how old are you guys? i've always assumed that dating sites were more for women over 25.

the smaller the profiles the better chance of a reply I find.social me on facebook minimal to no profiles works better than anywhere else. most other places I have an account in case of unsolicited messages. I get adds on myspace since they added that people you may know bit. on pof i havent had any visible profile views for about 2 weeks, I had 2 unsolicited messages, 1 of which is looking good for meeting.

On POF,, you can hide your profile. Keeps the fat chicks from wasting my time. Plus if you are in a postion that you don't want to advertise what you are up to. It is a very good option.

I agree. But the number of times I have ran into a girl's profile that really had nothing there is more than I like to count. And so it becomes hard with such a profile to even say anything about it. So you are basically forced to say something about their picture(s). Another thing that I noticed with POF. Is that as much as the girls complain about guys not reading their profiles, I think some girls forget that they even put in their profile.
If you are talking about POF I have to disagree with you 110%. Because with POF you can see when they read and or delete it. So you know they read your "bullshit" or not. And I would more say that girl's read your message then look at your profile then decide if they like what they see.
Online game is for the most part is a number games. So in theory if you where to send out a generic message you should get some of the girls replying back. As statistically speaking this should happen. But if you read the POF forums you will also see that girls hate generic or form messages. They want a tailored message aimed at them. Which takes up more time. But you can do more with a tailored message than a generic message can when it comes to creating comfort and attraction. Personally I go for the tailored message, but thats me.

Girls complain about this; however, in every single experiment I've ever done (using short snappy openers) personalisation doesn't seem to matter - and actually seems to be a slight negative.

By short and snappy I mean things like

"I know we haven't met, but I think we should break up"
OR
"I'm planning a jewel heist, want in?"
etc
Neither of these openers are great - I have far better ones than these, but I'm not sharing

If I've ever tried to personalise any message of that kind I get a lower response rate than if I don't personalise at all.

My view on personalisation is that in most cases guys will mention something in her profile that absolutely everyone else mentions too - hence you don't stand out.
Saying that online game is a numbers game is very misleading. Online game is no more a numbers game than 'in field' game.

At least to me, the 'numbers game' phrase implies that pretty much everyone will get a similar response rate and all you have to do is message enough people and you will succeed. However, this is not true.

Response rates can vary massively as can close rates - depending on your level of skill. As I said, when I started out on PoF I got 2% reply, 0% close. I now get 70% and 40%. I would say that online game is an improvalbe and learnable skill.

And yet girls on POF at least also complain about getting the same type of non personalized messages.
I would never use those on POF, maybe on MySpace when I was younger.
Interesting. My personalized messages tend to have a higher response rate than my generic ones do.
True. But the key here is to use her profile to your advantage. A lot of guys are either try to relate to what the girl says or bring something up that she mentioned in her profile. But if bring something up that is in her profile without even mention it at all, at least in my experience, you will have a higher response rate.

How is it misleading? The more messages you send out the more responses you will get statistically speaking. In field you have more control of the situation and have a much greater chance of closing than online. As oline is send message and look for a reply. In game its instant. Yes to a degree in field is a numbers game. But I don't think it is as nearly as much tho.

Take it from someone who's spent a lot of time Online. It's a numbers game pretty much. It's just like in-field. Except, the better you are the better you do, and the less numbers it takes. Don't beleive me, okay believe another expert.

Sean Messenger on Online Dating
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/WFksl_ZO9rY&hl ... ram><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WFksl_ZO9rY&hl ... 2=0x54abd6" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

_________________
Been around the world twice, Talked to everyone once...

I hate to be negative because I may be doing the wrong thing but I've used a number of lines that others have posted (that others liked) and they havent worked at all. I edited those a little by the way. When I did add someone, I just said something like "whats up, sorry about the random add by the way". I know "sorry" is a terrible word but ALMOST everyone responded to this instead of some story/line. I've been using this on girls on myspace from ages 18-20 by the way.

RE: Numbers game

I get the sense our differences here are largely definitional and come down to how you interpret the phrase "numbers game". My understanding of the phrase is that it means that the only or major way you succeed is rolling the dice as many times as possible AND that there is nothing more to it than that. Hence I disagree that it is a useful phrase to use.

I certianly don't think it is any more or less of a numbers game than infield. I get a better close rate online than I or my friends ever get infield. There is no way I'd day2 close 40% of the girls I approach in a bar, but I can get a 40% day2 close with girls that I message (By day2 close I mean have a girl I'm talking to agreeing to a specific time/date/place to meet). Although you can't calibrate instant by instant with voice tone and body language you can calibrate through very precise word by word selection to a level that would be near in possible in a club.

RE: Openers
I don't use those openers either (and did say that they weren't great) - they are just generic examples of the type of one line emails I was testing with.

RE: Personalisation

I'd be interested to see examples of what you're talking about. I can see that a personalised long message would be better than one that is a long un-personalised message.

However, my style is for one-liner, or at least very short openers. To give an example of the kind of personalisation I'm talking about, the generic standard opener...

"I'm planning a jewel heist. Want in?"

In my experience gets better results than...

"I'm planning a jewel heist. Want in? I could do with a girl who X" where X is something from her profile.

When I was testing that particular opener ages ago my figures were 10% on the first and 5% on the second.

As I said, I have much better openers - but that is one I kept the figures on when I was experimenting!

with something so simplistic, and the difference in responses, it implies there's something unexpected going on in the recipients minds. A perception of some kind.....

maybe, they're unimpressed being defined by a single characteristic.

I think that my original thinking was wrong. I don't really give a shit about reply rates. I want reply per hour of my time.

So even if I was getting 5% replies with personalized messages, and 2% with generic ones, if I can write generic ones 10x faster, it's still a major win.

Now I just write one good message and post it to 50 girls.