Practical Internet Dating Tips

If you want to get more dates online, or if you're just looking to learn how best to go about dating online for the first time, here are some practical internet dating tips.

1. Pick one of the best/biggest online dating agencies

Dating online successfully is a numbers game. There's no point signing up to one of the smaller players in the market, unless you intend to sign up to one of the bigger sites too. You want your ad to be exposed to as many interested potential partners as possible, so don't get off on the wrong foot by signing up to a site that doesn't have the numbers to start with.

2. Create an excellent personals ad (the most critical of these internet dating tips)

Once you've joined a site that has a lot of potential partners the next important thing to ensure is that your ad makes the best of your attributes. That means great photographs and words that will captivate the people that read your profile and make them want to contact you. It also has a job to do to filter out the people that you don't want contacting you.

3. Women - prepare for a flood of hits

If you've done stages 1 and 2 right, it's possible that you're going to get hit on a lot buy men. How can I say this politely... you're not going to appreciate all of them. But you do have to wade through a lot of Mr. Wrong's to find your Mr. Right. If you go in with the expectation that you may get a lot of contacts, then you're less likely to be overwhelmed when it happens

4. Men - Women will get a lot more contacts than you do

That doesn't mean to say that the best way forward is to join the rest of the men and try to hit on every woman who's registered. It's still much better to pick the women you fancy, who you think will fit well with you and that you meet most of their criteria for. Then write them a brief note letting them know you'd like to chat online. If you don't get a response, just move on.

4. If it's not working for you...

Go back and check you did everything in steps 1. and 2. It's really very tempting just to bang up a profile and any old photo, even worse, no photo at all. If your photo and profile aren't up to scratch, then you aren't going to get the results you'd hoped for.

Some people have a weird understanding of what makes a good photo. If you're serious about getting the partner you really want, get a professional photo taken. That way, you know your photo is up to scratch.

5. Get some more non-internet dating advice

These internet dating tips are centred around the first part of the dating process - finding potential partners. There's obviously a whole lot more to getting dates with the people you find online let alone finding suitable partners to have a relationship with. If you want some more help, make sure you pick up our free relationship advice and read the dating advice already on this site.