In today’s dating world, it’s essential to become competent at online dating.
Everyone who’s dating is also dating online. Or, at least, they’re trying to.
The base of a good online dating experience is also the most difficult part – the profile. A bad profile will stop you from getting matches, having starting points for conversations, and improving your chances of getting women interested in you online.
Unfortunately, for many men, online dating profiles are unreasonably challenging to create and write.
Men create profiles based on what they think women want, not on what women actually want.
This article is a solution to that problem.
We’re going to give you a guide to building a great online dating profile by analyzing some of the most common mistakes that men make when creating their profiles. From these very common (and specific) mistakes, you should have more than enough information to get started toward creating your own optimal dating profile.
At the end of this article, I’ll also offer you some suggestions for improving your dating profile.
1. Posting Too Many Shirtless Pictures
We get it, you have abs.
You workout.
You, and literally millions of other men on dating sites, think that being fit makes you unique.
It does not.
See, if anything, posting a bunch of shirtless photos of yourself makes a terrible impression on potential dates.
Women are more likely to see you as obsessive, conceited, and vain than they are anything else. They’re going to see you as a man who’s more interested in building his body than he is in building a relationship.
They’re going to see you as someone who isn’t worth the time.
It’s one thing to be fit and include a shirtless picture in your dating profile, it’s another to build your profile and your digital dating identity on your fitness.
2. Posting Hunting/Fishing Photos
If you live in a hunting village, this might be an exception, but women typically are repulsed by these pictures.
In terms of a dating profile, putting something like this on your profile cannot help you at all. It will only hurt you. You won’t “filter out the bad ones”, you’ll filter out nearly all of them. Dating profiles are a digital game, and you need to learn how to play the game well — otherwise, you’ll face the consequences.
The risk of posting a picture of something you’ve just slain is too great. One woman was even kicked off of Tinder for posting a hunter picture. It doesn’t matter if your hunting is legal where you did it, it matters if it’s legal where you’re swiping.
In the best-case scenario, your profile ends up being problematic. Worst case, it gets you kicked off the site you’re trying to use.
There are no good reasons to have a hunting or fishing picture on your dating profile.
3. Including Photos With an Ex (Or Just as Bad, A Female Friend)
This should be obvious, but for some reason, a lot of guys mess this up.
Having past relationships featured on your dating profile does not do what you think it does. It does not make you seem “experienced”. It doesn’t make you seem “hard to get”.
Having exes featured in the pictures on your dating profile is one of the worst mistakes that men (and women) make with their dating profiles, and it’s completely avoidable.
There are a lot of different pictures you can take – infinite, honestly. If the only photos you have of you looking “cleaned up” involve an ex-girlfriend, you might not be as cleaned up as you think you are.
Women don’t want to be involved with men who still have feelings for their exes – it turns them off.
And the hard truth is that this isn’t limited to just former partners. You should avoid pictures with pretty much any other woman – even if it’s your childhood best friend or your sister who is a few years younger than you.
For a stranger swiping through your profile on Tinder, they won’t take the time to discern who that woman is. They’ll simply see another woman and not want anything to do with you.
A few pictures with friends are okay – but any photo with you and any other women should be avoided.
4. Flexing Too Much
Maybe you’re doing well for yourself.
Maybe you have a good job, a nice car, and you’ve been on some cool trips. It’s not a bad idea to put some of these pictures in your profile. This is an authentic expression of your real life.
But you can take this too far and eventually start looking like a stuck-up jerk.
This might not seem like a bad thing to you, but the more of a stuck-up jerk you seem like, the more likely you are to attract the kind of women who are attracted to stuck-up jerks.
Your dating profile might not be an accurate depiction of who you are, but it will be an accurate depiction of how people think you are. If you seem like a jerk, you will attract the kind of people who think it’s attractive to be a jerk.
You’ll attract bad romantic partners.
It’s not bad to “flex” every once in a while. It’s bad to build a dating profile around how “flexy” you are.
5. Being Too Negative About the “Dating Culture” in Your Bio
Between ghosting, swiping, and all the other unique challenges that we have to deal with today, it’s pretty easy to get upset about the structure of today’s “dating culture”.
It’s definitely not ideal, but it’s the culture that we have. It’s what we’re forced to deal with.
To whine about this culture on your dating profile of all places is perhaps the worst thing that you can do to increase your chances of getting dates and matches. It’s the equivalent of going to a costume party, wearing a costume, and then proceeding to walk around the room and tell everyone about how much you hate costumes (and costume parties).
Don’t be that person – especially not if you want to have a good dating experience.
Dating culture today isn’t ideal – I get it. Your complaints are valid.
The only question is: what are you going to do about it?
You can either complain, or you can go out into the world and be the change that you want to see. You can either complain about how hard dating is, or you can simply go out into the world and date better.
If you ask me, this is the way to go.
6. Being Too Generic
You shouldn’t lie about the things you enjoy, but you also shouldn’t be generic.
We all like Netflix, naps, and brunch. These “likes” are so common that it’s probably not a good idea to think of them as fundamental parts of your personality.
Don’t be boring. Don’t be generic.
There’s nothing wrong with liking television or going out on the weekend with your friends, but you shouldn’t build a dating profile based on these things. You should build your dating profile on the specific, unique interests that make you who you are.
Women aren’t looking to date carbon copies of the same men over and over again. They’ll be bored if they view you as identical or too similar to the other men on the dating market.
The play here is to have “an edge” without seeming like too much of an outcast – which I’ll talk about in just a second.
Have self-awareness and cultural awareness. Notice when you’re being too generic, basic, and bland. Have good taste.
Women appreciate a man with taste.
7. Looking Like a Loner
The “lone wolf” thing is not attractive.
Being a loner, having no friends, and having no meaningful social connections is a tragedy, not something that you should lean into when you’re trying to seem interesting for a dating profile. We’ll talk about how to seem truly interesting in a bit, but looking like a loner is not the way you do it.
Think about the messages that the pictures you’re using convey. If something screams “I’ve got issues!”, it’s probably not a good idea to use it for your dating profile.
If you’re smart enough to be edgy, you’re smart enough to figure out what a good dating profile looks like.
If you’re edgy, out there, and trying to seem that way on your dating profile, it will be more of a hindrance than something that will help you attract like-minded women.
Trying too hard to express your “lone wolf” mentality on a dating profile is going to go against everything that might make a woman attracted to you. You won’t attract women, and the ones that are into you are not going to be the kinds of women that you want to have around.
Make your dating profile in a way that makes you seem social and approachable and look good. For crying out loud – you get to choose what you put on the profile – why would you make it seem like you’re socially incompetent?
8. Using Obscenely Old Pictures
You might think that your body was at its peak in your senior year of college, and you might be right, but this doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea to use these pictures to inflate the number of likes you get on your profile.
This is a form of “catfishing”, and it’s one of the worst things that you can do for your dating profile.
The goal of a dating profile is to get dates, not likes on your profile or first dates.
If you look like an Adonis online but in real life, you look like Larry the Cable Guy, you’re probably not going to struggle to get first dates, but you will not get second dates, and you will not build relationships.
You won’t get what you want out of your dating profile because you aren’t being authentic.
You need to be honest with your dating profile. The more you deceive your possible partners, the less likely you are to keep them around.
9. Lying About Anything
I wish I didn’t need to add this to this list, but I have to because this kind of stuff happens all the time.
Men say they work somewhere, have a certain level of status, or that they want a certain kind of relationship, and it’s a lie. They fabricate their dating profile because they think that they can seem “the way women want”.
This is called being “a social chameleon,” and it’s an incredibly weak way to live your life.
Relationships that are built on deceptions do not last. Dating profiles built on lies do not achieve the goals of getting relationships and dates for the user involved.
It’s also just a bad way to live your life. Do not lie about what you do.
If you cannot write a good bio without lying about who you are, what you want, and what you look like, you shouldn’t be on a dating site. You should be working to improve your life.
10. Telling a Sob Story As Your Bio
Everyone has a reason to be resentful or to think that the world has given them “a raw deal”.
Most people on dating apps have had dates and relationships before. They’ve had breakups before. They’ve felt loss and heartbreak. You are not unique in having “a past”.
There’s sort of a mutual understanding between everyone on dating apps that we’ve all struggled with romance before, and we’re all looking for something better.
We also all understand that today’s dating culture is hard – I talked about not complaining about that in one of the points above.
However, I still see this all the time on the dating profiles that my clients write today:
They tell a sob story about their past instead of writing about bio about what they’re working toward and interested in in the future. This completely derails their ability to have any chance of new connections from their dating app experience.
I don’t care how “real” you think you are – your profile cannot be negative. Get that in your brain.
How to Build a Great Dating Profile
You might have read through the 10 points above and thought something like this:
“Building a dating profile just got a heck of a lot harder. What am I even supposed to put on there?”
And look, I get it. Dating is hard enough as it is, trying to create an optimal profile for your dating experience probably feels downright impossible.
The truth is, if you avoid the 10 dating profile mistakes above, there are only really 3 things you need to do for your dating profile:
- Having some quality pictures of yourself
- Writing a short bio about who you are and why you’re on the dating profile
- Being honest
The last one is key – but we’ve already talked about that a lot in this article.
A great dating profile is not some puzzle that only masters of attraction can create. It doesn’t require any special skills – except for maybe a bit of self-awareness and knowledge of your best angles for pictures.
It can be simple, and if you avoid these crucial mistakes, you can have a killer dating profile in just a few minutes.
Conclusion
The smartest men know that simply constructing a good dating profile is not enough to cure their dating woes.
See, you might be able to build a good dating profile by yourself, and you might even get some dates just by chatting it up with some ladies online.
But building quality relationships is an entirely different story. Most men struggle with this for years. Many men never actually figure this out – they give up.
This is one of the biggest tragedies of men in romance – they give up because they can’t make themselves happy.
But you don’t need to live that way. You can build great relationships, become a leader, and attract the perfect woman.
You just need some help.
That’s why I want to tell you about my exclusive coaching program, led by me and my team of experienced men’s coaches.
See, this program isn’t only going to help you break free from nice guy behaviors, build quality romantic relationships, and become a stronger Grounded Man. It’s also going to provide you with support from both myself and my elite community of men. Our coaches provide informed professional advice on how to play hard to get, among other important relationship principles.
We’re going to help you learn how to get to know people without being desperate, clingy, or weak.
No drama, no games, just growth. This will be the last self-development group you’ll ever need.
With this program, you’ll be tapped into your own “band of brothers” and you’ll also have access to the best training course for men in existence today, as well as weekly calls with my team of inspiring and determined coaches. There are no boys, no complainers, or dabblers, this program is for serious men only.
