However, this is no longer the case. As we have seen withFacebook, Twitter, HubPages, and more, online social interaction has become the norm.

Online dating is no longer something that lives in the fringes of society. In fact, many of us have probably joined an online dating site or are currently thinking of joining one.

Not surprisingly, online dating shares many similarities with real-life dating. However, there are some differences. By recognizing and using these differences you can do to put yourself ahead of the pack and become an online Don Juan.

Successful Online Dating – How to Be An Online Don Juan
Source: Couple Dating Pictures

1. Online Dating Profile

After you join an online dating site, the first order of business is to write an online profile. Many people will consider their skills, interests, and strengths; then highlight those qualities that they deem to be most important.

However, that is often not the most effective approach.

Just as a work resume should speakof your target employer, your online dating resume should speak to your target online dates.

Write for your audience, not for yourself.

1. Online Dating Profile.

Before rushing to write up your online dating profile, first do some research.

Consider your prospective audience. Read up on the profiles of the men or women that you would most like to date. After going through a few of those, a pattern will usually emerge as to their interests, as well as likes and dislikes.

Once you have this, you are ready to start writing your online dating profile.

• Highlight aspects of yourself that are important not to you, but to your potential dates.
• Take your time. Your online dating profile is the first thing that someone sees about you. They will decide whether to start a conversation with you based on this profile alone. Therefore, it is very important to make a good first impression. 

  Do not rush. You will find more success if you initially put in the time to create a targeted and effective online profile.

• Do not lie, but try to put in things that both you and your target audience have in common. There is also nothing wrong with expanding your interests and trying out some of the things that your potential online matches enjoy. Read some new books, listen to new music, and watch a few movies that you have never seen before.

Birds of a feather flock together.

The more common ground you find, the better your chances of impressing your target dates and getting the first foot into the door.

Make your online dating profile more about your potential dates and less about you.

Make your online dating profile more about your potential dates and less about you.

2. Online Dating Plan

Birds of a feather flock together.

Have an online dating plan.

In online communication and encounters there is usually a greater time-lag. This can work in your favor if you use that time to prepare and formulate a good plan of action.

While creating your online dating plan, keep the following in mind –

• People respond best when you take the initiative and provide them with clear next steps to act on. Do not just leave an online conversation hanging. Always plan for follow-up conversations, meetings, and activities. If you take the initiative, you will find that people are more likely to follow.

  However, do not be overly pushy. This will only make you look desperate or dangerous, and neither will enhance your online dating prospects. If he/she is not interested in what you have to offer, then find someone else.

• Some people are naturally witty and charming. However, wit and charm can also be achieved through research and pre-planning.

  Have a plan on how to woo your date. Come up with a list of topics that you think he/she will enjoy and make sure you have good stories, jokes, or one-liners that will surely impress your date. In many ways, dating is like chess or having a debate. You anticipate your opponent’s moves and come up with clever counter moves. In this way you appear charming and witty because you know exactly what to say, and when to say it.

2. Online Dating Plan

3. Don’t Just Rely on Text

In online conversations, there is a tendency to rely solely on text.This is a mistake.

Relevant images and video will quickly catch a person’s attention and enhance your online conversation.

Impress your date with your creativity and do not be afraid to express yourself through words, pictures, music, or videos. Once, one of my dates composed me a song, and played it for me on the piano. That was incredibly attractive and I still remember that day!

Don’t just rely on text. One of the big advantages in online communication is that you can seamlessly speak through art, music, and videos. Be creative and use these other forms of expression to your advantage. This will set you apart from your competitors.

3. Don’t Just Rely on Text.

Successful Online Dating

Online dating success is not magic. To do well, all you need do is –

1. Put some time into creating an effective online dating profile that is targeted towards your audience.
2. Take the initiative and create a good online dating plan. If you provide good suggestions for followup conversations and meetings, it will be easier for your date to say Yes! Make your date an offer that is difficult to refuse.
3. Be creative. Step out of the box and speak with images, music, and video.

Most of all, remember to have fun and stay positive.

With online dating, it is easy to get discouraged if you are turned down or don’t get many responses. Online encounters are more fleeting in nature, and it is easy to lose confidence and give up altogether.

However, remember not to take it personally.

Online dating success is more about research, planning, and presentation than about you. If you are not performing well, go back and do more research, reformulate your plan, and rework your presentation. As you do this, you will get new data and learn which techniques work best for your potential dates.

The longer you stay in the game, the more you will learn, and the more successful you will become. Before you know it, you will have become an Online Don Juan.

What are you waiting for?? Get out there and have some fun!

Remember to have fun and stay positive.

This made me think about online scores in general, and in particular about online dating scores.

“Love has no boundaries“.

Maybe love does not, but dating and relationships certainly do.

Even though we like to think otherwise, we almost always date people who are from the same social rank or class as us. Most of the people that I have dated share the same education, religion, political affiliation. financial status, and social status as I do.

This is why online dating sites use these properties to calculate their match criteria, or more crudely put, their online dating scores.

Online Dating Score
Source: Masquerade Pictures

Frequently, we date people from school or from work,
Source: Young Love Pictures

Indeed this scoring system is normal and built into any dating process.

We are more compatible with those who are similar to us, and there is a higher likelihood that we will beattracted to them. After all, these educational, religious, political, financial, and social choices are the choices that we have made for ourselves, so presumably we think that they are better than the alternatives.

Online dating sites use these match criteria to help you pick potential mates because they generally work well. In online dating sites there are many participants who come from all walks of life, with a large range of backgrounds, beliefs, and social standing.

Filtering on some criteria is absolutely necessary to cull the herd.

Online dating sites use these match criteria because they generally work well.

Online Dating Score

When you consider online dating from a rational standpoint, it makes sense to date within your score class.

After all, if you date below your score, then are you not selling yourself short?

Everybody has a mental model of their own intrinsic value that is probably based on beauty, intellect, money, fame, charisma, social skills, technical skills, and much more. These are the attributes that we consciously or unconsciously use to evaluate others as well.

Different people will have different priorities as to which attributes are the most important, and indeed some people may apply different priorities to themselves than they apply to their chosen mates.

However, for an online dating transaction to succeed, both parties must agree on the price/score, and that is why most people date within their own score class.

Dating within your score need not always mean that you and your partner are equal in all attributes.

You can trade off one attribute for another. For example, older, successful men often date younger beautiful women. In this case, the man is trading off success, for beauty and the woman is trading off beauty, for success.

What is your online dating score?

Online Dating Scores and Social Pressures

Online Dating Scores and Social Pressures

However, even in cases where these trade offs are equitable and successful, one is still open to much criticism when perceived to be dating outside of one’s rank.

“She is just an air-head and a trophy wife; not at all worthy of a successful man.”

Successful men are a success because they are good at making effective life decisions, so I would not worry about their decision making capabilities with regards to their choice of women. They are getting something in return for what they are giving up. It is just a difference in priorities.

Our online dating score priority may change as we get older, and as our own circumstances and temperaments change. For example, many men go through “mid life crises” that temporarily or permanently change their relationship priorities.

This is sometimes why people divorce, cheat, or break up from bad relationships. Their priorities of valued attributes have changed, or their own attributes have changed and they no longer match their partner in dating score.

Dating Above Your Score

Since we are opportunistic beings, we will always be looking to date above our own score.

In fact, the more we date above our score, the better our ability to raise our own ranking. But since bothparties in the dating transaction will generally be trying to accomplish this…

Is dating above your score even possible?

Indeed it is. A transaction, including an online dating transaction, is never equal on both sides. Each side has imperfect information about the other. Each side may be in different emotional states, which can affect their decision making process. Proper marketing and communication can also do much to inflate your perceived online dating score.

However, dating above your rank is always a risk, because it is generally predicated on an artificial online dating score of one or both parties.

The factors that contribute to these artificial dating scores may change quickly, even in the short term, and this will lead to difficulties in the relationship. Your partner may discover more information about you. Your partner may get over his/her previous bad relationship and may no longer feel as vulnerable. Your partner may discover that you are all talk and no action, all shell and no substance.

If you continuously date above your score, and continuously fail, this may seriously affect your self esteem, which will cause a fall in your own dating scores.

Is dating above your score even possible?

Raising Your Online Dating Score

Raising Your Online Dating Score

Online dating scores are based on many attributes but they all can be grouped into three key categories –what you have, how you look, and who you are.

The more resources you have, the higher your online dating score. You can increase your dating score by getting the education and skills needed for acquiring these resources. When you are young, you generally have fewer resources, which results in a lower online dating score.

Once you finish school, and get a nice-paying job, your dating score increases significantly. In fact, some professionals who marry early will leave their spouse after a time, because their dating score may now be much higher than that of their spouse. Marriage laws in certain countries help to mitigate this disparity.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover“.

We shouldn’t; yet many of us do. We can’t help it. It is in our DNA.

The more attractive or beautiful you are, the higher your online dating score. Part of how you look is based on what you are born with, but there is much that you can do to either enhance or degrade what nature has given you. That is why cosmetics, clothes, dieting, and cosmetic surgery are such big money making businesses.

Finally, what is on the inside also matters, including personality, charm, and charisma. This is also an area where you can change and improve. Positive communication, self confidence, and tasteful humor will all help to raise your online dating score.

Online Dating Score – what you have, how you look, and who you are.