I’ve been doing affiliate marketing for a few months now, and have compiled TONS of data on women through advertising on Plenty of Fish.  Literally my ads have been shown millions of times already, so I decided to share with you some interesting information i’ve found about the profiles of women who are actually “biting.”  Here we go…

First and foremost, the data presented here is simply my professional interpretation of data i’ve collected through ads i’ve ran on Plenty of Fish (POF).  My opinion by no means is absolute, however, I do believe I have a unique vantage point being both a dating coach and advertising to women on a dating website.  This, I believe, gives some weight to my findings.  If you’re cool with that, then read on.

Now when you login to POF for the first time, you select from several categories of attributes to describe yourself.  When a woman logs in she does the same thing.  After going through a huge checklist of these categories, your profile is complete.  Women can then search for men through categories like what a man’s intent is, what his income is, or maybe by what profession he has.  Women can also use this information to selectively exclude who they don’t want to date (or more accurately, who they don’t think they would like to date on paper).

Lets talk first about the general population of the website.  Yes, there actually are women on POF, and tons of them.  They login, they search around, and they click on shit, so if you’re a guy with a profile up thinking “There aren’t even any real women on this thing” then you’re wrong.  Some of these women click on advertisements and signup for other dating websites in search of men.  These are the women i’m going to describe, because obviously they represent women who are on the prowl, and since anyone reading this is likely on the prowl as well, well you get the idea.  

As far as the category of “Intent” goes, women who selected “want a relationship” are by far the largest responding category.  Coming in a close second is “putting in serious effort to find someone,” and then in order “want to date but nothing serious,” “casual dating/no commitment” and finally “serious and want to find someone to marry.”  These findings shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone.  Obviously girls who want a relationship are the largest demographic in the dating scene, but remember this girl is labeling herself on a website like this, not having me label her as a definite slut in the bar.  Got it?  What a girl labels herself as and what she type of girl she actually is are two very different things.  So guess what?  I recommend you mirror this behavior and label yourself accordingly.  

Maybe I should back up a second.  With online dating often our strategy is to not exclude ourselves whenever possible.  We want to appeal to the largest demographic of women because when women look at your checklist of attributes they’re not looking to include you, they’re looking to exclude you.  This means if you fill in that you’re in a specific profession, for instance, and the girl doesn’t like that profession, she might take one look at you being an engineer (random example, don’t read too much into this) and in one instant think “Nope, i don’t like engineers” (or fucking firemen, whatever) then click to the next guy.  Again, to avoid this behavior, we seek to not exclude ourselves whenever possible.  This goes for the attributes and categories we choose, and also our text in the “about me” section.

With that theory understood, you can understand why I would recommend you choose in the top 3 categories for your own profile.  Also, you can gather that the most likely women to respond to you might be the ones who “want a relationship” or are “putting in serious effort to find someone.”  This same logic applies to the Relationship category, where by far and away the huge leaders of the pack are women seeking “Long Term” or “Dating.”  

Moving on, let’s talk about income.  The huge mass majority of women on POF aren’t rich.  Surprised?  I’m sure not.  Remember POF is a free dating website.  Most women on it make under 50K predominantly, with some actually in the $50-75K range, and very few higher, though they do exist.  To give you an idea, out of one million impressions (times one of my ads was shown on a woman’s screen) I had over 500 women respond with income 50K or less, and only 6 women respond with an income over 100K.  To be fair, this could just mean that women with higher incomes aren’t responding to advertising, but my guess is that there just aren’t many of them out there, and the ones that are likely aren’t finding dates through POF.

You will find about an equal distribution of people through the lower incomes though, so women with incomes of 40K are definitely there. As for your income, i’d say leave it blank if possible or put in somewhere around 50K.  This’ll again not exclude you from the majority.  Definitely do not be afraid to err on the side of having 20 or 25K more income on POF than you really have.  This is, afterall, a game right?  The reason I recommend pumping up your income (height wouldn’t hurt either) is that girls definitely think a guy with a higher income is more attractive, but at the same time you don’t want her showing up and sniffing out immediately that you’re not pulling down six figures.  And if you’re a “I don’t like games” or “I don’t want to lie, blah blah” guy then get real.  You don’t see her taking pictures of herself with bad camera angles on and no makeup on do you?  Get over your attitude and play to win.  

All of this stuff about income and relationship status is a great start, and since we live in a healthy age in time, it’s no surprise that the category of “Smoking” is an obvious deal breaker with women.  The vast majority don’t smoke and don’t want someone who does.  Again i’ll remind you that the idea for online dating is to not get excluded long enough to get to the meetup, when you can be yourself and she can get a real idea of you, because when she’s attracted she’ll excuse a bit more than she will when she’s at home on her computer seeking out her “checklist” man.  For this reason i’d recommend everyone, smokers or not, put that they don’t smoke on their profile.  Women who smoke occasionally or often are like 1/10th of the percentage of those who don’t smoke, so don’t be an idiot and exclude yourself from 90% of the women online.  Maybe you “just started” after your third date or something.  

Drinking, on the other hand, is a totally different story.  The huge majority of women online drink socially, or at least put that they do.  This makes sense to me because drinking socially is a high social status thing to do, and social women don’t want men to exclude them for not drinking from time to time, so even they’ll put that they drink socially.  My guess is that the women who put “no” for drinking are very likely ones who actually don’t drink, so for this category i’d recommend you know what you’re actually searching for in a woman before you answer.  If you don’t care, put that you drink socially.  If you don’t drink yourself and don’t want a woman who does drink, it’s not a terrible option to select that you don’t drink.  In this case I don’t think you’ll be excluding yourself because though women right “socially” for their own status reasons, a man who doesn’t drink won’t often be excluded by a woman for saying he doesn’t drink.  So here i’d say go with honesty if you really don’t drink, and if you do (even if it’s heavily) go with saying you drink socially.

Finally, i’d like to talk about the marital status of women.  Not surprisingly, the biggest chunk of women signing up for dating sites are divorced women, followed by single women, then seperated women.  This knowledge shouldn’t really change anything about your dating profile, other than I wouldn’t exclude a divorced woman from being a candidate for you because that’s the majority (unless of course you personally just wouldn’t date someone who has been divorced).  

That about sums it up.  If you’re online and you’re searching for women, remember that this is a game you’re playing, and it has a lot to do with a woman’s “checklist” of attributes she’d like in a guy and not a lot about your actual personal characteristics until you actually get on a date.  For this reason, you should play the game to win by seeking not to exclude yourself whenever possible instead of accurately describing yourself in every way.  When women meet and are attracted to a man, they’ll put up with a lot more than they will when they’re in front of their computer at home, so don’t be afraid to withhold some information or fudge a bit.  If you believe this and apply it to your online game, I believe you’ll have a much better experience and more success with online dating.  And even if you don’t end up with a rich woman, there are definitely still some women worth finding online.  Good luck!  Now go get those low income divorced camera angle-abusing makeup wearing lying skanks, maybe you’ll get lucky.  🙂