If you want to have any success in online dating, you’d better have good profile photos. No matter how well you’ve written your online dating profile, having good photos will make sure more matches click through to your profile, give you winks, respond to your messages, and ultimately date you. So, here’s why your photos won’t do those things for you.

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1. You aren’t smiling: It doesn’t matter how attractive you are – you don’t look good in an online dating profile photo if you aren’t smiling. This is your match’s first impression of you, and you want them to feel good when they see you. People tend to mirror the people they see. If you’re smiling, they’ll be smiling. If they’re smiling, they’ll like you. Get it? Also, having a smile is great; but having a genuine smile is even better. Try to find a photo from a time you are really smiling – like at a friend’s wedding, or your birthday party. When you are surrounded by friends and family, your smile will tend to be more genuine, and that shows.
2. You’re clearly with your ex: So the best photo you can find, is you with your arms around your ex. For the love of god, crop them out. If you don’t know how to do that, find someone who can.
3. You painted someone’s face out: Just because you shouldn’t put up a photo of you with your ex doesn’t mean that you should just pull out the paint program that came with your computer and paint a black box over their face. This just looks cheap. Crop, crop, crop – or find a different photo.
4. The lighting sucks: Poor lighting in a photo can make even Adonis look like Quasimodo. As a general rule – avoid harsh lighting: this would be extreme sun that is making you scowl and making your eye sockets look like wells that small children could fall into – or even – gasp – a flash. Yes, flashes generally make photos look like crap. Or rather, they make you look like crap. They make your skin look like a chrome dildo, and they make your eyes look like they belong to The Terminator (the infamous “red eye”). If a photo has these characteristics, is there no hope? Well, there are online dating profile photo touch up services such as ours; but it’s better if you can start with a good photo.
5. You aren’t wearing a shirt: Guys: chicks don’t want to look at pictures of you posing with your shirt off. Girls: well, if you can get a picture of yourself with your shirt off onto a dating site – it may just be the type of site that will get you what you’re looking for ;) Unless there is a darn good reason that you have your shirt off, just keep it on. It will do more damage than good.
6. You’ve taken it in your bathroom mirror: You’ve got lots of friends, right? Then why does your profile photo look like a MySpace photo circa October 2005? Get one of those friends to take a photo of you, or use a tripod, or rest the camera on something. You may have to try a few more times to get yourself into frame properly, but it will be worth it.
7. You’re using “the angles”: Ever run across one of those profiles where the person has a dozen pictures of themselves, but you still can’t tell what they look like? This is probably because they are using the angles. They’ve got photos of themselves from every possible angle except for straight-on, eye level – because then you would be able to see what they look like. Never bother meeting one of these people because it means they are either a) really ugly, b) too insecure to show you what they really look like, or c) both. Also, don’t be one of these people.

So there are the most common blunders that people make when putting up their online dating profile photo. Remember, no matter how well you’ve written your online dating profile, having good photos will make sure more matches click through to your profile, give you winks, respond to your messages, and ultimately date you.