On the Internet, English majors win!

When you are in a nightclub or bar, you don’t know much about the person whom you are considering for a conversation. I am an excellent dancer (I am a VIP at a Salsa club) and a computer genius, but I don’t wear computer logo apparel to a nightclub very often. I am essentially competing vs. every other guy who is there for her attention. He can be a drug addict, a smoker, a construction worker, a CEO, an accountant, a criminal…

To me, that’s highly inefficient. I’d much rather be with someone who ignores every other guy.

On the Internet, I have a very clear advantage. I can establish my unique value proposition with the girl and then take her to my favorite night club. Once there, she has sufficient information about me to be disinterested in just about everyone else. This is how English majors win. I am not one, but my creative writing abilities are good enough.

Think about the last time you read a dating profile.

Now think about the last 50 of them…100…200…

How many of them can you remember?

A picture and a headline are there to get your profile viewed. We accomplished that, but now we have to keep the reader’s interest. We now face the problem that is commonly referred to as differentiating yourself from the competition.

I don’t care how hot a girl is if I ultimately can’t connect with her mind.

Many profiles are very brief, disorganized, and, frankly, uninteresting. I refer to them as generic. I don’t date generic girls.

Differentiating yourself from competition is hard enough in the business world, but there we only have to deal with a world of competing companies, which is traditionally not that complicated. If you do not have a business with a global application, it’s pretty easy to out-innovate local competition. Exception - ubiquitous businesses like nail salons. What do such ubiquitous businesses do to survive? They have two options - innovate or compete on price.

In marketing, the last thing we want to do is to compete solely on price. That leads into price wars…

Huh?! What?! Wrong site!!!…Or is it?

When you create a personal profile, you are launching a marketing campaign where you are the product. As you can’t compete on price, unless you are looking for some sugar, you have to differentiate yourself using only text and imagery.

Writing style

This is a formal document. Using IM-speak “im lookin’ 4 u” will not get you far. Write as if you were writing a love letter. You are telling the other person a story. A story that is designed to captivate his attention. This story needs to be powerful, engaging, and full of the “wow” factor. Read back your profile and see if it inspires yourself to write to yourself.

Spelling

Firefox has a built-in spell checker! Use it. If you can’t spell, you will get fewer responses. It’s really that simple. You must spell correctly.

Grammar

There are grammar errors in this article. Those of you who can spot them will likely ignore them because the content is compelling enough. Those of you who can’t spot them won’t care too much.

The same applies to your profile. You should strive to make it as grammatically correct as you can, but don’t get obsessed about it. I simply have better things to do.

Headline

I already wrote an article on that. Your headline should sum up the key points of your profile. This is hard to do.

Opening statement

Think of this as a sub-title to your headline. “Dear luscious hottie,” could be a fun start.

Length

If you can sum yourself up in fewer than 500 characters, you are either a genius at writing succinctly or did not tell me enough about yourself.

When I am reading your profile, you got me drawn in and hooked on the line. Now I want to learn more about you and to check against my compatibility requirements.

Longer profiles may actually result in fewer responses, but that is misleading. Many times I would be reading a girl’s profile and see some things that make us less than an ideal match. By figuring that out very early, I’ve avoided wasting our time. In sales, we refer to this as pre-qualifying leads. My time is extremely valuable and I prefer not to go on dates that have zero chance of being ideal for me long-term.

The devil is in the details - share your passions

Don’t tell me “I like motorcycles”. Tell me “I ride a Yamaha R1. Can you keep up?!”.

The first statement is generic and tells me that you may have a mild interest in motorcycles and won’t run away if I ask you to hop on the back on my bike. The second statement is aggressive and tells me that you have an acute interest in riding sport bikes.

If I were a bike rider, I would be far more inclined to respond to the second statement.

Instead of “I like music, movies, tv” say “I just went to see DJ Tiesto as San Francisco Civic Auditorium. The show was cool, but the lack of lasers due to Tiesto’s request was a bummer. Have you seen Beowulf in IMAX 3D?! Seeing Angelina Jolie rise up from the water in 3D literally inches from my nose was…drool-worthy. What did you think about the season finale of Nip/Tuck?”

You want to engage the reader in a conversation. A classic marketing technique is to make the prospect think about how they would use the product instead of whether they need it. If I am starting to plan a date with you while reading your profile, you got me initially sold and to close the deal you have to give me a compelling reason to choose you from an ocean of competition.

Good sales people will not say “Call me if you have any questions”. They will say “We can meet on Thursday at 3pm-5pm or Friday 2pm. Which works better for you?”. If the prospect is engaged enough to consider this meeting, they will check the schedule and suggest a mutually acceptable time.

When I ask a girl out, I don’t give her the option to say “no”. I give her a list of choices. She always has that option, of course, but I do not explicitly present it.

Give me give me more, give me more…

Your profile is starting to look more interesting. Congratulations!

Go through it again and see if you left anything explained as one word and look for any potential stigmas.

“I am a nerd” has a stigma…”World-class computer expert” is better, don’t you think? I was a conference speaker at Microsoft, so I think I can claim that!

Rewrite anything that is generic, dull, or makes a reader say “huh?”.

What life accomplishments have you achieved so far that can make you unique? I doubt you’ll find too many computer experts who are competitive dancers, for example.

Close the deal

An effective action statement should take the reader over the top. You want her to really want you by the time she’s done reading.

“Well, luscious, if you are intrigued enough, I’d love to a cancel a few appointments to meet you this week”.

Why bother?!

I get a lot of first contact e-mail. I wrote a fairly edgy profile, so some of them are downright straightforward. Let’s just say I got more than one offer to participate in a sexy photoshoot. Some were even more explicit. In other instances, I wrote a profile that was more mainstream.

The girls who write me tell me that my profile told them that I was a very interesting person. It stood out in their minds. “You just grabbed my attention” was one compliment, for example. “Let’s meet tonight!” was another. I think you can see a pattern.

My profile effectively attracts wild, highly intelligent girls and filters out generic ones. Isn’t that what you want?

Argh! This is too much work!

You certainly got that right! I would argue that most people who aren’t in the advertising, marketing, or other creative writing industry can’t write a compelling profile. If you can, you may want to consider a career in that line of work.

Marketing communications experts charge hundreds of dollars per hour because just one page of text can make billions of dollars in revenues for their clients. I am not exaggerating. I bill at less than $200/hr so far.

Wouldn’t you rather go on a date than spend days on writing?

As I am an entrepreneur, I am addressing that problem with a professional online dating profile writing and editing service.

8-second intro

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60-second followup

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In the event of server failure, we have a procedure that recovers the server up to the point of failure within 30 minutes. We also offer real-time business continuity solutions from Neverfail.

Crashproof Solutions has not yet to date failed to recover data from a hard disk on which we had to work.

We have special expertise with Microsoft Exchange, Windows Mobile, SBS 2003, Remote Access, and Microsoft Office System. We sell brand name hardware and offer Microsoft Volume Licensing and Microsoft Financing.

We are extremely good at removing malicious software (popups, spyware, slow browser, crashing browser) without even using malware scanners. This is brain surgery on a computer.

We are extremely good at recovering crashed laptops as if the failure never happened.

Referral partners

We typically partner with management consultants, venture capitalists, investors, web designers, web developers, and other consultants. We are open to sub-contracting for our direct competitors on a white label basis (no business cards left behind).

Ideal referrals

We are an ideal fit for small and midmarket companies.

Practically any business can use our help. We have special expertise in helping small companies grow rapidly through strategically aligning their business plans with appropriate software, services, and financing packages.

We help companies with stressed cashflow through Microsoft Financing. We can deliver a package under which the customer makes no payments for a year, yet can benefit from the latest technologies. This typically leapfrogs the company far ahead.

A practical example of this would be the real estate sector. It was flush with cash, has excellent credit, yet there is no current cashflow due to market conditions. We can literally refinance the business overhead, cut telecommunications costs, find many other operating efficiencies, and more. In short, talk to us!

We have several midmarket multi-national corporations as our clients.

We assist them with highly technical Exchange and business continuity expertise.

Technologies with which we work

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More information

For more information, please see our main website at http://www.crashproofsolutions.com

The hotter you look, the more views you get

You’ve read my article on aspect ratios and know what size of the picture would be ideal for your profile. Now you are probably wondering how to get that one ideal picture taken to grab everyone’s attention.

There are two approaches to getting the pictures for your profile

Just about everyone uses the “OK, let’s have a look what pictures I have” strategy. They then look through all the pictures they have on the computer, find a few that are OK and use those.

Unless you have friends who are good photographers, that approach is sub-optimal at best. Most people can’t take a good picture. Moreover, they are typically taken in bad lighting and with focus on the ambiance rather than on you personally.

Taking pictures specifically for your profile is a much better idea

Overall, what you want is a good headshot. It’s not too difficult to get them done. All you need is a good digital camera, a thermonuclear source and some water vapor.

What?!

Sun and clouds…

There is a perfect article on creating killer headshots written by David Griffin. Read it. He’s an expert. He saved me a lot of time so I don’t have to write something like that from scratch.

While it’s certainly possible to take pictures like this with regular point&shoot cameras, a DSLR helps immensely.

I’ve used that article with great success. In fact, if you are booking a session with me, you won’t see lots of studio lighting gear. I just use my Rebel XT, my portrait lens, my cheap tripod, and whatever happens to look pretty as a background.

Self-portrait approach

A self-portrait should be your last resort. I had an emergency where I needed a headshot for a conference where I was speaking. It’s not my best by a long shot, but it worked for that purpose.

When you are doing portrait photography, you are going for a very shallow depth of field. That means you focus the viewer’s attention on the subject and blur out the background. You’ll notice that all pictures in print media and on the web are done that way. This is how we make the subject literally pop off the page.

Unfortunately, shallow depth of field requires very accurate focus. We normally focus on the subject’s eye. This is very tricky to do with a self-timer and manual focus. Bottom line: don’t try that at home. What normally is a 10-second job becomes a 1-hr ordeal.

Sharp focus is a double-edged sword. When the picture is sharp, it literally jumps off the page. However, all the flaws are also readily visible.

Have someone else take your picture for free

Find a friend with a DSLR and print out that article for him or her. You’ll have good results.

Alternatively, have a photographer take some pictures. There are many photographers who simply love taking pictures. Some of them want to transition into making it their business. In order to make money with photography, we need portfolios that showcase our work. Most commonly, we have an arrangement with the model that is referred to as TFP or TFCD. In such an arrangement, we take pictures of a model and give him or her a CD of the images in exchange for permission to use those images for our portfolios. TFCD stands for “trade time for CD” One place where you’ll find someone like that would be on Craigslist in the Talent Gigs section.

Pay someone to take your pictures

If you approach dating as personal marketing, it may make sense to invest into a professional photoshoot. After all most sites charge a fee to host your profile. Without good pictures, that tends to be a waste of time and money.

If you are local in the San Francisco Bay Area, I can snap a few shots for you. This will not be free.

The ethics of retouching

While it may be very tempting to perform a digital cosmetic surgery, I do not recommend doing that. I can easily create a what is referred to as “soft focus” image, but in the context of dating I am not sure I’d recommend using that. Such an image is what is commonly used in magazines. Compare the picture of the same celebrity in People magazine and in National Enquirer. I am sure you’ll see a big difference in her appearance.

Cleaning up the skin is easy and certainly should be done. Digital cosmetic surgery, on the other hand, will create an idealized image of you that may lead to disappointment in-person.

A hot headshot will get you more clicks. Take the time and do it right. The easiest way to test it is to post it on Hotornot.com and see what rating you will get.

Flash is bad! (Unless you are good)

Taking headshots with a flash typically has pretty bad consequences.  Basically, flash creates shadows that do not flatter the subject. That is precisely why I much prefer taking pictures in day light.

In order to take a good indoor picture with flash, we use diffusers, softboxes, and a whole bunch of other equipment. None of that is necessary with nice and soft day light.

Smile!

Model headshots are typically not smiling. If you have a good smile, show it. It shows friendliness. Some people actually should not be smiling, paradoxically enough.