TAKE IT FROM AN ONLINE DATING COACH—ONLINE DATING ISN’T REALLY “DATING.” IT’S DIGITAL MARKETING.

For matches and dates on Tinder, Bumble and other apps, you need to get good at digital marketing. Until you walk into that bar to meet, you’re not really “dating” women. You’re marketing to them.

There are more men on dating apps than women

Take it from someone who’s been an online dating coach for a decade. You see, there are a LOT more men on apps than women—about a 2-to-1 ratio. So, if you market yourself poorly, you struggle. You’ll swipe and swipe but get few matches and dates with attractive women. And according to the Pew Research Center, 51% of men who try online dating never get a SINGLE date in real life, and 80% of men fail to find a girlfriend from online dating.

This takes a toll: All those wasted swipes and wasted hours make you feel like apps just don’t work. Or maybe you feel that YOU’RE the problem: You’re unattractive or too short or just “not that guy” women want to swipe-right on. You feel rejected.

But the great news? You have what it takes to attract wonderful women online, as long as you market yourself correctly.

Getting dates online is not about being the most attractive

I know from experience. Back in the day, I had zero online-dating results. My low point? I couldn’t get even one cute girl in New York City into me, but I connected with a woman in San Francisco. Because she was my ONLY option, I flew 3,000 miles to surprise her, like in a movie. I showed up with red roses and Victoria’s Secret lingerie for her. It was a desperate move, I now realize, and she ghosted me. That’s what dating scarcity does -- makes you look needy, and it repels women.

So, I spent years studying and mastering online dating, learning that it’s about marketing yourself with the right photos and bio. And my results skyrocketed. One week on Tinder, I matched with 197 women, all of them attractive. Over a 3-day weekend, I had seven dates with seven gorgeous girls—and six of them were into me! This transformed my online-dating confidence, and turned me into an online-dating coach.

I recently went on Bumble for 60 minutes, and I got 47 “likes” and 26 matches, with high-quality women. Not a bad hour’s work. Now I get to CHOOSE who I message and go out with. An abundance of options!

Make your profile magnetic

So, what’s the marketing secret? How do you get lots of matches and dates? Four simple words: Make your profile magnetic.

By “magnetic,” I mean two things: Your profile must stand out from other guys' profiles, and it must offer women something of value. That’s all good marketing is: standing out in a crowded marketplace, and offering real value. I call that “magnetic.”

The opposite of magnetic is “boring,” and a boring profile is the enemy of results. Attractive women are flooded with hundreds of digital come-ons every week. If your profile fails to stand out and looks like all the others—grainy selfies, poor lighting, you holding the fish you caught—you become invisible to women, and they swipe left.

I repeat: Your problem is NOT your looks or that “apps just don’t work.” Your REAL issue? A boring, forgettable profile.

This is GREAT news because it’s 100% fixable. The first step? Use a featured photo that’s a “pattern interrupter.” On dating apps, women fall into a swiping hypnosis, swiping and swiping, seeing the same sorts of photos over and over. You must interrupt her pattern and capture her attention.

How? With a well-lit, professional-quality portrait. No shadowy selfies! No fish pics! No exceptions!

As an online-dating coach, I’m all about testing. So I jumped on Bumble using this low-quality selfie as my primary photo. The result? I swiped-right 100 times and got 3 measly matches. Why? The shadows on my face make me less attractive, and I’m not smiling. Women see this kind of shot all the time. I’m surprised I even got three matches.

Next, I replaced it with THIS pattern-interrupting portrait: me at my most
attractive: nicely-lit, well-dressed and smiling. I look date-able, so women see value here. After 100 right-swipes with this featured pic, I got not three, not 10, but 26 matches, all from attractive women! One photo change took me from 3 to 36 matches—an 800% increase.

My client Victor came to me because it had been five years since he’d had a
girlfriend. Well, we overhauled his profile, and he soon had more matches and dates on Hinge and Tinder than he knew what to do with, and then he was dating three women. And before long, he fell for Cheryl, and they JUST got engaged.

From a 5-year slump to a gorgeous fiancée! Not bad.

And you don’t have to be an online-dating coach to have that kind of success, as Victor proves.

How do you do it? First, you realize that online-dating isn’t really dating. It’s just digital-marketing.

There's more to it than just a great profile pic but that's a great first step to get you started. I mention some other Tinder tips on great opening lines here. If you want to know more about how to date attractive women online, what to say on Tinder, or what to text a girl, let's chat. Want to know about dating during a pandemic, click here? Book a free call here.

Connell Barrett is an acclaimed dating coach for men from NYC. He's appeared on shows such as Access Hollywood and The Today Show, as well as in publications such as O Magazine, Cosmopolitan, and Maxim. For online dating tips for men, click here. Book a free call with Connell here.