Welcome to the Baby Boomer Dating Series.

In this blog we continue with Part 2 of online dating success for those of you women over 40. Part 1 covered the importance of the photo in great detail.  Today, you’ll learn five more specific tips that have helped many over 40s women achieve online dating success. Here’s how I define success: meeting great guys and forming a lasting love relationship with the One.

You will learn: how to create the perfect, screenname, headline and profile; how to describe your ideal match; which sites to sign up for; and how to use search engine secrets to optimize your chances of being seen by many more guys.

Online Dating Success: Five Tips

Online Dating Tip 1. Your Screen Name, Headline and Profile Need to Pop
 

To differentiate yourself from all the other women out there, your screenname, headline and profile have to be real, upbeat and clever representations of who you are.   First, sign on as a male looking for a female and jot down ideas. Sign up on one of the larger online sites that has plenty of boomer aged-men like Match, eHarmony, or Tinder.  Ideally, do this exercise with a male friend to help you see what guys are looking for.  Next, ask each of your two best friends to write up a one paragraph description of you, highlighting your unique and wonderful qualities.  Now you are ready to put together an optimal screenname and profile that is 100% you and stands out.

Screennames like BubblyBrit; RioGirlinNYC; RareYetWellDone all pop.  They give guys a vivid picture of your personality. Try variations on these examples, or other positive and creative examples you can see by logging on to a major site as a guy looking for a woman. You can also appeal to men’s interests in a clever way. FootballSeasonistheBestTimeofYear; ILuvEntrepreneurs; or MatchPointMatch will catch the eye of a guy who shares your interests.  Similarly, you can create screen names that appeal to golfers, baseball enthusiasts, lawyers, doctors, sudoku-players or any other hobby or interest.

Screen name Don’ts:

Avoid defensive, kooky or negative monikers, like IHaveaKidIWillAlwaysLove; OrangePolkaDots; or LuckyLies. And please avoid anything to do with eye-color, being “sweet” or any of the other trite and boring names or headlines you see over and over. You won’t have online dating success with being negative or trite.

Online Dating Tip 2. The Perfect Headline and Profile  

For your Headline, write a sentence that showcases you and basically restates your love intention, but phrased in the third person.
Warm, witty, wonderful woman now looking for her special guy. 
Foxy, fun-loving redhead seeks her mate. 
Caring, kind Southern girl looking for a great partner.  

Avoid simply restating what you put in your screenname or indicating that you are fun and ready for a good time (that will only get you a crop of guys who are not interested in a relationship).

The All-Important Profile

Start by working from your friends’ write-ups (see Part 1).  Be honest and lead with your most inviting qualities. Are you funny?  A people person?  Do you have a quick mind?  Are you creative?  Write about it.  Then throw in some quirky, endearing or funny specifics.  For example you can say that you are a Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle person or love music from the 80’s. List your interests that men would be likely to share.  For example, you might mention hiking with the Sierra club, wine dinners or your favorite sports team.

Barbara, a people-person realtor used our love mentoring program to create online dating success. Remember how I defined that? That’s right. She met the love of her life online. Here’s the Headline that really attracted him.:
I have that approachable quality where people think I’m someone they know.  I’m a fiercely loyal friend and a good listener who loves storytellers.  I also love the thrill of the deal, am pretty handy in the kitchen and a great speller. I love peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, baseball games, stand-up comics, kissing and spur-of-the-moment road trips.

Online Dating Tip 3. Less is More When It Comes to Describing Your Ideal Match

When you write about an ideal match, make it short and general. Less is more—you don’t want the man feeling like he can’t measure up to a long list of qualities.  Also, remember that you are going to be filling your Dating Program of Three dance card, which will include guys who at first are “not really your type.”  Something like the following works fine: Looking for a good-hearted, successful man who wants a committed relationship with his best friend and lover.  You want to cast a wide net to capture men who are interested and then do the picking and choosing. When you do start sorting through your responses, then you can choose men whose profiles indicate that they are in the correct age range, successful and looking for a long-term relationship and children, if you want them.

Online Dating Tip 4. Work a Larger Site and a Boutique Site
     

If you want to achieve online dating success, I recommend that you become a paid subscriber on two sites: one large one, such as Match or eHarmony, and one specialized site like JDate.com, Christianmingle.com or Blacksingles.com.  Browse through different sites, reading the profiles.  Go with your intuition in picking a site. According to independent sources, there are currently over thirty million unique visitors per month at U.S. dating sites.  And millions more per month in the U.K. and Europe.  So there are plenty of people from whom to select.

Online Dating Tip 5. Master the Search Engine Secrets that Get More Results

A highly ranked profile can increase your visibility and generate more responses. When men run a search for women, and you meet the criteria, you will land at the top of their search results, ahead of other women, just by following some simple rules. On a number of sites, recently updated profiles are ranked higher.  You don’t have to do much to qualify. You can just tweak your info, changing your ideal first date or hobby frequently.  On some sites, you will come up as “New” all over again if you simply delete a sentence in your profile and then replace it.  Though these are easy ways to update your profile, it’s also a good idea to experiment with your photo, screen name and profile to see if making some changes pulls in better guys.

I Will Write Your Online Profile

There are many other online dating tips that will produce top-quality guys for over 40s women!  If you really want to fast forward to your online dating success and learn all the simple secrets that have helped many over 40s find the One quickly, then I have great news for you. My expert Love Mentors will teach you these easy-to-use strategies and help you develop photos, screen names and profiles that will make you stand out. And it’s included in my dating coaching package. Better yet, if you like, I will personally review your online presence at no extra cost.