After lots of experimenting , I finally came up with some great ways to increase your chances of getting dates on PlentyOfFish.com… and decided to write a blog post revealing this!

1: Think like a spammer. No, I don’t mean send lots of spam emails selling medications. But spammers are great at one thing - they create intriguing subject lines that often make you open them. And the same goes for emailing people on PlentyofFish.com. Chances are, you are competing with hundreds of other emails, especially for good looking women. So, you need to be creative. Just saying ‘hi’ or ‘how are you’ is probably going to get your email ignored - or deleted! Plus, you come off as being boring. One of the best things you can do is ask them a question about their profile, or make a interesting statement. Or use the trailing dots… to make them see the rest of the sentence. This will greatly increase the chance of having your email openend on PlentyOfFish.com… which is half the battle!

2: Try using the instant messenger on there. One of the things that worked the best for me was actually not even sending emails on PlentyOfFish.com! Yep, did you know that there is a built in instant messenger? Simply click on the ‘online’ link at the top of the website after you login. Then, just click on the ‘my city’ to find local singles in your area, that are also online at the same time as you. Then, simply click on any person that has the link under it named ‘IM user’. This will open up the instant messenger tool, so you can start talking to them live! And remember, as I said in #1 above, be creative in your first line, otherwise you might get ignored, or not noticed. This instant messenger got me way responses than email!

3: Use as many ‘good’ photos as you can. Would you email someone who doesn’t have a photo? Chances are probably slim. So, if you have no photo on your profile, why do you think people would email you either? You need at least 4 or 5 photos on your profile. No camera? Surely you have a friend that can take a picture and upload it for you. Its not exactly hard these days. And don’t just put random photos up. Don’t include pictures of you and your ex. Have pictures of you smiling, ones of you doing what you love, and have ones of you with your friends. This immediately seems more like a normal person. And no blurry shots - and worse yet - no old photos that don’t represent you! It will only cause problems if you meet them.

4: Use the ‘new users’ search. A great way to catch ‘fresh’ users, who probably aren’t jaded with lots of emails from weirdos, is to use the ‘new users’ link at the top right when you login. Simply click on that that and you will see all the new users within 50 miles of you. Email them… chances are higher these people will email you back. Definitely worked for me!

5: Use the ‘viewed me’ search. This feature is pretty good - it gives you a good indication of who is looking at your profile! If they have looked at you, chances are they were initially interested, but may not have known what to email you. So, click the ‘viewed me’ link on the top right after you login, then click on anyone you like the look of. Then, email and say something like ‘hey - noticed you were checking me out… were you too shy? lol’ or something along those lines. Works well for getting replies!

Bonus Tip… Try MySpace.com For Free Online Dating! Want to know another great place to meet people for free? Chances are that you already use it, but not for dating… yep, MySpace is actually great for meeting people for dates, if you know what you are doing. I wrote a free ebook all about it…
http://freeonlinedatingdirt.com/myspace-dating-secrets-ebook/

So what do you all think? Does anyone else have any tips for using PlentyofFish.com to get more dates? Feel free to reply below

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2: Collaboradate Launch New Wesite. This website, which lets you email users of other online dating websites, just relaunched. Looks better, and has some cool web 2.0 stuff like built in videos and mapping, but quite frankly, i would never use it again. Why? Because the only emails I have ever received from these people on here are spam and from women in russia. Has this ever worked for anyone? I would be curious to know…
http://www.collaboradate.com

3: Hot or Not Turning Free = Working! Yep, figured it would. This great free online dating service now has doubled in size since it went free, and now receives 20 million page views per day. Now thats a lot! I have always liked these guys, the perfect free online dating service!

http://onlinepersonalswatch.typepad.com/news/2007/06/for-hotornot-be.html

4: Online Dating Gets its Own TV Show. Well it was only a matter of time really. Its being made by ON networks and produced by ABC. Not exactly mainstream. I will curious to see what content is on there.  Its about advice for online dating, with success/horror stories. I would expect this to be heavily promotional to one of the big dating sites. curious to know which one. Maybe they can feature me, seeing as i am now a TV star?

http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2007/06/21/online-dating-gets-on-net-tv/

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I have actually been a fan of Kizmeet for a while now, and think its much better and more organized than Craiglist’s missed connection section, which is often pretty shady and seedy. Kizmeet is organized by category, like coffee shops and gyms, and has specific locations like Java Jones which you can post in.  Definitely worth using this service, especially if you are shy person and find it hard to pluck up the courage to go over and say hi to a potential ‘connection’ when you are out in a coffee shop or a bar or whatever.

I actually met the owner of Kizmeet too, very interesting entrepreneurial woman named Carrie and suggested they expand into free online dating - i.e. let the people that use the service meet the other people who have missed connections! The perfect next step if you ask me! Maybe I can help them do that.

Anyway, can’t wait to see this on interview on TV - when it goes live, I will post the link in here. Keep your eyes peeled…. and who knows. Maybe that missed connection I had in Java Jones will see the TV interview and contact me! That would be so funny.

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Great job Reactee, for helping me realize my dream of walking around with a geeky interactive SMS powered t-shirt…. that may get me more dates ;)  Go ahead - check them out, you can make any custom message you want on a t-shirt. Go on, let your creativity juices flow…

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1: Because you have to pay and become a subscriber in order to send and reply to emails, there is no guarantee that people can even reply to the emails you send them. I would guess only about 20% of the people on there are actually paying members. So that immediately reduces your chances of dating online and finding someone on there. So, you could see the person of your dreams on there, write them a wonderfully crafted email, but sadly get no response. Not because they didn’t like you, but because they aren’t a paid member, so couldn’t reply without paying $30 a month. Which leads me to my next point.

2: Yes, it costs $30 a month to use this ’service’. Fair enough its cheaper if you pay in advance (which is what I did). But that’s not exactly that cheap. PLUS they charge you more if you want to see if people have even read your email! This should be included in the basic monthly cost. And don’t forget Match.com is $30 more per month than MySpace Dating, which is free!

3: The built in email program is like something from the 90s. When you reply to emails, it doesn’t even show you the original email below that you are replying to! This makes it very hard to respond to what people have asked you, because you have to keep clicking ‘back’ to see what they said in their email. I don’t know of a single email program that doesn’t include the original email below when you hit reply. This immediately then puts you to a bad start - it doesn’t exactly inspire good free flowing conversation - something which is surely very importantly for a match-making service. Come on Match.com, this is an easy one to fix.

4: What happened to their built-in instant messenger? Years ago when I first used Match.com, they had a cool match.com instant messenger, which allowed you to chat live with other people online - great for connecting! But it’s not there anymore! Why did you take it away Match.com? When you combine this with #3 above, this really makes for bad conversation-starting. Please bring it back!

5: The people on there often lie about their photos. While this is not exactly Match.com’s fault, I increasingly found that people were using ‘outdated’ photos, which made the person look much better than when you meet them in person. A couple of women I met where ‘bigger’, and one I met looked much older than their photos. My advice? Always try and subtly ask how old someone’s photos are, and ask to get some newer ones if possible.

6: Match.com doesn’t make it easy to notify you of new matches. Fair enough, you can get email results for your saved searches. But you still have to look through all the results in the email, and hopefully notice new members occasionally - so its pretty easy to miss new matches. Match.com really should have a system to send you an email every time someone new matches your search, and email you details of JUST this new person - not everyone else that also has matched previously. That way, you see the new match easier and you can contact them immediately, and increase your chances of success.

7: Lastly, but very importantly. They fail badly at the whole ‘community’ thing - lacking options for profile personalization and ability to add friends, which is where online is going. Look at MySpace’s success - largely due to its ‘viral’ community aspects. The profile questions aren’t that bad at Match.com, and over the years they have improved the ones you have to answer. But why not make them customizable? They should give members a selection of questions that could answer. This encourages members to find questions they like and thus more likely to reveal great stuff about them. Also, users should be able to customize some elements of the look and feel of their member profile too. I guess Match.com are too concerned with their brand image to let users do this? Bad… again, look at the success of MySpace…

I would love it someone at Match.com reads this and replies to this. Help me get this in the hands of match.com by forwarding this to your friends and ‘digging’ this article using the yellow ’digg’ button above. That way hopefully someone at Match.com will come across it and hopefully we will get some answers! And make match.com a better place…

Anyway feel free to comment about your Match.com experiences too!

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They are keeping the paid membership for those of you who don’t want to see ads, and want to keep their premium benefits, like appearing higher up in people searches. They are also including free virtual flowers each month for paid members to send to potential matches.

So well will see how well they do - personally I hope it works because I have always loved the entrepreuneurial guys who run it, Jim and James. And its way better than PlentyofFish.com in my opinion (which looks way to amatuerish still)!

Anyway, if you haven’t ever joined them, now is a great time because its free!

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