In my view, writing an online profile is one of the most difficult things to do. I can write about anything, but give me the question "Tell us a little about yourself" and I draw a blank!
First Edition
I'm on the dating site okCupid for the last three weeks or so and after a slow start I decided to make changes to my profile. When I first wrote it, I didn't put too much thought into it even leaving several sections blank since I've always suspected that men don't really read the profile, they only go by the photos. But apparently I'm mistaken.
Second Edition
So I revamped the profile and had a guy friend look and critique it. And boy did he! His first judgement after reading my profile was that he would never write to me. Which shocked me, I felt the profile did made me look very full of myself, but he took issue with things I didn't even notice.
1) His biggest issue was one sentence where I mentioned I read up to 50 books a year (which is really a toned down figure, I read more than that) but my friend went on and on about how it made me look like a snob and that I thought I was better than people. So I just took that part out completely since I'd already mentioned I read a lot on another part of the profile.
To my defense, the only reason I added a number, was the fact that I've seen a lot of people put "reading" as a hobby just to put something. In my case, it's for real and I wanted to show that. But anyway...it's out of the profile.
2) He made a point about how many times I mentioned food or eating through the different sections. So I edited that a little.
He was fine with the photos since I showed several sides of my face and body and they were recent. And suggested I made changes to the settings so I could attract more people.
Third Edition
The following week I met another guy friend (who reads this blog..love ya!) and he also went over my profile, only made a few grammatical changes to the written part but had issues with the photos, saying that based on my main picture he wouldn't click to see me.
This is the picture I had as the main one. I like it because it shows the face clearly, a smile and you can clearly see I'm not flat-chested. He didn't like it, he said the smile seemed forced.
Instead he suggested I use this one as the main one, since I looked more at ease. He also suggested I made some artistic changes to it, like make it sepia toned, I tried it and I didn't quite like the look so I left it as is.
Another thing that bothered him about the photos was that they all looked too posed, which they were, I selected the best ones for several photo shoots I've had. He said I should have at least one where I looked relaxed and down to earth. He took a look at my photos folder and selected a few and from those I added this one, which is me bored and doing the border wait.
Fourth Edition
I just had to take out the mention about my blogging, more than one guy has asked "What do you blog about?", I say "cosmetics and fashion accesories" which is true, but not all of it. I already made the mistake of letting a guy know everything about me...you know, the whole "I have nothing to hide" thing...he never called back. So now I only mention writing a women's fiction book. Anything else is on a need-to-know basis.