Develop an online dating strategy that gets results

I started my online dating career reading diligently through profiles of women that I thought were cool, and then sending thoughtfully typed out messages to each one. It would take me about an hour to send out messages to a small handful of women.

Then I waited for a response. One day … two days … three days … a week … nothing.

In my experience over four years since those early struggles, there’s approximately a 1/3 chance that any given girl will respond to your first message, provided it stands out over the countless messages girls are inundated with on a daily basis. So instead of worrying whether one particular woman will respond, you have to consider the effectiveness of your messages after using them on large enough sample sizes.

I know how most women feel about receiving copy and pasted messages, but it’s the ideal online dating strategy for guys and girls for two reasons:

1. Like I said, roughly 2/3 of girls won’t respond to a guy’s first message, regardless of whether it’s copied and pasted

It takes time to craft a unique opening message for every woman. With a 1/3 response rate, it’s highly inefficient to take the time to write a new opener for each one; you might spend an hour writing different messages for only three women when statistically there’s a good chance none of them will respond.

Allocate your time wisely when you use online dating. Minimize your time spent sending out opening messages so you can maximize your time communicating with women who are interested enough in you to respond.

2. If you’re a woman, do you really want a guy becoming too attached to you before you’ve even responded to his opening message?

If he’s mass messaging with an effective opener, he’ll have plenty of women that do respond to turn his attention toward. He’s not going to stalk your page every hour or send you message after message hoping you’ll finally answer.

Here’s the crux of my online dating strategy:

I don’t care about the women I send opening messages to; I care about the ones who respond

First, I’ll come up with a fairly generic (yet entertaining and kind of outrageous) message and send it to maybe 30 to 50 girls at a time.

I do read profiles to make sure I’m messaging women I might like.

I’m not going to become too interested in any particular woman after reading her profile, because (I can’t stress enough) odds are she won’t respond to my message, even if it isn’t copy and pasted.

The first message is a net I’m casting. I wait to see who messages me back and then take it from there, instead of always waiting and hoping one girl in particular will message me back.

My second message is when the real interaction starts

When a woman replies to my opener, she’s demonstrated she’s willing to invest her time getting to know me. That means I’ll invest more of my undivided attention getting to know her. That’s when the copying and pasting stops, and when I start putting a lot more thought into what I send her.

Getting phone numbers and dates

Not every woman who responds to your messages will ultimately be willing to meet in person. I don’t like maintaining cyber relationships for long. So, maybe 15 out of every 50 women I message will respond, and then it will fluctuate as far as how many of them will be willing to meet within a week or so.

In conclusion, online dating can be a tedious sifting process, especially for guys

As much as I understand women not liking the idea of getting a message from a man that he sent to 50 other women, not enough women respond to opening messages to make it worth a man’s time to write a new opener for everyone.

I’ve been called out by girls for copying and pasting maybe five times in four years doing online dating. As long as your opening message is interesting, at least a little entertaining and doesn’t read like a form letter, you can safely use it again and again.