Podcast 009: how to make an online dating profile stand out like a pro

Transcription

Sean 

Welcome back to the Men’s Progress podcast. This is online dating 101.

Menprovement Podcast 

Ready to take your life to the next level? Then you’re in the right place. Get all the information you need to improve everything and live life like a pro. This is the Men’s Progress podcast with Sean Russell.

How to stand out in online dating

Sean 

What’s up guys? Welcome back to the Men’s Profession podcast. I’m your host, Sean Russell, a self-improvement enthusiast who is obsessed with taking his life to the next level. And I created this podcast to help myself and men from all around the world do just that. The topic of today’s show is all about how to stand out in online dating. Now. Online dating is currently one of the most crowded markets. And essentially, what you’re doing is advertising yourself to all the beautiful women out there in order to meet your wife, just have some fun, or do anything else you want to get into. What you do in your own time is your business. Well, I have the perfect guest with us today. His name is Chase A. Monta, and he is the owner of girlschasing.com, where he teaches men to live and carry themselves in a way that actually gets girls chasing after them rather than vice versa. But he’s also very skilled at doing this in the online world. He spent years—and I mean years—split-testing different kinds of profiles, going on tons of sites, getting tons of dates, and even making fake profiles where he was a girl to figure out what girls are being bombarded with every day. And through all this study, he created an epic 10,000-word article on how to meet tons of women on plenty of fish, which is why I got him on here today. I’m going to get him to dish out all his secrets, all his tricks, and all his tactics that took him literally from a 30% success rate all the way up to a 90% success rate. All the stuff that we talked about here has scientific numbers. And it’s really exciting. And it will have an applicable effect on your life. So if you’re a very busy guy, if you don’t have a big social circle, or if you simply want to meet more and more women, this podcast is going to tell you how to do it. So get out your pen and paper and take some notes, because you’re about to get some knowledge dropped on you by Chase Amante. What’s up, Chase, man?

Thanks for coming on the show.

Chase

Shawn, how’s it going?

What’s your experience with the fishing industry?

Sean

Great, Man, I’m really glad to have you on. Man,  what you do, I love you.  I’m thrilled to be here. So why don’t we jump right into it, man? I’ve been talking enough. Let’s get your expertise out here on the table. Plenty of Fish What’s your experience with it? Why? Why did you write that epic article?

Chase 

I wrote Plenty of Fish because I used it for a couple of years. And I had some good success with it. And I started traveling a lot more. It’s still used in some countries, but it’s not quite as popular around the globe. So I think a lot of guys are pretty protective of their profiles, messages, and all this stuff because they want to continue to be unique. And sometimes, when you put something out there, if it gets popular, then you’re going to have a lot of guys that are imitating assets. And then you’ve got to devise something totally new to stand out from all the imitators. But for me, it was like, You know what? I’m traveling, I’m meeting a lot more girls, and just as I’m out and about, I don’t really even see us online that much anymore, even though I do a lot of times when using some sort of local online site, whatever is popular in the country I’m visiting. So I don’t really use plenty of fish too much anymore. And I looked at that, and I said, You know what? A lot of guys are asking me stuff about this. So let me publish it. I actually published a long post on our discussion board forum originally. That wouldn’t seem popular. So I just turned it into this massive 10,000-word article. That probably takes like half an hour to read.

Sean 

Yeah, but those are the best parts, and honestly, I’m printing them out and using this guy. I think information overload is one of the worst things when you’re looking to do something and you read 10 different articles, you’re going to get 10 different opinions and you’re going to get scrambled, so I like that’s what I love about your site is that you can go there and what you’re reading about is definitive and long, like most of my articles, but you don’t need to read anymore and do our best.

What kind of success did you have with online dating?

Yeah, you do a great job, and what kind of success did you have with all this online dating? What were you going for, girlfriends? Are you just saying, you know, one-night stands?

Chase 

What I discovered was that it was very hard to meet women who met my caliber of girlfriends. Or what I’m looking for in a girlfriend through online dating. It seems like the girls that you meet off of online dating, or at least the girls that I’m looking for online dating, And a lot of the guys that I talked to are all a little bit nuts. It might be different now that it’s more mainstream with places like Tinder or whatnot. Yeah, but it just seems like a lot of the girls will take the time to sit down, write a profile, respond to messages, and actually come out and meet guys. And it’s kind of a lot of work for a girl when it’s usually more effortless for her. So she’s usually kind of a little bit naughty. So I would get a lot of girls, and this way that I would get out to get on the first date would hook up with them all kinds of weird, crazy things that would happen, like getting a phone call from the husband that I didn’t know existed. Or, this girl has some really weird backstory that she told me about that unfolded over the course of the day. I’d be like, Wow, this girl’s beautiful, intelligent, and completely batshit insane. Crazy. It’s a lot of fun. Yeah, I’ve always treated freaky girls as a good source for getting some fast hookups. Like,  freaky girls can be really fun. But not a place where I would spend a lot of time looking for a girlfriend? Yeah, that’s my personal experience. But I’ve talked to a lot of guys who’ve had similar experiences, and now I want every girl to meet online.

Sean 

Yeah, no, that’s cool. But you know, what’s important is that, you know, you saw a lot of success, you split-tested this over the years, and now you’re dishing out your formula for everyone. So you pretty much like split-testing this stuff. And you had all sorts of different profiles set up. Also, right?

Chase 

I’ve tried a bunch over the years with varying levels of success on different kinds of dating sites.

Sean 

Yeah, so you know, what works? You know, what doesn’t? So what’s most important? I think, obviously, your picture is most important. Right, so I was really interested to see all the picture tricks that you have. And why don’t we go through some of those now? Sure.

Chase 

Probably half of the article is on pictures; that was the third of it. And the reason why is because with online dating, your pictures are just the single most important thing, far from blowing everything else away. And think of it as maybe 80% of the results that you’re going to get. You can have a super clever headline or profile photo; could you see those amazing messaging skills? But if your pictures are not super attractive, you’re not going to get them anyway. The cool thing is that you don’t have to be born looking like Adonis, like Adele, like a Greek god; you don’t have to be the next Brad Pitt movie star guy. Because there’s so much that you can do with clothes, facial expression, how you position yourself in the picture, what sort of accessories we use for backgrounds and foregrounds, hairstyle, lighting, angle—all this stuff comes in to make a really good picture. So you can have a guy who’s just naturally very lucky, but he has a horrible picture that was kind of right for him on online dating. And you can have a guy who is very average. But if he’s got all this stuff handled properly, you can get a ton of responses. So one of the first things is that one of the first rules of picture taking is that for men, that’s different for men and for women. This is one that I picked up on my own over the years, but then OKCupid came out with their own blog where they actually broke it down into numbers and ran a statistical analysis on what kind of response rates guys with different-looking profile pictures had. And they found that men who were smiling at the camera and had made eye contact had the worst response rates. The only one that was worse than that was a guy not looking at the camera and making this flirty kind of face like girls make. So whatever you do, don’t make a flirty face. But you also don’t want to look at the camera. There’s another bit of research I saw; I don’t remember if it was OK, but it was looking down and away from the camera, which is the most attractive angle for a man. sort of mysterious and humble, I guess.

Looking away from the camera

And that was also around finding my own best-performing picture, which has always been one where I’m looking down into the write-off, kind of like I’m looking off into the distance. Looking down a bit Actually, I’m shifting on my suit jacket as I’m throwing that on in the picture.

Sean 

Yeah, it’s really interesting because I’m actually looking right at the camera, and I need to change that. But yeah, I’m looking at the numbers. And guys with no eye contact, not smiling, and looking away from the camera had a 90% success rate per attempt at meeting new women. Well, guys who were looking away while smiling were at 70%. Guys who were smiling, making a flirty face while looking, or 65% not smiling and making eye contact, which is what I’m doing, are 55%. That’s not very good. Don’t those numbers just walk? Yeah, and 35% if you’re making a flirty pace while looking white, which is crazy. It’s really interesting. And I wonder what the science behind that is. I think you talked about it in your article about how women like to check you out. Usually when you’re not looking at them.

Chase 

That’s my theory. There’s no research behind it. But yeah, typically, if you walk down the street, you don’t look at women. If you’re using your peripheral vision, you’ll notice the women checking you out. But as soon as you look, they look away. And if you walk down the street to stare at every woman you see now, none of them will look at you. Because, you know, they want to check you out when they don’t think that you can see. But if you’re looking, it can feel intense. It’s almost like a confrontation. or something’s expected. So it’s a little bit uncomfortable that they actually have some of this research where they put a picture of eyes above one of these. It’s like an honor system where you take out a bagel or doughnut and pay for it. Just leave $1. When they put a picture, just a picture of eyes, both the honor system boss where you put the money and the amount of people will pay something like doubles or triples. So just in a photograph, the eyes looking at you make this huge difference in how you feel towards whatever the situation is. Yeah, it’s incredible. It’s almost like it’s

Sean 

There’s pressure on you. You know, I’m looking at these example pictures that are now, and yeah, I could feel the pressure. These guys are looking at me right now.

Chase 

But there was a static picture.

Sean 

I think men I think you said that. Most men actually prefer it when the woman’s looking at the camera too.

Chase 

Right? That’s men and women on OKCupid. A woman is looking directly at the camera and making a flirty face. kind of cute.

Sean 

It sounds about right for girls checking you out. But girls are completely different from us. So that’s incredible that right there, if you knew tip number one and changed your success, you could double your success. If you were making a bloody face while looking away, you’re only getting 35% success. You can jump straight to 90 because you know how to take the right salary picture now, which is incredible for something so small, but not knowing these things is just going to hold you back. So more photo tricks. What’s next

Chase 

So another one that I started doing years ago was including a picture of me with just the side of a girl barely cropped out and just inside of us, and I did that because, if you’re familiar with the concept of pre-selection, that is that women for women are more like herd creatures, I suppose. And they have the problem that they have to pick out which men are actually high-quality, attractive men based on very limited data, and every guy is going to try and present himself as such that guys will lie about that, trying to pretend that they’re richer, more attractive, dominant, or whatever they actually are. One of the things that is very hard to live out is having attractive women around, so that’s sort of a signifier of quality. If she sees other attractive women around you, she assumes that you’re probably an attractive guy because those women seem to improve. There are tons and tons of guys out there that do not have attractive women around because they just don’t know what they’re doing.

Sean 

It’s really interesting, and it’s not to have a full picture of the girl in the picture with you, right? It’s actually strategically cropping this girl out so you can kind of see her, but you still can’t really make her out, even though she’s a friend. You don’t know if she has a girlfriend, just like you said in the pre-selection article, which I’m going to link to in the show notes. And otherwise, what I see here that I like is the contrast.

Chase 

Sure. Contrast is so strong that if you look at Most people’s pictures online, these are the kind of crummy, low-quality selfie-type pictures where it’s somewhat hard to see. So what you’re going for is actually having a picture that pops out of the page that contrasts with both the font color, the background design, and the page itself. And also, if you’re showing up on a page with other profiles, that contrasts with the other pictures. Even if you’re on something like Tinder, we’re flipping through and seeing a bunch of pictures; everyone’s pictures sort of have the same tones, and then yours pops out and looks very different. It immediately draws your eye, and the eyes are drawn to this because there’s something new that makes you pay attention to them.

How to change the color of your photos?

So treat yourself; start checking this person out. The example that I used on the site was one of these poor girls growing on fish, the second girl down in a very crisp, clear-looking picture. And she’s making an attractive female flirty face to the camera. And it’s in this sort of sepia tone where they subtly change the color tone of the picture, do that in Photoshop or do that. GIMP is the program that was free to download when those million other programs used to do this; he just changed the terms. Another one that I just picked up very recently was that there was a large analysis of these Instagram photos I saw; we were looking for which Instagram photos got the most shares and most likes. And one of the things they found was that photographs that had a washed-out color got double the shares and likes of photos with bright, vibrant colors. I think this is more of a trendy thing than a timeless thing. But probably the next three to five years. Having a photograph that has more washed-out or lighter colors in it is just a more visually appealing photograph, sort of like an older photo.

Sean 

Kind of like a black-and-white look, maybe

Chase 

maybe halfway between colors and black and white. Yeah, if you put it in photo editing software, you’ll see saturation. If you look for the saturation metric and make a picture, you remove some of the color saturation. That gives it this washed-out, less vibrant look. And that’s actually what’s really appealing, more popularly attractive. So

Sean 

I’ve been doing everything wrong. And I don’t really buy well. Yeah, I’m going Viber, and I’m looking straight at Kim. I don’t really do it too much for dating, but when I did, that was great. Anything else? Pictures?

How to pick the right profile picture

Chase 

Oh, yeah. So some of the other random ones are, and I’ve got a list of them here. Let me read these off to the animals. So this was one that I did. But I found that on OKCupid, they found pictures of men that have animals with them because they had the highest response rate of any other cat pictures of any other photos seen. So not worrying about whether you’re looking at the camera or not, just looking at it seems to make a guy with animal eyes responsible. Another one that has a really high response rate but isn’t quite as easy to do for most guys is the ABS shot. If you have really great abs, the ABS shot seems to perform really well. Although it seems to perform best with younger people, if she’s over 30 or 40, she probably feels like she can’t quite get a guy with ABS to bother. But if you’re with the younger girls, who now expect a lot of guys, and you happen to have ABS, that’s a nice one to show off. And then just do some cool activity. A picture that shows you doing something interesting can be a good one to have. Although a lot of times guys will put that as their number one profile picture. And those often don’t perform as well. Some of the other ones we want to talk about So that can be a nice backup picture. Just to give you a little bit more personality.

Sean 

Yeah. And the ad shot. I mean, I know there’s like, as you know, you’ve got to have a picture of you playing a sport or just at the beach. Would you differentiate that from a mirror selfie of you taking a picture of your own abs?

Chase 

That’s an interesting question. Unfortunately, I don’t have an app, so I keep meeting apps, but so far I don’t have them. Yeah. But part of me almost thinks that maybe you would have better results with a selfie because it’s not imposing, like, Look at this guy who just stepped out of Baywatch who does ABS running across the beach. If you have more attainability problems with a girl, she feels like she doesn’t have a shot. But I don’t know; you’d have to test that out. Maybe that’s not the case.

Sean 

I knew there were definitely girls out there when I was on sites where I read their profiles. And it’s like, if you have a mirror picture, or you know, you’re taking selfies, are you with your shirt off?

Chase 

Don’t bother messaging me and stuff like that, which is interesting. But that’s kind of like a good screening, because girls like that anyway. But I wouldn’t say some of that stuff. And never take that at face value. Because you see girls like that all the time. They’ll say, Don’t message me to blah, blah, blah. And then you have that, and you message them? And then they’re really happy to hear from you.

Sean 

So, yeah,

Chase 

I won’t worry about those messages too much.

Sean 

How many pictures are there in total? Would you recommend them, because I know they allow you?

Chase 

to? Well, on plenty of fish, I recommend no more than three. And sometimes you can actually just get away with one on some sites, set up profiles on some websites, and just have one profile picture. Like everybody else, I have six or seven pictures. And there’s one profile setup, and there’s plenty of replies. So usually, you want a couple just so that people can feel more certain about you. But if you have one really good picture and all the rest are crafted, just use that one really good picture.

Sean 

Yeah. And you recommend getting professional pictures, right? Yes, absolutely.

Chase 

The reason for that is that just because someone who is a professional photographer is good at taking really good-looking pictures and is usually going to be good at capturing a really good angle for you, a really good image or a good shot, or coming up with ideas for it, then we will tend to be on your own, and you can come in and you can bring them some of this direction. You know, I want to be looking down and away from the camera and not smiling. And I want to be held like my puppy dog or whatever. But other than that, it’s up to you to make it look really good. And then just let the person do their thing. Yeah, you can hire a professional photographer, or a lot of times you find them on Craigslist for free, especially in big cities, if it’s a new photographer who’s trying to build their portfolio.

Sean 

Yeah, that’s a great tip that you have on there. I really liked that. I mean, because I didn’t have professional pictures either. But when I started with all the sites and stuff, I ended up getting a professional camera, so I started to do my own. But if you’re looking for professional pictures and you don’t want to pay 350 to $400, you can search Craigslist in the gigs section with the label time for pictures, which means that these up-and-coming aspiring photographers will take pictures of you and give them to you for your time. They’re just trying to build a portfolio. And if you contact them, you can find someone near you to give you pre-professional pictures, which is great. And professional pictures, like Jay said, are going to make all the difference in the world. If you’re doing everything that he talks about. And you know, if you have the right angles and the right situations, it’s going to help your success; it’s going to double your success. And you can use this for pictures in any of the dating apps we talked about because they’re all picture-oriented, especially Tinder down dating, like things like Peer, where you can take a better picture and go from a 30% to 90% success rate. That’s huge. So right away, you have an advantage over all the other guys who aren’t listening to this podcast, right? So that’s incredible. We’ve only just begun. So I’d say that’s probably everything. You’ve got your pictures, right? Yeah. Thanks. So so. So what’s next? How do you get all the success?ou do? It’s not just your picture, is it?

How to build your profile on OKCupid

Chase 

Sure, of course not. But pictures are a big part of it. Yeah. However, after that, it depends on the platform that you’re using. So some of these have big profile spaces, or you have a lot of options and a bunch of questions, like OKCupid, which just has a ton of things you could go out on there. If you’re on there, I actually recommend just filling out one section and putting your details in there. Otherwise, it looks like you spent a lot of time there. And you’re really focused on this. Girls are actually looking for guys who seem busy and don’t have one at a time. So this is something to keep in mind as you’re building your profile on Reddit and sending messages. It seems like you hang out online all day, build your online dating profile, and spend all this time writing these really long, eloquent messages. It sort of seems like you don’t have a whole lot going on other than online dating. That’s not what girls look for. She’s on there to meet interesting men who just happened to be there. But we have more interesting things going on in the offline world. Yeah,

Sean 

I know—specifically,  plenty of fish. You have your picture, your user name, your headline, and your bio, as well as the First Date section. So let’s run through each one of those. Let’s start with username. You know, is there anything you definitely should be staying away from?

Chase 

Username: You don’t want anything that sounds like lovey-dovey or overly sexual; you can actually be better with something just really ambiguous and non-meaningful, like maybe some words don’t make sense. If it sounds cutesy, or like, oversexualized, overly romantic, or anything like that, That’s really hard to make work. Unless you have a picture that somehow complements that perfectly, I just want to go there. So, you know, don’t have to use names like sneaky” or sneaky shellfish to 14. Something like that It sounds like you stepped out of SpongeBob SquarePants. Yeah, here’s something that could be like, if you’re muscular, it could be like arms. 5467? Yes. Kind of. Not very. I’m not going into too much detail. Yeah, just.

Sean 

Yeah, nickname. Yeah, just don’t have it. Like, you know, sexy guys. 69 XX XX like? Yeah, I think you’re going to have more success with that. But that was 99. Just as subtlety is powerful, I like, you know, that’s why I think it’s very important to have profiles. After reading what you went through, it was shorter, sometimes better, and, you know, intriguing and mysterious. So just a little, little value that maybe someone would understand, but it’s not kind of out there. Not attention-grabbing. It’s not that important. Your name? So the next thing is the headline. Oh, what do you do for the headline?

Chase 

So for headlines, there are a couple different styles you can do, and I usually recommend getting something that’s just badass. But in the article, I went to a couple different types of styles that you can use that I think work. So one of those would be funny or cocky. So some examples of that would be, Where have I been all your life? Or click my profile and blow your minds. Or stop checking out and start writing to do something mysterious or intriguing, which is like a man off the plane in Chattanooga. Or for life, passion dreams in Mexico—I really use these too much because they’re a bit too dreamy for me. But I know a few guys who are like the super dreamy, mysterious kinds of guys, and they can make that work for them. So if you’re that sort of dreamer, artistic sort of person, you can possibly swing these hovers. And the thing to keep in mind with these headlines is that they will attract different kinds of girls. So you’ll typically want to be targeted towards the kinds of women that you want to be. The one that I find most effective The broadest net, the cast, is just kind of like a badass headline. Which mine that I used for a long time was not Mr. Right? That’s possible, Mr. Wrong. Or other ones, like that guy your girlfriend has tried to steal? Or I’m all kinds of wrong for you. Or it would never work out between us. Things like that. Yeah, I like those challenges. Yeah, like those. You’ve got a full list of these in your article. And I guess you’re giving away all your secrets. Now, we never really talked about this because you’re not in the online world anymore, right? Yeah, don’t do too much online. The most that I do anymore. As I travel around, I’m like, hopping onto a local site and setting up some messages for girls that are in the local area. I have a profile there, but I don’t do too much. I’ve been in the US too much for a few years. So don’t do US dating anymore. North America. So I don’t mind giving away this stuff. And even if everybody was using it, I could probably come up with fresh stuff.

Sean 

relatively straight. So, we got the headline down, and we got the picture. You name your headline. Next is your bio, which I would imagine is pretty important.

The importance of bios

Chase 

Yeah, bios are important. Again, one thing that I found is that shorter is better; short is sweet. The ones I found most effective have been short, two-paragraph bios. I really just want to pack a lot of information into a short period of time. They want to go for multiple different interesting, intriguing things that she can grasp onto without trying to sound like you’re being showboating or braggadocious. And you want to keep in mind which women you’re trying to appeal to, because you’re going to include different things in your profile based on that, like when I’ve been on. And I’ve been on sites with a lot of international women or a lot of women who travel more, so I’ll throw on some of the different countries that I’ve been to, and women from those countries who have traveled to those countries will tend to be the ones who respond best; they’ll say, Oh, I see that you went to XYZ country; I’ll ask you a bunch of questions about it. And these are mainly for the girls who are reading your profile. And depending on the site, like on Plenty of Fish, you’ll see plenty of girls who will respond to your messages, and they won’t even check out your profile. You’ll get girls that will talk to you about your messages and even give you their phone number, and they never looked at your profile. So profiles are something that is important, but it’s not. You don’t want to think that it’s nearly as important as your headshot. Yeah,

Sean 

I think so. Example profiles if you want for Yeah, I was going to say I think I keep running into the mysterious and intriguing kind of, you know, theme when it comes to headlines and profiles. That seems to be what works. And you’ve got a lot of examples in your article, which again, I’ll link to for anyone who wants to check out. Yeah, you can run through an example. And so

Chase 

all right. So here’s one example: So this is just a standard entry building profile. Two paragraphs: the first paragraph is I’m from the other side of the country, resettled here for a new line of work and new lines, with all the old behinds. It’s been a while since I was on Plenty of Fish, a lifetime ago. But I’ve met some fantastic people here before and a few not-so-fantastic ones, of course. And I can’t think of a better way to get started on a new home. So the second paragraph is music, right?

Explain why you’re on an online dating site

The secret truth and search are out of adventure. Recently, on my first trip to South America, I visited a very special place. But I’m using POF to find someone with a curious mind for that daring adventure, someone with both passion and humor in her heart. So what you’re seeking to accomplish with a profile like this is explain why you’re offline or why you’re on. Because this is a question that pretty much everyone has. Unless it’s a super popular app like Tinder, you kind of have to explain why you’re there. Because everyone goes on dating sites with the assumption that you’re sort of a loser if you’re on a dating site. If you look at girls profiles or read their messages, you’ll see them explain that it’s usually like, You know, haha, I don’t even go on dating sites, but my friend made me sign up a day or so ago.” Yeah. It’s like some really lame thing like that is like saying, Oh, she thinks she’s so above this dating thing.But actually, she’s trying to preserve her value. So hey, look, we’re not like all these other desperate people who do online dating. You should be paying attention to that because you need to include something in your profile that explains why you’re there as well. So she doesn’t think that you’re one of those other desperate people. You want her to be able to read your profile and say, Ah, kindred spirit. He doesn’t really belong here either. But he’s just using this because it’s the most efficient way to accomplish this kind of thing. So one of the best ways you can do that is by saying, I’m new in town. And actually, the one that I found most effective is using an online dating site before I even get to a new town to find people who are moving or changing cities. If you message a bunch of girls, say, Hey, I’m coming from XYZ town, but I’m going to be moving there, and I’m going to get in there in about a week or two. And when you do this, you get some great replies because these girls are really excited because it feels like here’s someone who’s fresh and original. He’s not some guy who’s sitting around town and can’t find a girlfriend; he’s looking for a girl right now. Because he isn’t from here, there’s nobody, so she gets this kind of discovery still. She feels like she’s getting something totally new that other girls haven’t tried yet. And that’s kind of exciting. Yeah, especially if everything else is bolted down, it surely seems like the other thing that you can do if you’re not just moving into town or visiting another town on business or on vacation is go with the I just broke up and I’m rebuilding my social circle kind of thing. What are you doing with those angles? You’re not saying I just broke up and am not rebounding because I just broke up and I want another girlfriend? You’re saying I just broke up and I’m rebuilding my There’s a circle because I kind of let it atrophy a bit in terms of laws and relationships, which is something that everybody does. But most people do get your relationship; you kind of wall yourself off in the world and talk to people for a while, then you get out and all your friends have moved on; they have other circles now, or they have their own boyfriends and girlfriends. So now you’re just reaching out and trying to be more social, meet more people, and rebuild these circles. And that’s something that girls can understand. Because most of them have had that experience themselves. It also communicates that you’re probably not looking super hard for a relationship because you just got out of one, which removes some of the pressure from them. So don’t feel like, Okay, well, I’ve got to be on my best behavior around this guy. And I’ve got to show him the great side; I’ve got to evaluate him really hard because he wants to be a boyfriend or anything like that. It’s been more laid-back. I’m just coming out of this rebuilding my social circle perspective. Yeah.

Sean 

All those tips And the one I see here that I really like is kind of like a secret tip that you can use. After all this And it mentions that you’re from a foreign country. Now you’ve just arrived. So that worked for you for a while.

Chase 

Oh, yeah, that’s So I tried to go back to when I was living in the States and not traveling around too much. I tried setting up different profiles. i One of them was like, Hey, I just got here from England or whatever. And girls just get so many messages. Now, obviously, I didn’t meet up with these girls; like, you know, I’m going to put on my British accent and be sharp with the tape now, and I’m just going to talk like this. Then I’ll reveal that it was all in there.

Sean 

But if you are, you know, coming from England, or, like I know, I’m actually from England, living in America, Fornia My family’s from there, and when I go there, you know, I can; it’s just my success. So much. More likely, anyway. because my voice alone So if you are in that situation, highlight it, because that’s going to get you great success.

Chase 

So it’s going to be the novelty effect. Yeah. Different. Interesting. Exciting. All

Sean 

right, so. So let’s say you build a great profile. And again, there are tons of examples in the article. And I want to get through this profile and onto the next session because I know we’ve been going on for a long time in the first date section in the last, and I usually don’t even write anything. Did you get what you put in?

Chase 

Yeah, so for me, it’s just something really simple. On plenty of fish, I think it depends on the site. A lot of sites don’t have a section. But if you want to include something in there, I like something that’s either really kind of nice or really makes her just imagine this scenario and visualize it. So as an example, I have an article. Let’s sit somewhere by the beach with ocean waves crashing against the shore and make a nice backdrop for a chat over drinks in France, where you can use something funny. It should be Dave and Busters, so I could mess you up at Air Hockey while we tell each other stories from our childhoods. Yeah.

Sort of playful and cooperative.

Setting up a female profile

Sean 

Yeah, it’s different than the usual dinner and drinks. Like, stand out. Trying, but not trying too hard. Alright, so that’s beautiful. You’ve got the perfect picture. Now you’ve got the perfect profile. And now you will have to actually message girls, which can be a little pitfall for a lot of guys and girls. They’re attracted. They’re getting 30 to 50 messages a day. I think you actually created a female profile, right?

Chase 

Yeah, I’ve set up female profiles on various sites several times to see what happens. The most memorable one for me was when I set one up on plenty of fish. And it was this set up with a picture of this, like a classic bleached blonde girl, whatever the guy wants, or most guys, and then I made this profile that sounded realistic but kind of pitchy. It’s kind of like, You know, here’s what I’m looking for. If you’re not, don’t bother. I’m really not looking for this kind of guy, whatever That’s the kind of thing you’re writing about. I thought most guys read this salted gal’s nasty replies. And I didn’t get a few. But most of them are like, Now there’s a few, or some guy writes in and he’s just like, Screw you. Your standards are way too high. You don’t deserve anything. But then you had to get a ton of other replies, some of which were just like, Hey, girl, we should get together, blah, blah, blah. Some of the guys tried to talk to your profile. They’re like, You know, I said, I saw that you said you liked this. That’s really cool, because I also like this thought about it. And then some guys that are trying to argue with you feel like, Hey, so why don’t you, like, do the duck? because, actually, this is probably really good. And like, you know, all these things are, you know, if you’re a popular person and you’re getting messages like this, you don’t want to respond to who this person is already to answer his questions. And I got a few cool messages. Some guys are kind of challenging, like really cool. So what I personally found works best is to have a short message that is humorous and intrigue-building. Plenty of Fish used to have a subject. So for that, I would always have an entry building subject line, where she has to click on Find out what it is. That would be like, you know, what, for one thing, jolts that they don’t have subject lines anymore. Just have a passage, but if you’re somewhere that has a subject line, use something like that, where she’s like, What isn’t what she was wondering, like, is it going to be making fun of her or assaulting her? You’re pointing out something interesting. She just doesn’t know what it is. Yeah. Yeah, as much intrigue as you can get in there. The intrigue is what drives her to respond; she has to know. So, you can’t always evade giving her an answer when you’re trying to draw the person as intriguing. But one of the things that you can do is give her an answer, but at the same time, you build a tree with something else. So it’s just stacking. Listen, tree. Tries go crazy. You just have to keep on track and find out what the answers are. Yeah, as I do, I invest more and more time. So as far as the message body, I boiled it down to what I found was working best for me on Plenty of Fish: a really simple message structure where I would take a few elements of her profile so that it’s not a complete carbon copy template. And I would put it into what is mostly a template and just send it out to a bunch of girls. So while I was doing it years ago, it would be like if she said in her profile that she really loves cats and that she likes to eat sushi at various points. You pick two random elements from her profile and first line that say, I hear the people who like cats and sushi are the most hardcore. Taylor Swift, and then on the next line, you do something like a winking smiley face. And the next one after that, you say, How’s the online dating world treating you, Ms. Some attribute profiles are so previous sociable, this adventurous, this bookworm. How has she described herself? Yes, ideally, you should use words that are similar to those she uses. Yeah. Yeah.

How to pick the right first line

Sean 

I love that. When I saw that, I was like, wow. Like you said, this girl’s going to get 50 messages a day, and most of them are going to be ridiculous, or they’re going to be, you know, sexually explicit, or just boring. But if you can come up there and see her talking about fitness now, she loves CrossFit. And you know, you say something, Lover, and then you know, how’s the online dating world treating you, Miss Fitness? Like, you know, kind of making fun of her, and like, that’s going to get her to respond. I could sense that. Just seeing those. So I really liked that when I saw it. It’s definitely a great example.

Chase 

Yeah, it’s fun, it’s fresh, and it’s easy for her to respond to, which is another huge one. Just something I saw when I set up the profile on Planet Fish: pitchy blonde girl, like everybody sends these really long messages here, like two or three paragraphs, and you look at it and you’re like, This guy seems cool, but I don’t have time to respond to this, especially for some busy girl. You know, she’s got tons of Instagram pictures to take and lots of Facebook status updates to read and reply to; she’ll have time to respond to a three-paragraph message from a complete stranger on an online dating site. However, this is a short, quippy thing that feels personal to her. She’s going to laugh and feel a little intrigue, and then she’s going to want to respond, and it’s easy for her responses to just blast off.  And if she’s really interested, maybe she’ll dig into your profile and shoot you a long response asking a bunch of questions, but even if she’s just a little bit interested, she could still find out.

How many girls are you messaging on a daily basis?

Sean 

Yeah, and I love them, and I love how you set up a girl article, a girl profile, and everything. It seems like you got pretty into character with it in a picture. You would like a little wig, yes, I’m just kidding. You thought about it. Yes, that is hilarious, man. And that’s why your articles are incredible—because you did the work. You did the testing; you went the extra mile. And so I love that we have something really great. So what do you think about it? Looking here? So we got that message down. That’s pretty good. I like that. That’s a good template you can use for pretty much anyone. How? How many girls? Were you messaging on it? Would you? Did you want to jump in, Susan?

Chase 

Oh, yeah, before we move on, just a message for anyone who doesn’t have his natural sense of humor. So when you’re doing that first line, you’re picking those two elements, like cats and sushi, or basketball and action movies, or whatever it is. Don’t pick two elements that are not connected in any way. Because then it seems random and funny. But two elements seem connected. And it seems not to be random and fine. It seems like you are criticizing her. So that would be like if in your profile. He said, Hey, I really like surfing and hanging out at the beach. She wrote I heard people who like surfing hang out at the beach ask the worst Justin Bieber questions. That sounds like she’s criticizing the beach lifestyle. But if you mentioned that, you said that you’re a total physics nerd. And she writes, Hey, I heard that people who like surfing and physics have just these impressions. Now that sounds funny, because those two things have nothing to do with each other. Make sure you pick two elements from her profile that are completely unrelated. Was that two things? First time?

Sean 

Yes. Great. And I wanted to ask you, How many girls are you messaging on a daily basis? because I did a podcast a couple of weeks ago with a guy who teaches you, you know, very, very hard-stricken men when it comes to their sex lives, how to meet women and lose their virginity, essentially. And he does it through online dating. And he says in his program that he sends like 40 messages a day. And I was just wondering how many women you typically messaged during your conquests.

Chase 

Yeah, that sounds like a good average. I’ve had some days where I’ve gone up to like 100 or 150 Girls, but usually it’s much lower than that. Just because you get burned out after a while. It depends on how good your template is and how easy it is to use, like a template like this, where you only need to really insert three different words likecats, sushi, and sociable. So that’s pretty easy to do, and pretty easy to fire off.

Sean 

Yeah, there’s a numbers game.

Chase 

Yeah, but you still have to spend time parsing the profile and finding those words. So it’s still a little bit of work. And it could be fatiguing. But yeah, it’s all understandable. Yeah,

Sean 

I know that that can definitely be tiring. Even on the technical work to make your eyes just for us, yeah, it’s a lot of messaging that’s interesting. No, and it’s like, just like in person, the more girls you approach—if you approach 100 Girls, you’re going to get a lot more numbers than if you approached three girls—and it’s the same way online. So

Chase 

It depends on your turnover on the site, because ideally you want to be messaging the girls who are the newest members, okay? Girls who, especially girls who have joined in the last 10 days, because these sites tend to have a lot of turnout, get stuck harder with all these lame messages because the more they apply, the more they get turned off. So we’re getting their push-up sleeves, and like the girls that are still on there after a few months, Like these veterans who have their own game plan, and what they’re doing is flaking guys on there.

Sean 

Yeah, I get that because there’s one girl who lives in my town. I mean, I still have my profile. So she’s been on; she favorited me like a year ago. So I was like, Okay, sweet. And I messaged her, and then she was a total bitch. I’m like, This girl favorited me, but she’s still on there. So she’s definitely been bearish. But I liked that. I liked that I messaged new girls and new members because I never did that. But it’s good. It’s a good tip. So how do you go about problem messaging? Say she responds back. How do you get the date?

Chase 

Well, you want to get off of messaging as quickly as possible. So typically, for me, I would just shoot a couple of messages back and forth with the girl as soon as it was reasonably clear that she was like, You want to be fun batteries that she enjoys talking to.” But as soon as it’s like, “cool, and you say, hey, you know, since we’re talking Let’s just hop off of here because we’re both too cool to be on online dating, or, you know, let’s make sure that neither of us is a weirdo to talk on the phone. And then what I like to do is throw her my number and say, I’m at this number on pi, pi, pi, pi, pi, pi, pi. So call me or text me your number, or you can send it to me here. And let’s talk. What you’re doing is saying, Here’s my number; call me. And then just leave it at that, because a lot of girls will not take the initiative to do that. Or they’re just too new or too scared or nervous, like not for a lot of guys, you feel scared or nervous, and calling some girl the first time is worse for the girl because the girls are supposed to be taking initiative. So she feels kind of off if she has to do it. Yeah, definitely. But you also don’t want to just say, Give me your number. Because then, the feeling is like you want her to get You want her to give you something, but you’re not offering anything in return. So you say, Here’s my number; call me or text me, or you can just shoot me your number on here, whatever is easiest. So you’re giving her a bunch of options, and you’re giving her number two. So it feels like you’re giving her something that feels very easy, natural, and comfortable. And she can do whatever she likes. So some girls will text you and say, Hey, it’s me. Other girls will give you their number on her website. Either way, you’ve got it. And I just texted her. A lot of times, it’s better. This is where having some good phone games comes in handy: give her a phone call or chat for a little bit on the phone. And after that, you can propose a date. Let’s grab some food scraps and drinks. Set up the logistics for either in the fall. It’s cool. When you’re free. She’ll say this day I say cool. I’ll text you the details. And then sort out logistics over text.

How to improve your voice?

And the phone is just moving from, like, your two strangers messaging to, like, now she hears your voice. And especially if you have an attractive-sounding voice, which hopefully you’re working on because that’s just a powerful attraction switch. A good voice was important for many leading men in Hollywood; almost every guy who is really popular in Hollywood has a good voice. So if you can do that, get on the phone. Good. Good. Good conversation. A good voice will make you attractive. Everything else is fairly straightforward from there.

Sean 

Yeah, man. I mean, I like that. That last tip about improving your voice is because I actually did the same thing. I was given a program called Perfect Voice. I don’t know how you went about improving your voice. Did you? Did you use a program, coaching, or anything like that?

Chase 

I did it pretty much on my own. Although I did take one single class for speech coaching because there was something that I couldn’t figure out, I felt that there was something I was doing wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what it was or fix it. Actually, my voice coach thought I had a professional coach at the time. I said no; I’ve just been an armchair voice improvement enthusiast for a few years. But she helped me figure out exactly what I was doing by depressing the hyoid bone back to the back of my tongue, which I never would have known a million years ago, and I didn’t know anything about that that’s the only bone in the body that is connected to any other bone that’s kind of floating around in the middle of your throat. And a lot of people push down on the back of your tongue, which makes your voice sound more muffled. Caring for your voice makes you harder to understand and makes it harder for you to speak. So she taught me how to take the backlight tongue off, which just made me speak a lot more clearly and effortlessly. That was the only voice coaching.

Sean 

Yeah, that’s definitely a subject for another day. And that’s what we’re going to cover, and I actually linked to a program that I use called Perfect Voice, and it was pretty good. You know, it has a lot of exercises and talks about what you just talked about there. just an audio program. Coaching can definitely be expensive, but they’ll definitely explore that another day, and we’ll definitely explore dating and how to crush it on a date in another podcast. So definitely subscribe if you’re into this. This was just about online dating, so now you’ve done it all and got the date. You’re going to have to wait to hear about how to really mess up; you’ll have to wait until the next group and podcast. Yeah, yeah, it’s like Christmas. But yeah, this has been really awesome. You know, I’ve got some great tips here myself. I learned a lot, and I might head back to my profile and see what I can do with these. Do you have any last words of advice you want to leave people with?

Chase 

I think I pretty much covered my strategy. Oh, yes. Here’s another piece of advice. So when you’re checking out websites, also check out some unconventional ones, especially ones that you would feel uncomfortable going to. Because here’s the counterintuitive. So I sort of stumbled on this one by accident. So I was going through this rocky time with an ex-girlfriend that we broke up with and we’re sort of struggling to get back together again. I associate a profile on this on my website. This is like back when I was like, No, I wouldn’t do this. But back then, I was like, Oh, I’ve got to check out and see what my ex-girlfriend is doing on this website. So it was called a Catholic match. So on Catholic Match, she was; she’s a Catholic girl for myself. So I want to join CatholicMatch. I said this profile; check it out. I mean, an attractive-looking profile, And it just got deluged with all these tons and tons of messages. Just crazy. And it wasn’t like bots; it was like girls were saying, Hey, welcome; here’s my phone number; give me a call and like scrap coffee and all that stuff. And like, I just had the same profile and hardly ever got messages from it; this is one where I didn’t even have to send out a message; I just got a deluge. I realized what was happening was that CatholicMatch is like a website that almost no guys go on and plenty of girls go on. How long is that really attractive? And I was like, Huh, you know, this is a website that I’ve never worked on in a million years. But there are a ton of girls on the site. So if you can check out some of these websites that are like places that normally you’d look at and say, You know, I will never go on their websites, it can be something of a hidden goldmine. Another one that I had a lot of luck with Back in the day, in 2006, Was this website called makeone.com? It’s not good anymore. Last time I checked, like all bots now, there are tons of lesbians and all dudes on there, and it was free for women to join and for guys that paid 50 bucks a month. So it sounded shitty. I got on there. And I’d get all these girls that would keep hitting me up for like chat, and he wants to meet up. I just had a really easy time meeting people because there was not a large selection of women.

Girlschase.com: Quiz

But the women who were on there all wanted to meet up with a guy. And just really easy. So check around for some of these unconventional sites; you’ll find a lot of sites that are just garbage and don’t work. But you also find some hidden gems that no other guy is using because they just don’t know about them. So it’s worth doing some of your own exploration and getting off the beaten path. That’s

Sean 

great. So why don’t you tell everyone where they can find you and do a little plug for girls? Chase.com, what do you have going on? What are your plans for the future? Yeah, absolutely.

Chase 

So obviously, go to girlschase.com. Check us out. We’ve got a really good quiz that’ll help you get situated. So we’ve got almost 1,000 articles now. As Sean was talking about earlier, they’re all pretty comprehensive. So, especially with newer guys, sometimes guys get on and feel overwhelmed. See, wow, where do I start? So stuck here. So if you go to girls.chase.com/quiz,  you go through a 10-question quiz that’s going to ask you various questions about where you’re at with women right now. Based on how you score, you’re going to get one of four books that are going to take you through the articles that are most relevant to where you’re at. So that could be a beginner. It could be a journeyman, which is intermediate, or a technician, which is advanced for master, but it probably won’t be mastered. Because if you need to use a cron dating website, you probably won’t need to come to girlschase.com on your master anyway. But if you are still passing things of interest, So go to the quiz. Take that, and you’ll be ready to rock and roll. One other thing worth mentioning is that we have a new piece of guidance coming up from one of our authors on-site. Williams actually sat down and put together his own Tinder method. That is pretty well put together and pretty genius stuff. And he’s had a bunch of guys test out some of the guys from our discussion forums. Actually, one of the guys from our editing team has done one of his guinea pigs. So our editor has been on there getting away with girls off Tinder, thanks to our program there. But we don’t have this page set up right now. But within a couple of weeks, you should be able to go to girls.chasing.com/tinder. And you’ll be able to learn all about that or be almost ready to launch it. So keep your eyes peeled. If you want to do Tinder dating, this is very effective.

Sean 

That is incredible, man. I’m really pumped about that. Check that out and possibly link to it on our site. Awesome. So you guys, you know, you can find all the links to everything that we talked about in this show, men. provement.com/npp 009. And we’ll have everything up there for you to chase articles, even a Tinder article. It might be a broken link but in a couple of weeks All right. Put it out there, is that? Yeah, no, take your time. And you know, this is actually going live in a few weeks. So you get access. And by the time this is airing, are you hearing this? Yeah, that will most likely be. Alright, so I always like to end on this. We’ll do it in terms of dating, not just online dating. But what is your biggest self-improvement tip for men who are looking to be better?

Chase 

The biggest self-improvement tip would be to target smaller pieces. Every guy starts out saying, My goal was to go out tonight and get laid, which is a good goal. But only once you’re at the point where you can do all the stuff that comes before that. So I would suggest that you start off by breaking down all the things into discrete steps and focusing on just doing a couple of those at a time. So my goal tonight is to approach three women who are incompetent. My goal tonight is to get phone numbers from two girls, or my goal tonight is to ask two women to come home, or you only have to ask one if the first one says yes. Pick goals that are relative to where you’re at. Don’t make learning much easier and much less emotional, because it won’t be like, Okay, I don’t know what I’m doing with girls tonight. But I’m going off tonight to get laid. At the end of the night, you’re sobbing into your handkerchief because you weren’t able to get laid. You start off with smaller steps, and you will get there eventually. Then you get to the point where you can say, Okay, my goal tonight is to try and pull the girl out. But that doesn’t come until later. So focus on just doing what you need to learn how to do right now to get to the next step. Just one piece at a time.

Sean 

Absolutely, man, that’s great advice. I love it. Alright guys, so this has been great. Thanks a lot, Chase. Thanks, guys, for listening, and I look forward to next time. Take care.

Thanks a lot, guys. If you enjoyed this post, head to menprovement.com and search dating apps for an epic article I wrote on the top 20 dating apps available for men. And there are a lot of incredible apps that you have definitely never heard of, for example. One is called carrot dating, where you can bribe girls for dates. That sucks. But I’m just giving an example. And there’s another one called Coffee Meets Bagel, which is Tinder that actually hooks you up with your friends on Facebook. So it keeps you in your social circle. And there are a ton of crazy dating apps I guarantee you’ve never heard of. So if you want to hit the online world, and you want to take all the tips that you just learned and crush it and meet tons of women, head to menprovement.com. Click the Search button, search for dating apps, and check out that article. It’s badass. Thanks, guys.

Menprovement Podcast 

Thanks for listening to the Men’s Progress podcast with Sean Russell. Get more episodes, more tips, and download our free self-improvement ebooks at www.menprovement.com.