How to Write Online Personals that Get You Noticed

This personals writing workshop will help you focus on creating an ad that will attract as many of the right responses as possible.

After all, isn’t that why you want to use a dating site - to meet people that you will connect with?

The workshop is divided into five parts:

Getting started - congratulations, you got started
Who you are - writing appealing personal ads
Who you want -the single women or men you’d like to meet
Your headline - getting singles’ attention
Summing it all up. Hey, at least read this.

Ok, now you know what’s ahead. Let’s dive right in:

How to Write Online Personals - First Steps

When you sign up for many of the major dating services, you are asked at the beginning to fill out a profile “sheet” which includes space to write your ad.

What do you say?

Well, you can say anything, and everything… but good personals, the ones that are going to get a lot more responses are the ones that usually spell out, in no uncertain terms:

Who YOU are, and

Who you want

And that is the gist of it - the basic idea: you want to tell those eligible singles out there what you are about, and you want do so honestly. Then, you want to say exactly what kind of man or woman you are looking for.

Hey, you are doing this for you, so why not ask for things you like?

Before you start writing personals, do this little exercise: grab a piece of paper, and make two lists.

The first list should be of things that you feel like any singles ought to know about you before they get in touch with you. The other, a list of qualities that you are looking for in a potential mate.

Just write a list of points at first, don’t write a book. We’ll look at the best way to put those points into beautiful prose in the next few pages.

Who You Are

Great personal ads describe exactly who you are

Hello. If you did not get here from part one of this personals workshop, we are discussing how writing better personal ads will help you attract more singles.

In this section, we’ll look at what you should say about you, to give the men or women that’ll be responding a better idea about who you are, and whether or not they might like to get to know you better.

First of all - did you make the list of things that you think other singles should know about you?

If not, here are some examples of points usually mentioned in good personal ads:

Your career
Your main interests outside of work
Your goals in life
How you like to spend your free time
Children (have?want?dislike?)
General personality traits (outgoing, introverted, etc.)
Are you a partier or a homebody
How you feel about relationships

Yes, yes, some of them may seem a little cheesy, but they are just supposed to be examples to get you thinking about what to say. Only you can know the true depths of the madness that possesses you. Er, the qualities that make you attractive to others.

Seriously, single men and women will really want to know these things about you, because there are just so many choices out there, that there is no reason to waste one’s time with incompatible matches.

One thing that you should include in your personal ads is some quality, or trait that is unique to you: a personality quirk, some specific life experience that has made you who you are, or anything that makes you stand out from all those other singles out there who are, in effect, your competition.

So write about yourself and make it sound good, but also make it something that comes from you. Don’t just write an ad.

Keep this in mind: the better dating services will ask you a number of questions, the answers to which will later appear in your profile. This means that you probably won’t have to talk about many minute details in your personal statement, but rather convey a more general idea of who you are.

To be really successful, this kind of writing will require a little more introspection then just stating whether or not you are a smoker or a morning person. (Although those two are probably hugely important.)

Who You Want to Date

You will also want to talk about the man or woman that you seek.

Often, weaving a brief paragraph about yourself, together with a somewhat detailed description of who you are looking for, will get you the best responses. But we’ll talk about on the next page.

Be specific about the single women or men you want

If you did not get here from part one if this personals workshop, we are discussing how writing a better personal ad will help you attract and meet single women or men that you can really connect with.

We’ve gotten to the part where you tell those men or women out there what you are looking for in a partner.

This can be a little tricky, because often expectations, either overly inflated or not specific enough can send the wrong message. We’ll get to the number one mistake that guys make in a minute, but first, some examples of things you can reasonably ask about:

Age range (no-brainer)
Children (have?want?dislike?)
Basic personality traits
General disposition towards fellow human beings
Geographical location (if it matters)
Willingness to move
Physical characteristics (be realistic here, and don’t create a negative impression by asking for overly superficial qualities.)

As you can see, you’ll be asking about things similar to what you described about yourself, though perhaps not quite as detailed. But remember:

The best prospects who will answer your personal ad, are the ones who will “see” themselves in it - in your description of who you are looking for.

That is why it is often better to be specific: you’ll be writing to fewer singles, yes, but the single women or men that respond will be much more likely to possess the qualities that you are looking for.

Basically, you are polling a huge sample of people, and you are asking them: do you see yourself in this description? If you say, “I want a man” lots of men will answer (and we do mean LOTS.)

But if you say: “I want a 33-38 year old agnostic man from South Jersey who loves the outdoors and is comfortable with large breed dogs” then you will get him, or both of them, to answer your ad, because he will say that’s me! when he sees your ad.

So that’s the key. Now, one last thing:

Guys: DO NOT be obnoxious, and say things like “I want to meet single women with a perfect body” or anything along the lines of “I prefer round butts”. There is a place for that, and it’s called adult personals.

If you are looking for a serious relationship, based on more than the most superficial qualities, you cannot be superficial in your personal ad. Actually, you can’t even think that way, let alone write it. Nothing turns single women off faster than a sleazy man.

Your Headline

Attract more singles with the right headline because it’s the 2nd thing people see (after your picture).

If you didn’t get here from part one of this personals workshop we are talking about how writing better personals will help you meet singles that you’ll really connect with.

In this section, you’ll read about headlines, and how writing a better one will attract more attention to your personal ads, and therefore to you (more singles will want to meet you.)

Look:

The personals’ headline is what catches your eye

That’s pretty obvious isn’t it? And it’s also very important. You have to get those singles’ attention before you can tell them more about yourself. Otherwise, the rest of your personal is meaningless.

But what do you say in your headline?

Here we have to make a confession: the two of us who created this guide are terrible headline writers. We just can’t do it. We tried, and tried, and all that we could come up with is “The personal’s headline is what catches your eye”.

Well, maybe that’s not such a bad example. After all it did get the main point across…

And that’s what you want to do: get your main point across.

Remember how you are supposed to include something that is unique about you in your personal ads? Well, include it in your headlines too.

Just a couple of words (don’t write a paragraph) about you, and what makes you interesting.

So, a headline like Single man looking for his best match, although entirely reasonable, will not get much traction. Seriously, are there any singles out there trying online dating who are not looking for their best match?

The point is to stand out from the crowd, to get noticed by those singles who will be most likely to appeal to you, and who will find you interesting enough to establish contact. Incidentally, elsewhere on this site we also talk about how best to contact singles. But that’s later.

Summing it All Up

In this last section, we’ll try to put together all the dating advice you might have missed in the previous few pages.

Let’s start with what your ad should say about you:

You want to be honest
Mention something that is unique about you
List anything important you think they should know
Give some basic information about your station in life

The idea is to attract singles who will like you for who you are. So don’t hide anything, and talk about those qualities you feel are important.

And do the same when explaining what kind of man or woman you’d like to meet:

Ask about things that you want in a partner
Be as specific as possible
Mention anything that might be a no-no (smoking, children, location restrictions)
Do not be superficial about physical characteristics

In the end, the people who are most likely to answer your ad are the ones who see themselves in your description of your ideal partner.

And to get their attention, you must write a good headline:

Make it catchy, but descriptive
Mention the unique quality that you also discuss in the main part of your personal ad

The trick, if we can call it that, is to have your headline stand out from the crowd.

Also (this is so obvious we didn’t mention it before): check you grammr also your speling!

Do not make a bad first impression with your writing - you’ll be shooting yourself in the foot right from the start…

…and everything that you’ve learned here will be wasted. And you’ve learned enough to starting writing great personals!

But it’s not all you should know about online dating: in fact, all the action takes place once you contact that men or woman who catches your eye, and start chatting, or talking, or whatever you want to call it. What do you say then? We discuss this in the article about contacting singles.