your friends are unlikely to know about it unless you tell them. Do you want to be discussed in this way? Aside from that, let’s say you don’t end up seeing each other again, you’ll feel really awkward around the set-up friend because you’ll be wondering if they know. That and if you’re not happy about the outcome, you’ll be tempted to grill them.

Have fun

Standard fare you may say but I know a lot of people who treat dates like routine, annoying, trips to the dentist. You might as well have fun otherwise what is the point in going unless somebody held a gun to your head and forced you…then that’s a whole other problem!