Online Dating Results, Week of 10/31 – 11/7

Let me start this post by saying that a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.

Having said that, I do think the entire online dating industry needs a big dose of transparency and, for that reason, I submit to you, dear reader, my results for my first week back to online dating in quite some time, the week of 10/31 – 11/7:

• Completely re-wrote my profile
• Contacted 41 women
• 7 of those profiles went dark in the same time period (a 17% churn rate*)
• Received responses from 14 women (a 34% response rate)
• Proactively contacted by 2 women
• Received 5 phone numbers (12% of initial messages)
• Went on 3 dates
• Message-to-meet ratio for the week: 7%
• Second dates planned after first dates: 0.

This was all Cupid, and I should mention that not all of this “reduction” through the funnel was women blowing me off: out of the 5 phone numbers I got I deliberately chose not to pursue two of them.

From all my reading and talking with friends, the above numbers seem like a pretty middle-of-the-road, average experience for a male in his 20s or 30s on OkCupid in a medium-sized urban area. My city is about 500k people (with 2 million in the surrounding metro area).

Here’s the other side of the equation, my input:

• 1-2 hours on profile rewrites and message sending
• $20 – 30 on dates
• Level of certainty that I would not want a second date with all three women I met, arrived at either prior to actually meeting in person, or within 0.05 seconds of them arriving at our chosen venue: 100%.

Listen, I’m not trying to be a whiny bitch here; the truth is, I’ve only been at it for a week.

I am, however, trying to portray, as honestly as possible, that this online dating thing is tough — even for a guy who has a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn’t.

I view my current situation as a sort of boot camp; what I’m doing is clearly not working very well for the current dating market I’m trying to crack. But I’m committed to refining and tweaking my approach until I do crack it. And, since I suspect that almost literally ever other dating market in the U.S. is easier than my market, I will be in an even better position to advise other guys on how to maximize their results from online dating.

So there you have it. I hope this has post has been illuminating to you on some level — and I hope it inspires you to post your own stats, either in the comments below or on your own blog!
^{*An earlier one-week test rendered a 30% churn rate, which suggests to me that this metric is pretty highly variable.}

The Message Most Likely To Get a Response

Okay, so here’s a question that a lot of guys have on their minds when they first begin using online dating.

• What do I say in a message to a girl?

You can say anything, but you want to make it good right?

Luckily, it turns out that most men send pretty incompetent — i.e., not great — messages. The vast majority seem to consist of “sup” or “hey you’re cute” or “wanna date me” or something else that seems to have taken almost zero effort.

It’s not very hard to write a better message than “sup bab-ee.” But in between that abysmal message and a really good, stand-out, 1% of attractive guys message is a vast, dream-littered field of mediocrity.

The goal of this article is to get you safely through that field of mediocrity and at least closer to a 1% message. Here’s what that message will look like.

Humor and Confidence

The message needs to convey your unique sense of humor, and your confidence in yourself.

You need to say things that communicate that you don’t take the whole thing too seriously. Don’t apologize or be contrite for messaging her. Don’t fawn over her. Don’t mention her looks. She knows you’re attracted to her on a physical level; that’s a given if you’re messaging her.

Humor and confidence. Confidence and humor.

Call to Action

My assumption here is that most women appreciate, on some level, a take-charge kinda guy. That’s the kinda guy you want to be (another assumption).

Don’t be afraid to end every message with a “call to action” — a directive that she email you. “Message me back” can work. So can “Anyway, email me,” and a thousand variations on the theme.

It’s amazing to me how many guys wonder why their online conversations stale out. When they share the back-and-forth with me, it invariably turns out that they weren’t directive in any way.

This is the messaging equivalent of ‘making a move,’ in the real-world and, like the real world, fortune favors the bold. Tell her what you want her to do; she can then decide if she wants to comply or not. (Hint: most of the time, she wants to comply.)

Reference her profile

If you’re looking for a serious or semi-serious relationship (or at least entertaining the possibility) it doesn’t hurt to demonstrate to her that you’ve read her profile.

Please, please, please, go beyond saying, “I also like X.” This is mediocre.

Instead, say something controversial, challenging, or noteworthy, like “I bet I can eat ice cream faster than you. Let’s find out.” Or “Marky Mark’s career is really overrated; I ran into him in the bathroom one time, and he agreed with me.” Or something even better.

Stand out & Keep it Short 

These last two are your bonus pro-tips. To stand out, try this tactic: create a female profile in your city, let the messages pour in for 24-48 hours, and then review the messages and take note of what every other guy in your city is doing to approach these women. Note what makes you annoyed, aggravated, or incredulous. Think of it as an exercise in “thinking like a woman” (not a bad habit to get into to build compassion, in fact.)

Then, plan your message strategy around being notably different from that.

For keep it short, I generally recommend your messages be no longer than 2-5 lines at the most. She isn’t trying to read a novel. You just need to convey humor, confidence, and demonstrate that you are a unique guy, and do it succinctly (remember: show, don’t tell.)

What awesome messages have you found that have worked really well? Share in the comments section below!

 

Choose Women Who Choose You

A long time ago, I was given the following advice about women (in general, not related to online dating):

“Choose women who choose you.” 

Without getting into a deep discussions of social roles and the fact that women are always the choosers, it’s enough to say that following this advice has improved my life immeasurably.

How does this translate to online dating? Well, with most dating sites (and certainly with OkCupid), you can actually see what women have been viewing your profile lately.

Now, women will often hit your profile, and not send a message. (Remember, women are conditioned not to initiate contact.) But that shouldn’t stop you from messaging those women who viewed your profile.

Think of it this way: your profile is a product. The woman was already interested enough in your picture or headline to click through. In sales terminology, she’s a prospect: she’s entered the top of the sales funnel.

The question is, is she into the offer? If she rates your profile highly (4 or 5 stars) this is an even bigger indication of interest. This is pretty much as clear a woman can be about saying “Please message me I want to know more” without actually sending you that in a message. In a bar, this is like the girl giving you constant fuck-me eyes from across the room.

Follow up on it. In my experience, the highest-probability messages are messages I send to women who visited my profile. Recently one woman even gave me her number right away in the first message she sent me (in reply to a message I sent her.)

So, what do you say in this message? “Hey, I saw you looking at my profile, what’s up?” Yes. But dressed up a little.

I’ve got another article coming on how to send the best message possible, but here are the basics.

1. Tease her about looking at your profile and not messaging you. Duh, she’s not supposed to message you, but that’s what makes this a tease.
2. Be confident. Assume she’ll message you back, and tell her to do so.
3. Reference her profile in some small way (not required, but may help).

Here’s an example that has worked for me in the past:

“What do you think you’re doing, creepin on my profile without sending a message?? Anyway, I just logged on to see if anyone could catch my eye. Luckily, you did So, you have XYZ thing, do you? I seriously doubt [joke/tease/playful]. Okay, enough of this. Email me back and we’ll see if [whatever].

A word to the wise: don’t accuse her of being a stalker (stalkers are scary).

So what’s good about this message? It’s playful; humorous; it conveys confidence and humor; and finally, it contains a strong call to action — a direct command that she message you back.

Now, of course some woman are going to think, “No way I’m going to message you! I don’t like men bossing me around!” Or whatever. That’s okay. Better that, than a woman reading your message and thinking, “Oh, another milquetoast guy who tries to make idle chit-chat in a message and gives me literally nothing to say next.”

The command tone (which probably warrants its own article) selects for women who are pretty feminine; that is, they want to be guided or lead by a man. If you’re not that guy, you probably want to adjust your strategy so that you’re more passive and receptive to a woman approaching you. In that case, a woman with more masculine characteristics probably will initiate contact with you; then it’s just up to you to be the hot girl, and follow her lead in the interaction.

This is why self-knowledge is so important in (online) dating: you need to know where you personally fall (congruently!) on the passivity to activity spectrum. Then you need to either A) do the deep self-work required to expand your range or B) accept where you’re at and screen hard for the type of woman who  is your complementary opposite.

Try it out, and let us know your results in the comments below!

Women Will Tell You When They’re Ready

One of the things I’ve noticed about online dating, and particularly Cupid, is that, if you’re listening, women will tell you exactly what to do and when.

This parallels interactions with women in the real world perfectly (of course). But it’s easy to point to the direction happening online because everything is written.

Here are two recent examples, complete with transcripts.

Example 1:

1. I send a brief introductory message, complete with intro video and mention of items in her profile (this is my standard approach, by the way.)
2. She responds in kind, but with a much longer message. (That’s a hint. Message length usually correlates with amount of interest. Not always.)
3. We message back and forth, for a total of about 11 messages, for the next 5 days, including a few double-messages from her. (Hint: when a girl double-messages you, it’s another indicator that she’s interested.) I would not recommend sending this many messages or talking online for this many days. It was sort of an experiment.
4. Finally, she says: “Well, it’s Sunday night. I think I’ve got a million things to do before tomorrow and I’m out of town for work quite a bit this week.” 
5. Translation: “Are we going to meet up, or what? Make a move!”
6. My next message was a basic “Let’s get coffee” email, plus my phone number.
7. She texted me the next morning.
8. We have a date set up later this week.

Pretty open and shut case, and pretty clear communication from her. Now, of course it’s not what a guy would say: a guy would just say, “Well, you’re interesting, let’s hang out.” But women are socialized to see that as too forward (and dipping towards the ever-present fear of being perceived as ‘slutty.’ Guys, sut-shaming does nothing but exacerbate our frustrations with the female gender; but that is the a topic for another article.)

Okay, let’s look at another example:

1. I send a brief introductory message, complete with introductory video, and no mention of anything in her profile.
2. She responds in kind, with a message of the same length, and calls out my video for the soundtrack.
3. We go back and forth for 9 more messages on our respective taste in music, for the next 5 days. Short messages, lots of links to youtube and soundcloud.
4. At message 9, I reference her profile, and ask what I have to do to “sample her tuna casserole” [dish changed to protect her identity.] Her profile boasts of her tuna-casserole making skills.
5. She replies with, “… Tuna casserole fan, eh? Well, I am always much more fond of making grilled cheese after a couple of drinks. Just sayin’.“
6. Translation: “Take me out for drinks already!”
7. My next message was, “Do you want to go to Venue A or Venue B?”
8. In our next 3 messages we exchange phone numbers and she promises to text.
9. She doesn’t text (at least, not yet).

There are a few additional things we can learn from this second exchange.

First – music is universal and a good topic upon which to establish initial values and rapport. There’s a reason teenagers are so obsessed with music and it’s influence in dating: music is meaning. This is also why guys and girls who are “in a band” get so much action. Music moves us. It is primal and elemental.

Second – you can give your number first. It telegraphs confidence and presumes trust. In 90% of cases when I offer my number first, women reciprocate and give their number immediately.

Third – when women say they’re going to call or text you, odds are, they won’t get around to it. No, they’re not “liars.” It’s just that their intentions change over time (like everyone’s.) Her intention in that moment is to text or call you. A few hours later, her intention is to pick up her kid from school, or get the laundry done, or carry on a really hilarious conversation with some other dude. It’s okay. It’s not about you. Don’t get upset about it.

There’s also an ambivalence I detected in this interaction: I gave this particular woman a pretty restrictive list of options for our date, over-working the “A or B” dynamic. She came back with, “Well, neither A or B work for me, so I’ll text you.” I read frustration in that response: I wasn’t flexible enough, so I’m on the back burner.

Now, if I just stay passive, I’ll stay on the back burner until I eventually fall off the stove (which won’t take long.) The way I can get back on the front burner is to take the initiative by calling or texting her and setting up a date.

Remember, guys are supposed to initiate; so even if a girl swears up and down she’ll do the work, don’t rely on her to follow-through; it’s just not as important to her that she follow through as that she be pursued by an attractive man. It’s your job to be that attractive man, and pursue her.

There you have it: a short guide to listening to women who will tell you when they’re ready to be taken out. Of course this won’t always happen — often women will just discontinue the conversation if you fail to take action — but this is a good example of what it looks like when women get a little bored and take a major role in helping the meet happen, because she really does want to meet the guy.

If a woman is curious about you, she’ll drop all kinds of hints that you can use to create a meet in real life. You just have to pay attention, and act.

Final take-away: aim to message back-and-forth with a woman no more than 2-3 times before you move into the real world. Although you can go much longer, there’s really no point: if she’s talking to you, she’s probably willing to meet you, or warming up to that.

When You Log On Matters

When you first start online dating, it’s tempting to use it as much as you want.

Don’t. Resist the temptation. More time won’t get you better results: more strategically and tactically-sound behaviors will get you better results.

Here’s the lowdown on your logged-in behavior.

1. Log on during “down” times in your week: mid-day on Sunday, lunch break, right after work. I see lots of girls answering messages at these times, especially in the 4:30 – 6:30pm time frame. Another key time period would be in the early morning, since many people do email, social media, and dating sites first thing, as they warm up for their day. Sending out messages right before these peaks is the next best thing you can do after messaging women who are already online, since your message is more likely to be at the top of her inbox.
2. When you’re on, be on. Answer your messages and send a few new ones. I’ll cover more about messaging strategy in future posts, but suffice it to say, it’s better to send a few messages every few days than 40 messages in a single weekend. Whatever you do, don’t just lurk and hang out. That’s useless.
3. When you’re off, be off. Don’t leave the app running on your phone (keeping you logged in) or the browser tab open. Women searching profiles need to see that your “last online time” wasn’t “15 minutes ago” no matter when she hits your profile. The idea that some time has passed (like up to 24-36 hours) is good for you. It says you have a life, and it doesn’t revolve around the online dating website.
4. Make plans for the weekend on Tuesday. OkCupid’s own data suggests that this is the major usage pattern for people looking to set up dates for the weekend. Similarly, set up early-week dates, such as Tuesday or Thursday nights, on Sunday night. Most women, no matter how busy their lifestyle, have down-time on Sunday night. It’s the ideal time to get into an online chat or, better yet, a text-message conversation. It helps that people are often relaxed from a solid weekend, and preparing for the week, maybe dreading it, looking for a little friendly distraction. Be that distraction.
5. Be disciplined about your schedule. I recommend you log on to the site a maximum of once per day, with a caveat for mobile app use if you’re riding the bus or waiting in line or what not. I further recommend that you set aside at least three nights per week to go on dates — adjusting for your own life and schedule, of course. I like Tuesday and Thursday evenings after work, and Sunday early afternoon. The weekday night dates are a little more romantic, since there is a time constraint — you both presumably have to get up for work in the morning — without being the obvious “social” slot of Friday or Saturday night. Sunday afternoon is good because it is a less-pressured time: you both are likely to be relaxed, and there’s no time pressure.
6. A note about scheduling dates on Friday and Saturdays. As a guy with an active social life, these are either third-date nights for girls you’re really hitting it off with, or social nights to spend with friends, dancing, partying or doing whatever fascinating fun hobby you have. I would never schedule a first date on a Friday or Saturday night for this reason. Saturday nights are really ‘girlfriend’ or ‘girlfriend material’ nights, and my presumption is you won’t know if she’s girlfriend material until a few dates in.

There you have it: seven simple rules to guide your online dating usage behavior.

What rules do you use to get your best results?

Why Are You Getting Crappy, Unimaginative Messages?

I’ve cracked the case. I’ve discovered one of the biggest scourges of online dating success, for both men and women.

This, ladies and gentleman, is why you never get any good messages from people you find hot:

• Your profile contains 0 proper nouns 

Okay, so I didn’t do a scientific study to establish this, but it is, in my humble opinion, an open-and-shut case. I’ve studied thousands (no, I mean, thousands) of women’s dating profiles, and at this point, hundreds of guys’ profiles (no, I haven’t gone to bat for the other team; I’ve started reviewing guys’ profiles to help improve them). And the problem is pernicious and persistent for both genders.

This is how it typically goes for a woman:

• Check out a guy’s profile
• It’s generic, boring, bland, blah
• This guy doesn’t stand out from the crowd.
• Why should I message him?
• I can’t think of a reason.
• NEXT!

Girls, you are guilty of this too — and this is what the experience is like, from a guy’s perspective:

• Check out a girl’s profile
• It’s generic, boring, bland, blah
• There is literally nothing in her profile I can reference, make a joke about, etc.
• So what do I message her?
• I can’t think of anything.
• Wait, maybe I’m supposed to make something up that’s witty, but it’ll sound generic and copy-paste without any reference to her profile.
• Too much effort.
• NEXT!

And that’s just for average-looking girls. The bland-profile problem seems to be exacerbated for better-looking girls — or to be more precise, for the girls I can deduce spend more time thinking about their appearance, as evidenced by the numerous “hot” photos they’ve posted, the amount of time they spend in makeup, with hair done, cleavage-enhanced, etc.

Here’s how things go for those “hot” girls:

• Check out a girl’s profile
• It’s generic, boring, bland, blah.
• She’s given me ZERO opportunity to relate to her as a human being.
• But wait, she’s hot.
• So what do I message her, “You’re hot?”
• I guess I’ll just do that then. It’s my only chance.
• Woman is all like, “Ewww, guys are just after me for my looks!”

See?

(Hot) women, you are complicit in the type of messages you get!

If you are tired of being called out by guys just for your looks, then please, for God’s sake, give us something else to call you out for! 

If you’re tired of getting these crappy, unimaginative messages, maybe it’s because you have a crappy, unimaginative profile!

But wait, I hear you say. I’m a hot woman! “Effort” is anathema to me! I put my effort into my appearance, and in uploading hot photos to the site!

Then don’t be disappointed when that’s all guys comment on.

If your social and reproductive value is primarily in how hot you are, don’t be surprised when guys pick up on that, and ask to date you simply for that reason. There’s a sick double standard in asking you girls to be pretty, and then asking you to get mad at guys who comment on the fact that you’re pretty.

It’s easier in person because in person, I get a sense for your personality, goals and ambitions in the first microsecond I meet you. I don’t know I know these things, but I do, and they enable me to relate to you as a human being.

On the internet, all I have is photos and text — you might as well be a dog I’m thinking of adopting. If you’ve failed to do a really good job convey your unique personality in those photos and text — and let me be clear, this is not easy to do — then it’s an almost hopeless game for both of us.

(And, yes, I know most of the guys commenting in your looks are doing it in an incompetent way. We’ll leave a discussion of competent vs. incompetent male attention for another day. For today, I’m just trying to drive the point home: bland profile = bland messages.)

One of the big sins of online dating is that it equalizes the playing field, i.e., it doesn’t take into account male and female sex and gender and value differences. So, until a site comes along that does, you might have to think and behave a little outside-the-box in order to get the results you want.

It’s really simple: don’t want to be objectified? Stop objectifying yourself. Put the cleavage away. Show us pictures of you cuddling your cat in a sweater while sitting on a stack of Great Literature instead.

You know what attracts smart guys? Mystery, intrigue, and a commensurate display of intelligence on your part. Guys like solving problems and puzzles. Give them a freakin’ puzzle to solve. Give them an obstacle to crash through. (And no, that obstacle shouldn’t be “I’m not on here much.”)

And please, God please, add some proper nouns to your profile. 

Proper nouns are easy, and fun. See, like this!:

• Azores
• Baryshnikov
• Chlamydia
• Dostoevsky
• Euripides
• Frank Zappa
• Garfield
• Hemingway
• Io

See? So easy!

Just to spell it out further, here are the clear win-conditions and lose-conditions I’m trying to convey here.

LOSE CONDITIONS

#1

Can’t imagine my life without my
Friends, Iphone, my bike, potato chips, tea, and chocolate.

“iPhone,” while technically a proper noun, is so ubiquitous as to be useless. I love my iPhone too! I don’t know anyone eles who likes iPhones! Let’s date!

#2

I party, study, play with my cats, make a mess of my apartment, and clean it back up again. To understand my day-to-day, imagine this on a never-ending loop. That’s all I’ll give you, ask me if you want more.

Hi, I would really like more detail about your never-ending-loop of a life. Like, why don’t you insert me into this loop, since your pictures prominently feature your ample cleavage, and I am the #1 fan of ample cleavage?

WIN CONDITION (so rare I could only find one example)

Here are some things I’ve done in my life. . .

Collected ancient Greek pottery in Thebes.
Went to Disneyland in Tokyo when all the elementary schools had the day off (Jesus…).
Made Kid Cudi buy me a drink because he was mean.
Played with halogenated solvents.
Dressed up like Ke$ha, only to be mistaken for her later in the night.
Danced to Biz Markie with the huge guy from The Green Mile.

That block of text is almost 50% proper nouns. I don’t even know what half that stuff is, but it sounds impressive, so I’m attracted. And, she name-drops famous people, which is both obnoxious and hot. That’s the way you do it.

Listen, men and women are equally guilty of writing these snore-fest profiles. But men and women are equally interested in the love & affection that can result from a really good match on a dating website.

You want that really good match? Then hang that personality out there — your specific personality, as identified through proper nouns.

OkCupid or Match.com: What’s Better for Online Dating?

I got a request to write up a Match vs OkCupid post, and that’s just exactly what I’m going to do.

In one corner, we have the hipster-cool OkCupid, (which is now owned by Match.com, although the founding team is still on board doing all the work.) Cupid started as SparksNotes, a note-taking service for college students, and then morphed into a personality test site, with built-in virality: you could post your test results, sort of like badges, on other websites, which inevitably drew more people into the site to take the tests.

OkCupid’s history is interesting because it basically started with everything you find on a dating website (tests, quizzes, personality profiles), minus the dating. Now it’s probably the premiere free dating site on the Internet, taking second place to Plenty of Fish in terms of raw traffic, but since I can’t bear to subject my eyes to the hideous awfulness that is PoF (and neither can any of my friends), it’s #1 in my book.

In the other corner, we have Match.com, the undisputed king of online dating websites, free or paid. Match is also amongst the oldest matchmaking properties on the web, having been started in the mid-1990s.

Since we’re focusing on the efficacy of these two sites from a user’s perspective, I’ve broken down the experience into a five main categories:

• Efficacy. What are the quality of the matches and quality of dates?
• Ease of use. How long does it take to get off the site and meet someone in person?
• Value. What does the site deliver vs. what you give up to use it?
• Design and aesthetics. Is using the site and/or mobile app a pleasant experience?
• Network. What type of people are using this site? What is the dating pool like?

A couple of notes: in an informal and totally non-scientific poll, the first four categories represent what most people are looking for in a dating website: that it gets them good dates, that it’s easy to use, that it’s a good value, and that using it is enjoyable (or at least not unpleasant. Plenty of Fish utterly fails in the Design & Aesthetics category, which is why it’s not even on my radar.)

The fifth category, Network, is sort of the category that rules them all. Even if the website looks and works awesome, if there’s nobody on it — or nobody attractive to you — it fails. With online dating, the pool is the product, and you’re paying to get access to the pool. 

So let’s start this cage match, shall we?

Efficacy: How Serious Are You?  

You can’t talk about the efficacy of a dating site without talking about its user base. OkCupid is free, supported by ads. It attracts people who would rather not pay for online dating, but are OK with looking at ads. I think this indicates a slightly-less-serious, or at the very least slight-more-cost-conscious, dating pool.

(You can pay OkCupid $10 a month to get access to some premium features — ability to search by  body type, and a few other perks — but I imagine fewer than 10% of users actually do this.)

On Match.com, users are free to browse other profiles and wink at other users, but messaging is locked away behind the subscription. Monthly access can be had for as little as $15 a month (a 6-month commitment is required) or as much as $35 (a one-month subscription). Match also offers a “guarantee” for an extra $1 per month — they will pay for another 6 months of use if you do not find your “special someone” in the first six months — although there are reports that this guarantee is hard to qualify for and sometimes enforced in a shady manner.

So I think it’s fair to say that Match.com users are more serious: if they’re messaging you, they’re serious about meeting someone, because they’re either paying for it monthly, or they’re on a 7-day free trial period and trying to get a date in seven days.

Here’s my experience. I tried Match.com once, and used it diligently for 6 months. I met one woman in person.

Now, granted, at the time my “online dating game” wasn’t very strong, but I still find this metric pathetic. Arguably, I wasn’t looking for something serious, so I was using the wrong site for me at the time: but I still find 1 date in 6 months to be an indicator of efficacy for me personally.

Of course, arguing from anecdotes is useless: I know at least one girl who got married from using Match.com. Now, she did spend about 10 hours a week on the site for 6 straight months, but if that’s what it takes.

In contrast, I have found OkCupid much more efficacious. I have met dozens of girls through the site, many of whom turned into friends, and several of whom I had short romantic relationships with.

Simply because of the cost difference, I think of OkCupid as the more efficacious site, but it really does depend on what you’re looking for. If you want to meet someone for the long term or someone who is serious about getting married, Match.com probably has the better network for you.

Winner: Depends what you’re looking for. Match for the more-serious, Cupid for the less-serious.

Ease of Use: How Fast Can You Get Offline? 

In my view, the objective of online dating is to make it offline dating as quickly as possible. Unless what you’re really looking for is a pen-pal, most of us will admit that actually building relationships takes place in real time in the real world, not mediated by electronic screens.

So which site gives you a faster time-to-real-life? It’s really a toss-up, because it depends on your skills with your profile, messaging and pictures, as well as the motivations and confidence of the other person in question.

There are all kinds of people on both sites, both very secure and bold people who are willing to meet up after 1-2 messages, and people who expect to exchange 20+ messages through inmail before a phone number is exchanged.

Having said that, I will also say that there are specific things a guy can do that make it more likely a girl will give you her phone number within 1-2 messages. I know, because I’ve used these techniques, and the success is repeatable. Recently, a girl gave me her number in the first reply message she sent to me (and then followed it up with a “wow, I just read your profile, it’s so good” message).

This one’s a toss-up, because I believe there are specific guys that everyone can do to improve their time-to-real-life, which work equally well on both sites.

Value: Free vs Paid 

Cupid wins. I’m just going to call it out right now. Free beats paid any day of the week, especially if you use an ad-blocker on your browser so you don’t have to be brainwashed by their ads.

I suppose there is some actual value in the signaling function of paying for online dating, whether on Cupid or Match. vis a vie the fact that guys willing to pay will probably be viewed by women as “more serious” and perhaps also “more marriage-material” which might be what you’re going for. For those of not going for that, it will probably hurt more than help: all the casual chicks will say, what kind of loser has to pay for online dating?

From a user perspective, the value equation has to be optimized for your time. Whether or not you’re spending monthly on online dating, my presumption is that your time is valuable, and you want to spend as little time as possible finessing your profile, messaging hundreds of women, and crafting the perfect reply. There are shortcuts and quick rules-of-thumb for all these activities that will radically boost your success rates. I intend to write about all of them in future articles, so stay tuned.

Online dating shouldn’t take more than 1 to 2 hours a week. That should be enough for you to get the results you want, whether it’s setting up 3 coffee dates with attractive women or 1 coffee date with one seriously attractive, seriously compatible woman.

Design and aesthetics: Cupid Takes the Cake 

This category seems to me an easy call: OkCupid wins, hands down, as the site with the superior user interface, design, and general look and feel.

Match is no slouch in this department, boosted by a recent redesign, but they’re still not up to Cupid’s standards. Nobody in the online dating game is (although WhyDon’tWe has plenty of pretty buttons with rounded corners.)

I mean, come on: which would you rather spend an hour staring at?

OkCupid profile. Notice how much cleaner it is.

On mobile: I have to plead ignorance here, since I’ve only ever used Cupid’s app, and my verdict is: it’s good, but not significantly better than the website experience.

I doubt Match.com’s Mobile Match is significantly better than their on-site browsing experience either, so I’ve got to call this one a tie. Sound off in the comments if I’m totally wrong here.

I will note that Cupid’s app has a “Locals” feature that tries to identify potential matches who are nearby, in your neighborhood, and allows you to post suggested date ideas that others can take you up on. I’ve had virtually zero success with posting my own date ideas, although one woman did contact me using the feature, once.

In general, I think dating sites are still struggling with the local-social-mobile intersection. Eventually, someone might solve this and make it a killer app — I know what kind of product I would pay for in this space — but nobody has stepped forward with the right product design yet, and no incumbent is thinking about it in the right way, so it might take a while.

Network: Dating Pool or Dead Pool? 

I know by now you’re probably convinced I’m a shill for OkCupid, but it’s not true, and this category will demonstrate why: churn.

Churn is a reality of online dating websites. Generally, the better the product, the higher the churn: paradoxically, people who stay on the site long-term, continuing their search month after month, are by definition frustrated daters, not getting results. So a good churn rate indicates one of two things:

1. Your site is so godawful that people get off as quickly as they get on
2. Your site is so damn good at matching folks that they get off as quickly as they get on

I’ve heard that Match.com turns over their entire customer inventory every 6 months. This makes sense, given their six-month membership packages, and their six-month guarantee: people probably think, “Okay, I’ll give this online dating thing a serious shot for 6-months, and see what happens.” One way or another, they’re getting off the ride after that 6 month period is up.

Cupid has no such artificial restrictions. In one recent sample, fully 30% of profiles I messaged over a two-day period disappeared within the business week. That’s a huge, colossal, stupendous amount of churn. It’s much, much more than Match.com’s.

So what’s going on here? Are Cupid users less serious about dating? Probably. Are they more apt to jump on and jump off at a whim? Probably.

The flip-side problem to too much churn is not enough. In other words: the dead-pool effect: people who create profiles, then abandon them shortly afterwards, either because they started dating someone, or because they got discouraged and gave up. This easily leads to the common problem of “messaging dead profiles” — beautiful people who haven’t logged in lately. Technically, they’re “active users” (although every dating site defines “active” users differently) — but they’re not going to see your message.

If I had to guess, I would say that Match’s inventory is probably, on average, more “stale” than Cupid’s. Is this good or bad for you? Well, it’s neither, because you’re going to use the only smart tactic that can be deployed when faced with the oscillating problems of too much vs. not enough churn: you’re only going to message people who are online now, or who have been active in the past day. 

Listen, profiles are products: but unlike a can of tuna, a profile has no “best-buy” date and no known shelf-life. A lot of is going behind the scenes with every profile you view, and you don’t get to see any of it: that ‘perfect profile’ that you’re convinced is your soulmate could disappear any instant. If they haven’t logged in in the last 3 days, odds are they’re not going to, either.

If you’re serious about getting results from online dating, you should therefore only be reviewing product that is guaranteed “fresh” — that is, product that is using the site at the same time you are. The bigger the local pool, the easier this is (i.e., in a big city) — if you are in a rural area or a small-ish city (less than 1 million people), you’re going to have to expand your browsing to longer and longer temporal scales (last 5 days, last week, etc.)

A final note: since OkCupid is free, it’s not unusual to run into the same people on both Match and Cupid.  It’s also not unusual to see the same person on the site for a long period of time; there are a few women on OkCupid that I have seen pop up multiple times, on and off, over a 3 year period. I call them the “long-term-available” and I suppose I share a certain camaraderie with them, since I’ve obviously been in and out of serious relationships during the same time period. Maybe one day we’ll all have a big meetup and swap stories.

The Final Analysis: What’s Better, OkCupid or Match.com?

The answer: it depends.

Here’s my advice: if you’re looking to get into a seriously-long-term relationship and/or marriage, use Match.com. It probably has a dating pool slightly more aligned with that intention, and in any case, putting your money up front signals your seriousness, which is the right message to send to potential mates.

If you’re just looking to get your feet wet with online dating and you’re not sure how serious you are about marriage or finding a long-term mate, use OkCupid. It’s free, it’s easier to use (IMHO), and the dating pool is just as good as you’ll find anywhere else on the Internet. Plus, it’s more fun to use, and that counts for something, right?

If you find yourself straddling the fence, use paid OkCupid. The additional options will make your searching and messaging more effective, and help you spend less time and get better results.

Of course, there’s nothing to say you can’t use both sites, and many people do. But if you’re like me, your attention is already spread thin enough. A busy man only really needs one dating site and application.

I hope this has helped your decision making. Sound off in the comments if you (dis)agree!