Those who have successes in online dating

Successes in terms of matches and landing dates, like Meh.

Any advice to those doing poorly (e.g. me)?

Get your profile looked over by female (assuming you want to date women) friends. Particularly if you can get the same general "type" as you tend to like to have a look.  So, if you like hipster artsy types your super-corporate polo playing friend might be less useful.

Part of it is just experience and building up your sixth sense for whether the other person is looking for something similar and if you'll get on.  I can now tell fairly quickly in a chat if it's worth pursuing but it's taken me best part of a decade of online and app dating to work it out.

Remember "bubbly" just means annoying and large.

Buy a nice watch and new shoes

i often read that women like these

quite how it helps signify a good potential mate apart from a bad one I don’t know but it seems to work

also, wear newish clothes and brush your teeth

basically this is 99% of dating

Be comfortable with yourself and who you are. 

Be the best looking version of you that you can be - dress well, lose weight, that kind of thing. 

Sell two interrelated things: 

1. Who you are, not what you like; and 

2. The idea of being in a relationship with you and what that's like. 

What Pinkus said and also. Those who I know who have been successful obviously enjoyed it in that they enjoyed meeting people. They always had something positive to say about the people that they met and their night out even if they weren’t their type. They were as much focused on the other people as their own wants and they always made it sound fun. All happily partnered up. All outside London.  Those who didn’t succeed always made it sound a miserable experience. All in London. Just my observations so I am not drawing conclusions as others have much more experience than me. 

Avoid the small talk via the app. Once you've matched then move on WhatsApp and only chat to arrange the date. Do the date in person. 

Exchanging messages and speaking via WhatsApp/the app is boring and time consuming. Just meet in person and see what the vibe is. Somebody up for meeting is probably worth meeting. 

A decent blurb can tip you into swipe right territory if you’re on someone’s borderline. 
 

Extend an invitation to go out after a few positive messages. The guys I date are the ones who ask. I tire of the others easily. 

There’s no clear optimal strategy. Women control the game, and they don’t act very uniformly. I see some women say on their profiles, “let’s just go for a drink, no chat.” I have others I’ve asked out after a week of chat say, “no I don’t agree to meet this early.” I’ve had plenty who just stop messaging me because I didn’t ask them out early enough. I had others stopped responding because I asked them out (they were probably just over committed with dates). And I’ve had plenty of those “no chat, let’s just meet up” dates go terribly because there was no build up, and we also were just totally incompatible in a way that some pre-date chat would have revealed. 

Give us the rest of the list, Judo.  Let's say:

Harrow

Westminster 

Charterhouse 

Shrewsbury 

Eton 

MARLBOROUGH 

Uppingham 

Radley

And I suppose the Catholic ones: 

downside

Ampleforth

And just for luck 

Tonbridge

Ummmm that's it

 

As someone said, be comfortable in yourself (which I appreciate is hard to just "do") and remember the audition goes both ways.  The best advice I ever received was to embed the fact that there are no "standards" or "levels".  Any man can get any woman and vice versa.  Knowing that more or less killed any unhealthy insecurities I previously had and, I believe, made me (even ;-)) more attractive as a result.

Also, if you have a passion for something (anything? not sure), wear it as a badge.  It makes you interesting and memorable.  Works both ways of course - look for a partner who has something about her too.

Amen to that. For a long time my profile included a rather sarcastic dig at the people who put liking good food and drink down as a hobby.  Everybody likes good food.