Put your best face forward

If you want to get hits on your dating profile, you better have a profile picture. Whether you've got movie star looks or something less than that, the only way you're going to meet someone on a dating site is to put your best face forward. It's really the same as traditional dating in that sense but with a twist, someone's best face forward might of been taken two chins ago.

First off, looks are not important thing to me. Research has proven, although initially, looks have little to do with a successful match. Appearances matter a whole lot more to me. That and honesty. In my experience, of the 10 women I've met in person from Match and eHarmony, only 4 had been accurately depicted in their profile pictures. Most of the time, the pictures posted were just old pictures. There is nothing wrong with posting older pictures as long as your appearance hasn't changed. The thing is, it is not just older pictures, it's also misleading pictures too.

What do I mean by misleading pictures? Well, when a woman's main theme in her "About me" section of her profile is wanting to settle down because she's tired of the party and/or bar scene than posting pictures of herself in her profile sauced, posing with a beer bong, it's really hard to take the woman seriously when they wink at you on Match. I drink socially, I have no problem with women who drink regularly but don't say one thing and show yourself to be another thing.

Another good thing to do is to crop others out of your profile pictures. I always wonder what these single mothers are thinking posting pictures of themselves with their kids. With all the stranger danger stuff reported on a daily basis, why take a chance that the dude on the other side of the internet is a pedophile. I have problems posting pictures of my nieces on facebook for that very reason, even with my security settings set to not show my photos to anyone other than my friends.

It's just not cropping out pictures of kids, adults should be cropped out too. There is one woman I was matched with on eHarmony that had a few pictures with one of her best guy friends. From the pictures, it looked like they were boyfriend/girlfriend. They really looked like a couple. Seriously. Also Ladies, you never want to post pictures of you and your girlfriends. Those type of pictures take the focus away from you and transfer that focus to your friends. Especially if your friends are hot. I said looks are not important to me in this process, which is still true; however, when looking at a group of women I don't know, my eyes will focus on the most attractive women in the photo. If that is not you, you've lost my focus.

There is much more where that came from. I've shared some things that you shouldn't do with your profile pictures, the next blog, I'll delve into some of the things you should do and a few more things you shouldn't do. If you take one thing away from my blog, other than my brutal honesty, I hope you realize that there is no wrong way to go about a dating profile. It's just better to be smart, honest and realistic, while also making yourself the sole focus of your profile.

Introduction to the Online Dating Guru

Hi! My name is Chris. My blog is titled the "Online Dating Guru" but I am hardly a guru of any type of dating, yet alone online dating. This blog will serve as a place I can rant and rave about some of the dos and don'ts of online dating. I consider everything I share to be informational and/or funny.

About Me: I'm a 30 year old bachelor in a place where meeting single people is virtually impossible. Of all my friends here (I've been here for 4 years), I can count two who are not married. Two out of a good number of people. Okay, maybe I don't have loads of friends but I do have some very great friends, just none of them are single or no single people my age. So after having no luck with traditional dating, I turned to online dating. I did so for the first time 2 years ago. I have since dated 10 women that I met online, the longest courtship lasting two months, the shortest being merely a day or two. I've viewed over a thousand different profiles, sent countless number of emails, sent one or two winks and really thought I had found my match two or three times, all to no avail. Also, I have been winked at (by one dude too), been the focus of someone's blog, been reviewed on a dating rating site (poorly, I might add) and been dumped via email, text message, voice mail and Instant Message. So I've been there and done that.

Why write about it? I have a lot of humorous tales from my dating adventures on Yahoo Personals, Match.com and eHarmony and I can provide some good advice, advice i could have used when I started. You'll learn Weirdos are attracted to me. You'll also learn that even if the woman is normal, weird things will always happen to us. It all makes for interesting experiences that become interesting stories. We'll see if anyone will check this out. I hope my stories and opinions help someone else, while also providing some entertainment.

Thanks for Reading!