How to Write a Dating Profile: 5 Steps to Online Dating Success

Successful online dating relies on your dating profile giving a memorable first impression. But, how can you let people quickly and easily get a true sense of who you are? Read our five steps to making your dating profile stand out.

If fellow online daters quickly identify something attractive or appealing in your profile, prospects are good for future contact. An unexciting profile that fails to instantly impress, however, will be swiftly overlooked and forgotten. There are so many dating sites in the modern world, each with its own tips on how to best present yourself. We wanted to ask the people that matter though, people who are actually looking to date! We asked 1000 EliteSingles members what attracted them to other members’ profiles and what turned them off.

Here are some of our top tips for ensuring your profile page fully represents what you offer.

Step 1: Be Positive

An upbeat attitude is essential if you want to win people over, so sit down to write your profile when you are in a positive frame of mind. Be interesting, distinguish yourself, and express your personality as much as you can. The self-descriptive parts of an online dating profile influence attractiveness much more than the fixed-choice questions, so ensure you take advantage of them. These clues to your personality are, alongside your picture, the main motivation for a potential partner to contact you. Introduce your personal qualities as strengths so that you are remembered positively.

READ MORE: New to online dating? Read our EliteSingles’ expert tips.

Step 2: Give Detail and Stand Out

A comprehensive description of your abilities, interests and goals will distinguish your online dating profile from the mass of others on the site. An appealing dating profile is best achieved by avoiding general statements and thinking carefully about precisely why you should be contacted. The way you describe yourself here allows other singles to have a small insight into your life and imagine being with you, so give a true snapshot of your life by writing expressively about who you are and boldly defining the type of relationship you want.

Step 3: Check Your Spelling and Grammar

Our EliteSingles survey revealed that in the UK, the most despised trait on an online dating profile is poor spelling and grammar. It isn’t just a turn off because it makes the person seem uneducated, it also suggests much more about them, their intentions and their commitment to the romantic journey.

If you go for an important interview, you ensure your CV has good spelling and grammar. Your dating profile requires the same attention because it becomes easier for online daters to skip past such profiles rather than “waste time” on them. EliteSingles Partner Psychologist, Relationship Coach Sam Owen, explains that, “Online daters will be asking themselves questions like, if his/her written language is sloppy, does that mean they’ll have a sloppy attitude towards me, not respect my time, turn up dressed shabby, forget commitments they’ve made to me if we started dating? This may seem far-fetched and a dater may not even make these judgments consciously but subconsciously their brain will make these calculations and easily ignore this person’s online profile as a result.”

READ MORE: Long-term relationship success begins with intelligent matchmaking. Read how we give our members the best chance at meeting the right person.

Step 4: Upload a Dating Profile Picture

Profile photos help online daters decide whether or not they want to make initial contact with a fellow dater and an attractive profile photo is the strongest determinant of whether your profile is generally appealing. 52% of our survey respondents said they wouldn’t open a profile without a photo. If you haven’t got a photo attached it makes it really hard for other online daters to connect with you as another human being. Owen explains that, “We build up an idea of a person’s personality by looking at their photo, how they have posed, their facial expression, the clothes they are wearing and much more. If you provide people with those cues they feel they can make more of an informed decision as to whether or not to pursue you.”

Steer clear of dating profile photo fails; in the UK, 33% of survey respondents said they’d turned off most from a photo that was too revealing, followed by wearing sunglasses (18%) and bad photo-shopping (16%).

READ MORE: How to take better profile photos – 6 steps to success

Step Five: Be yourself!

Ultimately the best photos are usually those that present you in a true and engaging way, so make the picture complement how you present yourself throughout the profile. 70% of our survey respondents would refuse a 2^nd date from someone they see has embellished and exaggerated in their profile.

Your online profile is there to help those you’re matched with find out who you genuinely are. Owen explains that “Most people also prefer humility in others, so bragging is often a sure-fire way to repel someone. If they think you’re a bragger or a blagger, they’ll feel unable to build trust with you and respect you, and you need both if you’re going to seriously date.”

Your profile is critical for your future relationship success; ensure it truly reflects the best of you are and gives the best impression you can to potential partners on the site.

Looking to go further to enhance your online dating experience? Together with partners, EliteSingles is here to offer you the chance to receive specialised support that’ll help to ensure you get the most out of your online dating journey. Whether you’re a newcomer looking to get an overview of online dating to help you get started, or you’re a veteran looking for some specialist advice, the dating coaching services at Maclynn are ideal for singles seeking a meaningful, long-lasting relationship!

About the author: Esther Moriarty

Esther Moriarty is an editor for EliteSingles.

See more articles written by Esther Moriarty