How to Write the Best Online Dating Profile by Evan Marc Katz

You know what a typical dating profile looks like.

“Nice, smart, kind, warm, funny, honest, successful, ambitious, family-oriented. I like hiking, biking, movies, music, and travel. I love to laugh. I’m equally comfortable in a little black dress or in jeans and T-shirt. I like staying in to watch Netflix but love going out to dance all night at a party. I’m looking for my best friend, lover, and partner in crime for a long-term relationship. No players, addicts, liars, perverts, winks, or games, please!”

Did she misrepresent herself? No. Did she misspell anything? No. Did she distinguish herself from all the other women who said a slightly different version of the same thing?

Hell no!

So if you’re reading this  now and still maintain the belief that your   profile should be a cross between a resume and a diary, listen closely:

You’re doing it wrong.

Your profile is not a resume, nor a diary. It’s a personal ad. An actual advertisement that speaks directly to the deepest wants and needs of your desired customer.

In other words, you’re trying to demonstrate what the READER gets out of dating you.

Your profile is not a resume, nor a diary. It’s a personal ad. An actual advertisement that speaks directly to the deepest wants and needs of your desired customer.

When your profile contains lists of adjectives, hobbies, and cliches, you may be telling  the truth, but you haven’t  provided compelling evidence as to why someone should write to you.

In advance of Valentine’s Day, and in association with EliteSingles digital dating bootcamp, I’m going to teach you the special sauce that I teach my e-Cyrano writers.

If you aren’t aware, I created  e-Cyrano online dating profile writing back in 2003. It remains the world’s leading provider of professionally written online dating profiles that attract the kind of people you want to meet. Inside e-Cyrano is a questionnaire that asks very specific questions that produce unique responses from clients.

And while I can’t give you a free look inside e-Cyrano, I can tell you what I teach our writers. Follow these basic directions and you, too, will have a perfect profile to attract someone special into your life this Valentine’s Day.

1. Think of the 5 or 6 adjectives that describe you best. Then promise not to use them. Adjectives are boring. If I say I’m “funny, interesting, passionate, intelligent, and thoughtful,” couldn’t that equally describe you? Or my mother? Why write something that everyone else in the world could write?
2. Come up with a story that illustrates each adjective. A story is finite. It’s one-line long. It’s funny, interesting or memorable. And it tells a tale of your behavior in relation to a person you dated in the past. So instead of a line that implies you’re intelligent because you “graduated summa cum laude from Cornell and have an engineering background” you would instead think of examples of how a  FUTURE PARTNER benefits from your intelligence – using stories from your past.
3. For example, here’s what I would say about my own wife’s intelligence:
   1. “She explains the plot of both How to Get Away with Murder and A Midsummer’s Night Dream, since I can never seem to follow them.”
   2. “She’d make me a color-coded Excel spreadsheet to help me prepare for my fantasy football draft.  
   3. “She knows how to negotiate better deals for us at hotels and will always take  the phone from me to handle customer service issues.”

When a woman reads such stories and sees herself in them, she now has a compelling reason to want to write to me – and an easy opening to do so. Great profiles not only attract better prospects but they elicit more interesting emails as well.  

4. Once you connect these stories that show how your reader benefits from your generosity, sensitivity, tenacity, playfulness, and good character, you will have a profile unlike any other – one that tugs at his/her heartstrings and illustrates what life will look like with you in it.

It may sound complicated, but it’s not brain surgery – just basic marketing: think about what your customer wants and demonstrate how you can provide it.

Once you stop thinking of your profile as a sum of your qualities and accomplishments and start focusing on what you can GIVE to another person, you will see a marked difference in your online dating experience.

Once you stop thinking of your profile as a sum of your qualities and accomplishments and start focusing on what you can GIVE to another person, you will see a marked difference in your online dating experience.

But hey, that’s just my take on it after writing over 1000 online dating profiles. There are no shortage of other people who have something valuable to offer on the subject as well.

Your thoughts, as always, are greatly appreciated.