Match.com

[roxyrlh]

In your experience, what is the best way to navigate this site. I tend to not be very interested in any of my daily matches and often find myself reaching out to "others " with little response. How can I improve my impression/contact ?

[glynn]

How are your pictures?? What does your profile say. Read tips that they give. Everything needs to be very positive with good face and body shots. Respond to people who respond to you even if it is to say you are not interested at this time. Keep a very open mind.

[roxyrlh]

I'm probably operating under very cautious standards as I don't want to give the wrong impression

[bullygirl979]

What do your emails that you are sending out say? I purposely but a few things in my profile (like I have a wicked slice in my golf swing) and then followed it up with "if you have any tips, email me. Please!" It was very easy to see who had read my profile and who was doing a copy and paste job. The banal "hi, how are you? What do you like to do for fun?" emails I just ignored.

[glynn]

Sept 28, 2015 14:32:52 GMT -5 roxyrlh said:

I'm probably operating under very cautious standards as I don't want to give the wrong impression

Be truthful and honest and throw it out there. You can back away if you are not interested, that is the beauty of it being online. Do not give out your personal contact  info or  identifying info in your profile. Be vague but honest.

I have had on for awhile and have not paid for it. On the 20th they had a free day if you put a picture up and I had several people e-mail me and a bunch of like for a picture that does look good if I have to say so myself. I am nothing special and hate pictures so I was a little impressed with myself. I took it off that night and I had several ask what happen before I was locked out again. I am still talking to the one who e-mailed me the most..... through my personal e-mail. He checks a lot of boxes except appearance and I am trying to be open and see what happens. He was not a no but a maybe. He ticks my other boxes so we are trying to figure out how to me in person in the next few weeks. I reserve my judgments until them.

[roxyrlh]

I'm very genuine in my emails when I reach out as I do read their profiles. Part of me wonders if it's a lifestyle difference ( divorced with two kids) most men in my category have children much older than mine so I wonder if they are tabling me because of that.

[alleinesein]

Match is hit or miss. I think a lot of it depends on your location and age group. I was on match for a year and had 1 person contact me and not a single response from people that I contacted. The emails I sent were definitely more than just the generic "hi, how you doing" variety and they tended to include things that were in the person's profile. One of my friends managed to meet someone on match within a month of joining and they have been a couple for almost a year. In my area there is a huge overlap between match and okc so it is entirely possible that a lot of the men on match do not pay for the site.

[Deleted]

This is such a hard one. I feel like so many people on the paid sites just have the free version where they can't view your email that I stopped putting any effort into those and did the free sites. Sure there is more to weed through, but at least you have something to weed through. I agree with not holding back and laying some "quirks" out there. I menton that I love roller coasters and skee ball. That has gotten me a lot of convos started.

[pinkdutchtulips]

Anything that was a generic 'hi how are you' got ignored. Anything that I wasn't remotely attracted to got ignored also. To date ... NO ONE has given me grief for not responding to them.

I vowed never to chase guys after my experience with xh- I don't send out any first contacts. If you like me, shoot me a message and let's see if I respond back.

[roxyrlh]

I definitely reach out, I make my interest known- it's the lack of response back that has me discouraged

[roxyrlh]

Thank you all for the advice !

[Deleted]

I agree with mp, it's a crapshoot. I think it's luck and timing.  In my life, I've probably done a total of 2 years of online dating.  I did ALL the sites..paid and free.  During that time I didn't have lots of action...i probably went on less than 10 first dates and waaay less second dates.  Yet some people I know went on one or more dates per week.  
I think I didn't fit the typical mold of what many of the guys in my area are into.
It's worth a try..it allows you to "meet" guys you wouldn't have met otherwise.  
I did meet my BF on a free site and we've been together about 2 years.

[Queen Mamadala]

I used match for very brief periods on a few separate occasions over the course of 2.5 years, on and off, OLD. While it was far better than PoF, I did not enjoy it as much as OKC. OKC was my favorite of all the sites I tried. I did meet people from all of the sites, mostly PoF and OKC, but definitely preferred the matching system/algorithm, overall vibe and profile layout of OKC. I met my husband on OKC, two previous SOs and a few others I briefly dated. I met some interesting, nice matches on PoF, many of which happened to also be on the other sites, but most were in the 2-3 date range, and one lasted about a month or so.

My profile went through a few different iterations. I kept the overall theme/vibe the same, which was pretty matter-of-fact, devoid of the usual cliches and snarky/sarcastic. I knew my target audience and made sure to include things about me/what I'm interested in, that would attract or appeal to this demographic. While parts were serious, other parts were light-hearted and sarcastic.

I don't know what Match's profile layout looks like now, but I remember PoF having a headline, and I played around with this and found it to be pretty fun and a great icebreaker. In the early days mine was something like "James Bond v. Jason Bourne" and "Predator v. Xenomorph" (sci-fi and action movie buff). At the time I met H on OKC the beginning of my profile made a reference to an indie comedy/sci-fi movie that true indie movie buffs or fellow nerds/geeks would "get," and I tied it into an excerpt of creative writing. I received a lot of messages, and many of them responded to the opening of my profile, and thought the majority of the guesses were wrong (H guessed right ), it was still fun and made for good conversation/interaction.

After 2.5 years of OLD I made sure to just be myself and have fun with it. Many suggest keeping it short (or, rather, not overlong) and sweet while avoiding cliches and common annoyances. My profile was long from the very beginning, and got even longer overtime. Like very long. Long can be okay/good depending on how it's written. H's was quite long, too. Longer than mine by 100 words. I preferred longer profiles. I rarely messaged anyone that had little to say in their profile.

OKC blog has a lot of good posts that addresses issues/dynamic of OLD. I don't know if you're on OKC, too, but I found their forum interesting at times.

oktrends.okcupid.com/

[Wanderista]

I never did Match. I do know someone who was successful with Match but she was also the one who got married and had a baby really quickly. I don't think she was indicative of most people on Match, she was just basically looking for a guy who wanted to get serious fast and who wanted kids soon. (Erm, that was not my approach but she seems pretty happy).

I had luck with OkC. I actually dated around on it some when I was younger and later met the guy I'm dating. I know that I put funny jokes in my style of humor into the "You should message me if ..." section of OkC. That made for an easy conversation starter.

Honestly though, I messaged my now BF on OkC through some random profile sorter like 3 months before he replied to me. I had totally forgotten that I had done it. I usually had the approach of only messaging guys who wrote me first. But on a random night around the holidays, I was bored and did the random profile matcher thing. I sent out messages to anyone who I thought was cute and interesting enough. I later remembered doing that because I only did it on two evenings on a whim. Then a while later I got a reply from my now BF and thought, "When the hell did I write this guy? Oh yeah ..." He had been traveling and not on OkC much. Anyway, we started talking but it took a few dates for me to want to date him.

So, I guess my message is that rules are good and it's ok to bend or break them too. You never know how you might get lucky and meet someone that you like.

[roxyrlh]

Thank you for all of the tips and stories, I hope to report back with my own

[roxyrlh]

If I " block search " does this mean they aren't able to see me