You can win or lose a person’s attention with your profile pictures, and it’s not because of your looks. What you’re doing in the pictures can affect how you’re perceived, and with the right pictures, you might be able to catch a few more eyes and invites in your inbox. You don’t have to be ridiculously good-looking to be successful at online dating. In fact, sometimes more attractive people can be at a disadvantage in online dating. According to a study by OKCupid , women prefer to message guys of “average” good looks more often than they do the “most attractive” men. But the reverse isn’t exactly true—on OKCupid, two thirds of male messages go to the highest rated third of women. So if you’re a normal guy, you’re already ahead of the game. Then why do so many guys post Zoolander selfies, shirtless gym pics, and professionally photographed headshots? They’re trying too hard—and it shows. The woman you’re looking for probably doesn’t care about that stuff.

Your Crappy Dating Profile Picture Is Ruining Everything

Are you ready for the busiest day of the year in the online dating world? Ready to kickstart your love life? And how are your dating profile photos? Not sure?

For Men. Courtesy of Hinge. Smile Without Teeth.

You want to present the best version of yourself, but you also want to look relatable enough that people will want to know more about you. Should you use that selfie you took during golden hour last week? Your work company headshot? Your latest Tik-Tok dancing video? Saskia Nelson, founder of Hey Saturday , knows a thing or two about selecting great dating app photos.

Her business specializes in helping people take photos for their dating app profile that represent their truest selves. To help you get more matches and feel more confident, Nelson provided her best insider tips for choosing your dating app profile photos. Your best accessory is your self-confidence, so you should always choose photos you think you look awesome in.

Before you can accept love and compliments from other people, you have to believe you deserve it! A great dating app photo not only shows off your flawless face, but it also tells people something about who you are as a person. Include some photos of you with your favorite meals. Are you a runner?

How it works

What constitutes a good dating profile picture? Dating apps can be confusing, demoralising or just downright offensive. Here are four tried-and-tested tips to help you find love in the algorithm.

How to get the perfect pic for your dating profile bright colours inspires feelings of extreme self-loathing, taking a nice, presentable photo and.

Don’t judge a book by its cover. But in the online dating world, a picture is often all you have to go by. Picking good profile pictures is the key to success in finding matches. It’s a lot of pressureespecially if you don’t like photos of yourself. Fortunately, major online dating companies regularly complete surveys to figure out exactly what users find attractive.

Based on this research, you’ll have the best dating profile pictures in no time! In fact, OKCupid found that being too attractive might result in receiving fewer messages. This holds especially true for men. Average or below-average-looking people are more likely to receive messages from women. Getting more messages doesn’t mean finding an offline connection quicker. People who receive a lot of messages tend to spend less time replying, making it difficult to get to know each other.

It’s also hard to quantify what these labels mean: your “average” might be someone else’s “very attractive”. To be clear, your attractiveness is unlikely to be the core reason your profile doesn’t get attention.

How to Take the Best Profile Picture

Jump to navigation. Good profile pictures aptly tell your story; they enable your personality and interests to shine through. When done properly they are a very good way to attract the type of people you want to be meeting; like-minded, intelligent individuals. Research has shown that the only thing worse than a bad profile picture is no photo at all.

Picking good profile pictures is the key to success in finding matches. Simply taking a photo outside can lead to 19 percent more messages.

For our inaugural CNET online dating advice column, we explore just how the hell you’re supposed to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger on Tinder. Greetings, friends. Welcome to CNET’s online dating advice column by me — Erin Carson, staff reporter, resident young-enough-person, refrigerdating correspondent , curator of odd stuff on the internet , most likely to leave you on “read.

You might be wondering why you should pay any attention to what I have to say about online dating. First off, I’ve been happily married for 10 years. I’m out there just like everyone else, a machete in one hand, pocket knife between my teeth, hacking through the dating wilderness, wondering how this all happened, and why I didn’t pack bug spray. I’ve also been covering dating apps for about three years, which means that if I’ve written about it, I’ve probably downloaded it.

In that time I’ve talked to many of the folks behind the apps you use , and with experts who work with hopeful lovebirds every day. Most of all, believe me when I tell you: I get that online dating is a little weird. So, if you’ve got questions about how to pick an app, craft a bio or how not to sink into an existential mire whilst on the apps , hit me up.

If I’ve just destroyed your entire dating profile photo strategy, pull up a chair and we can chat.

Step 4: How to choose the perfect profile picture

Click here. This includes external sites looking to farm responses for content. Read the Frequently Asked Questions wiki and do a search before asking a question.

You can win or lose a person’s attention with your profile pictures, and You don​’t have to be ridiculously good-looking to be successful at online dating. but today we’re taking a closer look at what kinds of pictures do well.

We want to help you make your profile picture as interesting and engaging as the rest of your profile. To find out what makes a good profile picture on OkCupid we collected , example user pictures, paired them up and asked people to make snap judgments, like so:. We collated these millions of judgments with the time of day each picture was taken, what the shutter speed was, and so on.

Almost all modern cameras embed this stuff in a special header, called EXIF data. Here are our findings:. Prefer a professional camera over your phone? Well, the type and brand of camera you use has a huge effect on how good you look in your pictures. This is a plot of the most popular makes:. As you can see, the general pattern is that more complex cameras take better pictures.

They might want to consider making sharing more difficult. Beyond the advantages or shortcomings of any specific brand, the more-complex-is-better trend bears out at all ages:.

10 Tinder Pictures to Help You Double Your Matches

Recently, he giddily kept me posted on the pre-first-date chemistry he shared with a woman he met online. I hope I don’t screw it up. Not gonna happen. Because he’s a nice guy, Marc’s telling of the scenario was polite.

For Everyone. Courtesy of Hinge. Get Sporty.

Tinder tips. The art of dating profile photos isn’t hard to master, and yet so many people get it wrong. We speak to the professionals about how to make sure you sell yourself as best you can. It has never been easier to have photos of yourself, both candid and curated, and it has therefore never been easier to show yourself off to future partners on the internet. The problem is, sometimes we give people too much choice.

A case in point: most people’s dating profiles. Just turn on an app such as Tinder and you will witness people who are:. While, for some communities, privacy is vitally important, for the vast majority of people these choices are made out of incompetence rather than out of a need to keep themselves safe.

How to Look Good In Every Picture