The goal of an online dating site profile is to entice other singles to click onto your profile, read through it, and make the effort to contact you to find out more about you.



You should not rush through this step. For a few fortunate people, writing is a very natural thing. They can sit down and look at a blank sheet of paper and within 15-20 minutes they are able to write a concise and well-written profile. These people are the exception.

Most of us fall into the second category of people who struggle with writing in general, let alone writing personal information about ourselves. This will be the most time consuming process of setting up your dating profile. It can take people many hours, if not days, to develop a profile that they're comfortable in posting.

By nature, most people are not good at selling. Sales is a difficult process, and it takes a certain personality to succeed in sales. Yet every dating site you visit tells you that you need to develop a personal profile that “sells” yourself to other singles. This is a tough dilemma for many to deal with.

Generally speaking, most people are modest about selling themselves. From an early age, our parents go to great lengths to tell us what an admirable personality trait humility is, and we are encouraged to praise and extol the virtues of others while at the same time downplaying our own actions. We are not comfortable with “bragging” to others about what our strengths are.

Let's take a look at this social trend we are taught, and let's use it to our benefit to develop our online persona. This will require you to step outside your normal comfort zone, but the benefits you receive from it will be quite substantial in the long run.

• Ask your closest personal confidents if they could take a few minutes of their own time to write down what it is that they like most about you.

Explain to them why you're asking them to do this, and you'll find that they'll be more than happy to help you out. Once you ask a few close friends, siblings, or even your parents to do this, you will find reoccurring themes that will continue to present themselves.

This will be embarrassing process for a many because it requires you to put yourself out there a little bit. You'll be letting others know that you're planning to use an online dating site. This might stop a few people from following my advice, because the anonymity of using an online dating service is a big selling point of the process.

Single people don't like to have discussions on why they're still single (again back to the issue of drawing attention to ourselves). If this describes you remember that you have little to lose. You've chosen a person who's gotten to know you really well and they like what you have to offer.

Remember, you are joining an online dating service because you want a change in your life. Your current model for meeting singles isn't working as you would like. You are tired of being alone and you are looking for someone to share your day-to-day activities with. A few minutes of what you perceive to be “embarrassment” with a friend who values you for who you are is really a small inconvenience.

The benefit of asking two or three people to do this for you is that the majority of your dating profile will be written for you. It will portray who you are and how people perceive you. It will be an honest representation of who you are, and research shows that honest online dating profiles tend to be the most successful.