Peresonal Tips

Personals Tips
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Becoming a member of a personals site
Usually a good personals site won't make you fill out too much stuff to join. It is pretty annoying to be forced to fill out pages and pages of stuff. Avoid sites that do that, it is apparent that they were not designed very well. This site is pretty easy to join.

Your a member, now what?
So you have just joined a personals site, now what? Well, now you can check the site out. By now you should be able to see if this is a quality site or not. One of the best ways to tell this is by checking for advertisements. Are there a lot of ads on this site?

Creating your profile
What makes a good profile? Well, consider something: You are selling yourself. Although we don't typically like to think of ourselves as 'products', when it comes to online dating, that's exactly what we are. You can't expect people to be clicking on your profile and sending you email just because you want them to. You have to give them a reason.

The most important part of your profile
What's the number one most important part of your profile? That's right, your picture. Aren't we all so shallow? Well, no actually! You don't have to be a supermodel or anything. The point of a picture is to give your profile more of an impact.

Adding pictures to your profile
Adding a picture is seemingly the most difficult thing for people to do, both mentally and technically. Maybe you want to add your picture, but you are feeling a bit apprehensive? Who's going to see it? What if someone I know sees it? I don't want to be embarrassed! Forget about all of that. It's just not going to help you out at all. Your picture is everything here, not adding it would be a costly mistake. So just get over it already!

Things to keep in mind about your pictures
Most digital cameras produce very large picture files. The same goes with scanners. Most dating sites don't accept files that are overly large as it uses up a lot of server resources. You need to make sure your file is less than around 200k. If you find that your picture file is larger than this, don't worry. You can resize it yourself using one of the programs that came with your computer.

Searching for people
Most dating sites have at least a few searching methods to allow you to find people. These usually include some sort of basic search, where you set an age range and distance, and an advanced search, where you can set all kinds of criteria. One thing to keep in mind when it comes to advanced searches is the more criteria you enter, the less search results you will get back.

Getting too few results on your searches?
Are you running searches and finding that not many profiles are getting returned? There could be a few reasons for this. Are you living in a rural area? If so, there is not going to be as many members, so you will naturally get back fewer results. You may want to increase your distance to 100+ miles. If this is too far for you, online dating services might not be what you need. You may need to move! You have to be where the people are after all.

Matchmaking searches
Many dating sites have a 'compatibility search', or 'mutual match' search. This search type attempts to match you up with compatible singles by comparing your profile with others using an algorithm designed by the site. Each dating site has its own method of matching, some are better than others. The question is, should you trust a computer to decide who you belong with?

Subscription costs
There are a couple of different ways dating sites charge for their services. Most have time-based subscriptions. For example one month, three month, six month, or maybe even one year subscriptions. The longer service you choose the lower the monthly price will end up being. One month may be $24.95 and three months $59.95. We would recommend starting off with a month, just to give the site a try. You may end up not liking it, but if you do, you can always renew for 3 or 6 months later. Prices vary for each dating site out there, but on average they are around $20 per month, which is a lot cheaper than your average date.

Contacting methods
Most communication methods dating sites use revolve around email one way or another. Not all systems are created equal, in fact some are far superior than others. Below is a description of some of the messaging systems personals sites use.