Since my divorce 2.5 years ago, I've been honing my skills on these websites and done very well, and also been very disappointed - I've documented many of my encounters elsewhere under my former alias for those interested.
This thread is long and I haven't followed along until recently however just wanted to post some of my experiences with match and eharmony since my divorce to anyone who may find it useful. There's a lot of guys here, who know more than me - but I would put the count of women I've gone out with at around 50 in 2.5 years and the women I've "closed the deal" with at around 30% of that which is a decent success rate considering many of those un-pursued flings were of my choice...as a matter of fact, I've actually only gone out with 2 people I met at a bar without the assistance of an online site - so this can be exploited.
Let's begin:
Setting Up Your Profile:
A lot of this depends on what you are looking for. Are you just looking for some strange? Or are you seriously looking for the mother of your children? I'm not looking for the mother of my children so I can't speak to that unfortunately.
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Photos: You've got to have a lot of them and you need more than just head shots. Make them recent and make them photos in which you are clearly having a good time. The photo taken BY you OF you is a tool move, especially if you're sitting in your car. I don't know why dudes do this. This is a chick thing to do. Get a photo of you standing with 4 of your buddies out at a bar, on a golf course, with a drink in your hand and smiling from ear to ear like you are having the best ####### time of your life. This tells the woman you are a fun guy and projects that you are young and vibrant and can probably last a long time in the sack. Again, no SELF photos - this tells the woman you are vain - ladies like a confident guy, not a stuck up guy.
If you are looking for strange, no photos with you and a dog under 20 pounds please (sorry Woz). You're only going to attract animal lovers who are too picky to find a guy and that's why they're using an online dating site to begin with. Lose the dog photos. These types of photos are cringe worthy for both guys and girls looking to get laid and project the opposite of sex appeal. If you must have a prop with you in the photo, have someone take an action shot of you shooting a basketball, or with an oversized mug of beer in your hand from Dave and Busters. Now you're fun and athletic. Only girls looking for their future husband want a sensitive guy - there's a LOT of women on these sites looking for a tryst, moreso on match than eHarmony FWIW.
Variety in your photos. Put one up of you in some sort of athletic gear or doing something athletic. Make sure there is a full body, if you have blue eyes make sure one accentuates your eyes; if you are a nice dresser, put a full body photo of you wearing your nicest get-up. This is really important...get yourself a photo with a HOT chick. I know a few hot chicks but don't really have any as friends, so when I'm out at a bar and there's a really hot waitress or patron I simply walked up to them and say hello and ask them for a photo since your friends are always busting your balls about never talking to women at the bar. Works every time. Just assure them it's not going on facebook, you're just texting it to your buddy Mike who is always ragging on you for not having enough confidence to talk to a woman. Get this photo up on match or eharmony. I promise you, 75% of women out there will look at the female in the photo and analyze whether or not she's good looking or not and then measure herself up to your companion in the photo. Feel free to put a caption in there: "Me with my friend Jen at the bar". The hotter the women you hang around with, the hotter the women you will attract.
When you do have photos of friends, make sure you don't have 10 photos of you and you're zit-faced, freckled, glasses-wearing, overweight good bud Ralph. Ralph might be the type of guy to drive out to you on I-95 when you run out of gas and help you out, but you need to exude popularity, and being in a photo with a bunch of
s is going to hurt your image. It sounds harsh - but it's true. The objective here is strange, not showing people you are a humanitarian by befriending strange looking humans.
Show your teeth in the photo. Chicks always dig guys with nice teeth. If you have nice teeth, show them when you smile. If you're teeth aren't bright, buy some whitening strips and get a photo up there 30 days later.
Finally, get a photo of you doing something wild and exciting: surfing, parasailing, sky diving. It doesn't even matter if it's you, just find a photo of some dude surfing where you can't see his face. She'll never notice - just tell her you love to surf and every time she invites you to the beach, feign sickness.
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Your information section: Again, this entire post is assuming you're looking for a fling, not a wife.
Height: Always add an inch or 2 - she won't notice if you wear high top basketball sneakers anyway. I personally search for women at least 3 inches shorter than me and I've never been called on adding 2 inches if I follow this.
Interests: Don't put "book club" "chess" or "reading" here. I don't care if you've never been on the beach in your life, put "surfing", "playing basketball", and "going to concerts". You're projecting that you're an outgoing guy who isn't like every other guy on the planet who is really just interested in watching the Yankees and playing poker. You actually get out there and go surfing and play sports.
Want Kids: Someday is the answer here - no need to come off desperate here and say "Definitely". Some girls get scared away if you think your only focus is getting married and having kids. There's a LOT of overbearing/desperate guys on these websites who push the envelope with commitment and talking about having a family, not necessary - if you fall in love, those discussions will come organically.
Ethnicity: Feel free to go with "other" here if you're bold enough. Most Caucasians can get away with telling people they are a quarter puerto rican or something of that nature. It's a progressive world out there, chicks would love a guy that's not a cookie cutter white boy from the suburbs. You can play this off as you get more comfortable.
Smoke: The answer is no way, even if you do.
Political Views: Just go with middle of the road here.
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About you:
I promise you, no greater reward will come than using a LOT of words to describe yourself here. The male profiles out there are generic and usually one paragraph long filled with terrible punctuation and misuse of homonyms. To the good looking women out there, that are also smart, this is a turn off. Be detailed and try to stray from typing the generic crap that everyone types. Everyone types in "I'm looking for someone that can make me laugh and be my best friend." Just get creative here and use as much of the space as possible. This will keep a girl reading, and make you stand out from the others who are just chasing a good time. Talking about the feeling of riding a wave for the first time, or crushing 50 hot wings in a hot wing eating contest to illustrate how daring and wild you are. You've got to be a standout in this regard. Big time.
Her profile:
Her Photos: It's been said a million times here, but no full body shots = no chance. I've learned the hard way after showing up to many first dates thinking I was walking into a situation with a cute girl with maybe 10-20 extra pounds and been absolutely shocked at the disproportionate size of the assets the female chooses NOT to show in the photos. If she has photos of her with her back to the camera and not facing front, she has an enormous stomach. If she has photos of her waist up, she has gigantic legs. If there's a photo of just her eyes, she likely looks like Gargamel from the Smurfs. Just move on - please trust me on this.
Also, try to find a girl who is very attractive but doesn't have the most attractive friends in her photos. Those friends probably have ugly boyfriends, and when you meet her friends for the first time, they will all convince her how good looking you are.
Her "Body Type": - It seems like in almost EVERY instance a girl always upgrades her body type status one direction to the positive side. I've met girls who claim to be "about average" and are NOWHERE close to "average". If they say "Curvy", they aren't Kim Kardashian curvy, they are "lumpy" at best. "A few extra pounds" means at least 50 extra pounds. Obviously there are exceptions, however, compare with the photos. If you see an array of photos that look like they are 5 years old compared to others, go with whatever appears to be the most recent. Obviously they do this to come off as more attractive. If you aren't into bigger women, then just stick to "Athletic and Toned" or "Skinny/Thin". If you are into bigger girls, than just ignore this entire post and more power to you - to his, his own and god bless ya.
About her: The opposite of what you're profile should contain. Look for something short and sweet. If she didn't take the time to fill it out completely or type an essay on who she is, she probably has lower standards. If she writes 3000 words in the "About Me" section, she's likely wound way too tightly to ever navigate quickly enough to close the deal. She's taking the online dating VERY seriously and weeding out the weeds and she's going to be highly selective with you unless you fit all of her criteria. I try to stay away. If you're looking for a long term relationship, I think the longer profiles are the way to go - that means they ARE serious about meeting someone for a long term thing and are a better match for a commitment-minded guy.
eHarmony vs. match:
I've spent extensive time on both. If you're looking for it to take a month to meet a girl, eHarmony is great. If you're looking to exchange maybe one or two emails and then go have a drink, you've got to go with match in that case.
The girls on eHarmony are on there because it is definitely more of an intensive process. You have 4 steps of "guided communication" that can take forever to get through. A lot of the girls on there aren't as outgoing either since eHarmony keeps your profile hidden from the general public while match does not. There are exceptions and I've had success with both sites, but far more success with match as far as getting to the end game quicker.
Match is also great because you can actually search for a body type, height, marital status, etc. It's cheaper too, if you're looking to save a buck. Match is the way to go for newly single guys looking to get out in the world and experience things.
Getting a date:
1 - If she contacts you, don't respond right away. Always give it 24-48 hours in between getting back to here. It screams desperation otherwise.
2 - NEVER take a girl to dinner on a first date; ALWAYS "meet for a drink or two" as the first meeting point. This is non-negotiable. With a drink or two, things are VERY open ended - you aren't confined to the cook and waiter's time frame and can be loose with how long you stay. If you date enough, you WILL run into the occasional person who looks nothing like their photos and weighs about 50 pounds more. It's happened to me, and those are the nights where I grab a drink to be polite and set the expectation that it's JUST a drink because that's what you feel most comfortable with. After one drink, simply let them know you don't like to drive drunk so one drink is your limit and you're looking forward to an actual date with them later in the week.
Let's say best case scenario, and the chick really is smoking during your drink meetup. You can stay for 2-3 drinks. You can also sit at a bar with them and read their body language a lot easier. If you think she's interested, try "accidentally" touching your leg to hers and see if she pulls away. It's a good sign if she doesn't. It's a good sign also if her bar stool ends up practically facing you as opposed to having the close off body language of facing the other way. You can't get this read sitting across from each other at a restaurant. This is really important to me. You can tell so much by doing the "have a drink or two and sit next to each other on our own time constraint." If it's going REALLY well, suggest you go somewhere else - another bar perhaps. Do your research and if there's another bar close by with a band playing, mention that. If she's totally up for it, you are well on your way - and she's also a little drunk by this time hopefully.
I can't stress the "meet for a drink" enough as a first point of meeting. I've closed the deal on night one before, but I've also been able to only waste 10 minutes of my life by using this method and hightailing it out of there is the girl was nothing like she represented herself to be.
There's obviously a science to this, and I'll probably add more to it as I think of things. I've ended up in Long Term relationships too just by approaching these things just like described above. Sometimes it happens, but it's much better that way if you approach things nonchalantly with the mission of hooking up first in my opinion.
I never understood this way of thinking unless you are dead set on meeting someone to get married.
always makes me 
dont know where else to air out my emotions...drunk thread?!
sooner than later!
. I'm thinking to myself awesome, at least she recognizes I should be thanked for my gentlemanly behavior. But for like 15 minutes she won't do it! I try nicely requesting it, suggesting she has me all interested in seeing how good she is, etc. She keeps shaking her head though and telling me I'll "be ok." At this point I'm thinking this is sadistic and consider telling her I'm not twelve and need a bit more than touching to enjoy this. I don't want to push too hard because my guess is she'll progress when I see her next, and I had exhausted all normal requests to the point of begging.
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