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Get the edge over your dating competition and attract more desirable dating prospects. The UK’s leading dating profile writing service. You’ll be in good hands with our dating profile experts. Our team of writers have already helped over 4,000 singles land more dates with an improved dating profile. The aim of Dating Profile Generator is to help you fill that all-important free text field on online dating sites. Give us a feel for the kind of person that you are, and we'll write a description of you in the tone we think you'd take if you bothered to write it yourself.
You might say Steve Dean is a professional dater. Since the day nine years ago when he turned to “the apps” to escape the tiny dating pool in his one-square mile Pennsylvania town, he has gone on a date at least once a week. A decade ago, one romantic partner scanned his phone, which had at least 50 dating apps on it, and mused that he could be a consultant for the dating industry.
It turns out, he could. Not long after, Dean founded his company, Dateworking, which advises dating companies such as OKCupid but also offers services to individual daters. Through one-on-one sessions and monthly retainers, he helps clients reach their romantic goals, dispensing what is often brutally honest advice.
Through my past reporting about the dynamics of online dating, I had seen social media chatter about people like Dean, elusive “profile doctors” who could build you a successful dating profile for a set price. Some advised their clients on wording and choices; others went as far as having text conversations with potential daters, pretending to actually be their clients, only handing off the baton when it came to an in-person meeting.
I imagined profile-doctoring to be a shadowy, secretive industry, with the consultants whispering advice like a version of Will Smith’s character in “Hitch.” But when I went looking for the profile doctors, I found dozens of them, all willing to talk openly about what they’ve learned about the quick-hit world of online dating and often describing themselves as part-therapist, part-matchmaker, part-strategist, and part-artist.
This is how an industry evolves. Online dating has exploded in the past decade, with thousands of platforms available, tailored to different subgroups or goals. The firm Market Research.comestimates that the industry will have a $3.2 billion valuation by 2020. It all demands a new set of skills and a new language of creative expression — which has created a new area of professional expertise. If online dating has entirely shed its stigma, the use of dating consultants might not be far behind.
No matter what kind of online dater you are, professionals are ready to help. Most of the profile consultants I spoke with said a big portion of their client base is divorcees and widowers over age 50, who have arrived back in a dating world that looks nothing like the one they left behind. They also serve millennials, though, and people looking for non-traditional relationships. More men seek their services than women, since, they said, women generally receive more online matches. Some of their clients are introverts. Some are highly successful business people who would rather pay someone to manage the dating process than to spend time on it themselves.
“She was finding exactly the kind of man she didn’t want to find because her profile was built to attract them.”
Profile doctors aren’t cheap, though; the ones I spoke to charge anywhere from $100 for a one-hour phone call to $5,000 for an all-inclusive package. They pitch their expertise as a way to make dating less painful, less time-consuming, and more successful.
“You have to recognize that a lot of dating apps are there to consume your attention and money, and to force you into dopamine loops,” says Dean, who describes himself as non-monogamous, suggesting his deep experience with many dating platforms. “I tell people, ‘Hey, be glad you’re talking to me first, because I’m going to save you a thousand hours of misery!”
A profile doctor’s first step, Dean says, is getting clients to figure out what they want: A long term relationship? A casual hook-up? A parent for their children? Next comes figuring out which platform best fits the goals, and explaining the strategies behind certain algorithms.
Then it’s on to evaluating a client’s existing profile — which often involves dispensing some brutal honesty. Dean was recently approached by a client who wanted a monogamous relationship but wasn’t having any success. When Dean looked at her dating profile, he realized what the problem was: her pictures.
“I was horrified,” he says. “It was just a bunch of intense modeling shots with a lot of cleavage, her staring in a sultry way into the camera. She had lots of little quippy one liners, like “How about we get drinks?” and “I’m always up for hopping on a flight!” She was a caricature of a person with no vulnerability. Everything was just coded to say, ‘I’m desperate for attention.’”
In other words, she had misunderstood the root goal of an online dating profile, which is to tell a story about yourself that attracts a specific kind of person in response.
“I had to work with her on using photos that tell stories, suggesting that she was a real person and not just an Instagram model. Modeling shots aren’t useful unless you want to provide masturbatory material for guys who are scrolling at 2 a.m.,” Dean says. “She was finding exactly the kind of man she didn’t want to find because her profile was built to attract them.”
That’s a common mistake, says Erika Ettin, the founder of A Little Nudge. Like Dean, she was an early adopter of online dating. A trained economist, she found herself making spreadsheets that helped her track her successes and failures against her methods. Eventually, she quit her job and started her own dating-consulting business.
Successful profiles, Ettin learned, feature high-quality photos that show how you actually look. She sees how things go wrong, as with one male client in his mid-50s, who was living in New York and called her to find out why he wasn’t having success.
“When he showed me his profile, it was clear why,” she says. “His photos weren’t doing him any justice. He had a lot of group photos where someone else looked more attractive than him. And his profile had grammar mistakes. You only get one first impression!”
Ettin and Dean also tell clients to use phrasing that invites conversation; Ettin calls it “message bait.” For example, she advises, don’t just say you like to ski; instead, cite a favorite mountain, so a would-be match might have a reason to respond.
“Try something like: ‘I’m obsessed with creative adventures. What’s your idea for something we could do on a Saturday?’” Dean recommends. “You’ll get great responses and you’re empowering people to come up with something creative and unique. Without that, they’ll just comment on your physical characteristics.”
As with any good story, there is power in the details, says Eric Resnick, the owner of ProfileHelper. “I don’t care what you do for a living, I want to know why you like it — or what you would rather be doing,” he tells clients. “I don’t want to create a recipe-list profile. I don’t care if you’re adventurous. I tell people: Talk to me about something adventurous that you actually did.”
Resnick also scans the profiles of his clients’ potential dates, reading between the lines for hidden clues and red flags. Someone who asks for a match with “basic human considerations” like loyalty and honesty — or says he’s looking for a “one-man woman” — has likely been cheated on, he says. Sometimes, he sees profiles that have what he calls the “used car pitch.” “They say, ‘Here’s why you should love me,” Resnick says. “And this is a person who is telling you they have zero self-worth. They might have bravado, but they’re really a scared little girl or boy inside.”
Resnick also tells clients to look at a profile and ask: Do I fit into this person’s life? Once, a client came to ProfileHelper asking how to connect with a woman he thought was perfect for him. Her profile said she loved travel — and the client told Resnick that he, too, loved travel, so they had a lot in common. But when Resnick really dug in, the client admitted that while he idealized travel, he had never really traveled himself, apart from two trips to Las Vegas. The woman in question traveled weekly.
“I said, ‘You’re looking for a match that isn’t there,’” Resnick explains. “This is a woman who travels habitually, whose bag is packed. And you don’t even own a bag! I had to help him realize, she isn’t looking for someone like you.”
Resnick and the other profile doctors I spoke with agreed on one seemingly-contradictory key to the matchmaking process: You should actually hope you get rejected, and often. Dean says most people make the mistake of trying to be likeable, which can mute their unique attributes and bring them thousands of matches that aren’t ideal fits.
“You want people to reject you in a great quantity, because you’re not going to be compatible with a lot of people,” he says. “You just want a few people who will be more closely matched, and this requires you to not be generically attractive and acceptable. You must be compelling and unique.”
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Resnick focuses much of his time ghostwriting new profiles for people after a 60- to 90-minute phone conversation. He sees himself as a kind of translator of the human soul, someone who can listen to you talk for a while and then sum you up in a short blurb. And he says he’s been perfecting the process for years.
Not every dating consultant will go so far as to step into another’s shoes online, though. Dean prefers not to write clients’ profiles wholesale; he wants to give people advice they can deploy themselves. And he almost always refuses to send messages pretending to be someone else.
But Ettin says assuming another persona is a fascinating study of human behavior, one that makes her job exciting. “I’m an 80-year-old man one minute, and a 30-year-old woman the next,” she says of her consulting process, which often involves engaging in conversations on behalf of her clients all the way up until the in-person date. “I’m not emotionally connected to these daters so it puts me in a good place, and I get to shield my clients from what happens when people don’t respond to them.”
It’s hard not to hear all of this and wonder if the people your friends are talking to online are actually the people pictured in their profiles. But dating consultants say their advice helps daters with little experience present themselves in a whole different medium.
To them, the work is not deceit so much as intensive editing, or writerly expression. Maybe the online dating profile is a new art form. And if that’s the case, every writer could use an editor.
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Online dating gives you endless opportunities to meet potential dates, because the pool of people is always being replenished. You can search for someone who shares your passion for the arts, or someone who sees marriage and a family in their future, or someone who wants to dabble in dating after losing a spouse. To help you attract the type of person you’re interested in, I want you to maximize your chances of getting noticed, and that means making an amazing dating profile.
Here are six dating profile tips that will help you stand out from the crowd:
1. Make it conversational.
We’re all drawn to authenticity and sincerity. You want to make your potential date feel as if you’re talking directly to him or her. That means, the more you can make your online crush feel an instantaneous connection with you the greater the likelihood he or she will want to message you. In your profile, you could even ask a question like, “Are You ready for the loudest screams when we ride a roller-coaster?” or “Wouldn’t it be exciting if we could share our love of museums by going to three in one weekend?” By writing your profile in the same style that you use to chat with your friends, you’ll be giving your potential dates a sneak peek at what dating you would really be like.
2. Keep some of your thoughts to yourself.
You don’t have to spill your guts and divulge everything about yourself in your dating profile. Honesty is a must, but full disclosure is not recommended. Because you’re promoting yourself, shine the spotlight on your accomplishments, talents, and everything wonderful about you.
Don’t share that you were fired from your most recent job, had gastric bypass surgery, or have $5,000 in credit card debt and don’t go into the gory details of your last two breakups. And whatever you do (even if you’re thinking it) don’t say online dating is your last resort. Essentially, you are insulting anyone looking at your profile.
3. Headlines sell newspapers. (And you.)
In real life, your username is your smile, your scent, your flirty laugh, and your body language. In digital life, your username is your chance to make an unforgettable first impression and capture your crush’s attention so he or she will be intrigued to read on. It could be your only chance to get him/her to go from viewing you to contacting you.
Take your time while selecting your username, because your username equals your personal brand. It sends a message about who you are, and it will either attract your ideal match, or make them run away as quickly as possible. Your job is to be your very own marketing and public relations manager.
Online dating reminds me of window shopping—you only stop and take notice when the shoe looks like it would be a perfect fit. Your username paired with your photo is the best way to go from the “online racks” (only looking) to the “online cash register” (definitely clicking). Because you only have a nanosecond for those viewing you to stay or leave, creating an intriguing, unique, fun username is essential.
Online dating is competitive. I wish I could give all of you a unique username, but since I can’t, here are some suggestions:
- Let’s start with an iced decaf cappuccino
- Rx for Love
- Country man turned City Slicker
- Lifetime Warranty
- Passionate for Sailing
4. Stay away from what you don’t want.
This is so hard to avoid. I know you want to lay your cards out on the table. You may think that if you say no drugs, no cheaters, no liars, no hook ups, no players, no one who eats meat, no one who is self-employed, no one without a credit card, etc., you’ve found the perfect way to find someone who has the qualities that you think you want. Unfortunately, even is something meets your list of qualifications, they’ll probably be turned off by it too. When daters see someone listing what they don’t want they usually think, “I’m sure you will find something wrong with me too and who needs someone who has a long list of don’ts.?”
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5. Create an imperfect profile.
When your profile is honest and accurately describes who you are, it guarantees that your date will look forward to meeting the real you. How wonderful is that! Instead of agonizing on trying to write the perfect profile, how about writing an imperfect one and explain why? It’s a very unique and different approach. Here is an example of what you can write:
I have been working on my profile for days. Every time I think it’s “perfect” I wonder what you are going to think of it(me) and will you want to meet me.? So, after another week obsessing over what to write I decided that I was going to tell you who I really am, and even if you go on to the next profile, that’s okay because we all aren’t going to click.First let me tell you about some of my blemishes; I can be a picky eater, I prefer not to argue, I need a lot of affection and I can be a worrier. Phew…. I am glad that is out of the way. The part about my hobbies. I am not athletic, don’t have any collections and prefer not to do daring kinds of things like ziplining. But, I promise you that I am one of the most interesting, curious, down to earth, fun, fascinating, warm, adventurous, caring and humble (LOL) people you will ever meet. The funniest things make me so happy, winning $5.00 on a scratch off lotto ticket, finding my long lost favorite pair of shoes, hanging at an outdoor free concert, and getting an I love u text for no reason! I would do anything for the love of my life. It would be fabulous if you have a huge heart and smile to go along with your quick wit, your inquiring mind, your adorable face and body, and if most of your interests are even different from mine. How about going for burger or frozen yogurt with yummy toppings to see if we click! Talk soon.
The bottom line is that you pay a price if you’re not authentic and frank. An you increase your chances of being disappointed because your date was expecting someone else to show up.
Always remember that your goal is to capture your crush’s attention instantaneously so he/she will want to contact you. This is your moment to sing your own praises, show your wit, be a window to your soul, and demonstrate your approachability.
You want those viewing you to say wow and visualize how you will capture their heart. Self-promotion with a touch of humility and tenderness is the ideal blend.
Fran Greene LCSW is a nationally renowned relationship expert. Flirting is her hobby, love is her passion, and her dream is for you to have a loving relationship. She has a private practice working with singles who want to maximize their social life and couples who want to improve their relationships. And she’s also an accomplished online dating coach. To learn more about how to get back into the dating world check out her newest book Dating Again with Courage & Confidence. She is also the author of The Flirting Bible. Visit Fran at www.frangreene.com.
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