Hey Guys,

I've been following the guide from Insider Internet dating and one of those things is to set up a dummy female account on a dating site so you can see the type of responses that women get. You then use this info to your advantage. It's sneaky but really does hit home on how lame most men are on the net. Do not be one of them.

I thought I'd share some stats from a recon profile I set up on a Swiss website. I live in the land of cuckoo clocks.

Setup on 30th September 2009

Profile viewed 244 times

Received mails/messages from 49 different men

Received 22 Heartbeats ( a bit like a Poke on Facebook)

Of the 49 men who mailed only 6 mailed more than once.

Of all the mails I would say that only 3 or 4 were worthwhile.

There were also about 5 mails in French (Switzerland is multilingual but the profile says nothing about any language other than English!)

Of the 49 men who contacted 25 did not have a profile picture.

Of the profile photos very few are interesting (The site moderates a LOT of things and it's hard to get anything creative past the 'guarddogs') One profile picture looks like a prison shot.

My conclusions so far...

A lot of men view proflies and don't bother to contact women. Is this some sort of weird online approach anxiety? Or they see the profile and are not interested?

The 'Heartbeat' thing is so wussy/weak. It's pathetic that men think women would be interested in one or two word obvious compliments. Why don't most of these men mail? Laziness? Fear?

The lack of a profile picture is a bit off putting. Women are more suspicious online. However make sure you have a good photo as the passport/prison ones are scary.

Now onto the main bit, the mails that women receive. Most are just ... uninteresting. A few were a bit unusual and strayed too far into the weird zone. One mail was received from a person who obviously had read IID Most mails were either one liners or quite long winded. Having re-read the longer ones most of them they start off well then go doubtful at the end (Lot's of use of words like "hope" and "wish" and "if". Very few are remotely funny or challenging. Very few actually say what they want next.

Very few men follow up their mails/messages. This is a no brainer. No response in 3 or 4 days then mail them again. Help them to sort the good guys (YOU) from the rest of the no-hopers out there. I've arranged 3 or 4 dates simply from girls/women I've contacted again. Do NOT harrass them though!


This info should be useful to anyone doing online game

Thanks for the tips.

I was wonder what to say in a follow up email after no response. Since you have already emailed her once with an opener do you want to use another opener?

It sounds like you have had some success with the follow up email. My worry is that this may come off as needy.

Hi 21doublej,

thanks for your comments. Without revealing all of what Insider Internet Dating suggests here's what you do.IID actively encourages you to follow a template for your mails BUT to personalise them so they do not come across as fake or bulk mails.

Yes there is a danger that a follow up mail would be considered needy. But let's face it the stats speak for themselves. Do it and you increase your chances of meeting, and it only takes about 30 seconds, if that, to post. NO downside in my opinion. My experience is that about 30% of women DO reply to the followup. Typically they will apologise that they rarely check their online mail through the site concerned . I had one lady say that she admired my persistence.

Here's a template (there are a few but I think this is good) straight from IID, adapt as necessary:-

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey there [her screen name],

I emailed you a week or so ago but I haven't
heard anything back yet....

(in this paragraph you need to mention that
its odd and make a funny comment about how
shes getting a zillion emails or something
funny happened to her from meeting some
loser guys - or a REALLY good one is to
mention something funny about ONE OF HER
PICTURES!)

Well I figured I'd email you one last time.

After I read your profile I got the impression that
you seemed like you were a cool chick (Could
I be wrong?)

If you're looking to meet someone then I
think it would be really foolish for both of
us if we never spoke at least ONE time.

Give a few (like 1) sentence about you
(your age, mention the qualities women really
like, do it brief, age, what you enjoy doing
etc.)

(Here's your close. You need to tell her what
you want her to do like: email me back, lets
meet for coffee, or a drink etc.)

your name

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I like IID as it really emphasises the need for a structure in your approaches online. You have to treat it like work in way. It makes you detatch and not spend 30 minutes constructing a 'perfect' individual email for each which gets ignored.

I think that's the art getting the balance between generic template and personalisation.

If you PM me i can give more info

Sky

Great advice. That template idea is good, I havent tried it yet but plan to start to. I checked out the IID blog and there is some awesome info on there on messaging.

Agreed! Very few men follow up and your stats are right on with what I found. There are a lot of good lessons you can learn by building a recon profile. For instance you learned that the better ones spent time on their profile, have pictures, actually write a good short to the point message, and send follow up messages.

Also, I'd like to point out that there are tons of articles out there on online dating. Many sites like Match, Eharmony, and others produce their own tips and advice for building strong profiles. Believe it or not they have good information because they want their site and you to be successful.

Good post!