So you wanna online date.

You just got dumped, or you’ve already dated all your decent looking friends’ friends, or whatever. Someone told you there’s a bunch of cool people on OkCupid or a bunch of successful people on Match.com or a bunch of people watching the minute hand on the biological clock rotate on and on on eHarmony. (Or so I imagine – never joined that one…)

If you’re looking for anything more than genitals getting creative with orifices (or vice versa), you’re gonna need to write yourself a profile and if you wanna meet someone interesting, it’s gonna have to be kinda good. And most people have no idea where to start.

Rule 1: Reflect, Reflect, Reflect

The point of a profile is to attract the kind of people you want to meet. Give this some thought! The number of people floating around on dating sites can be overwhelming and there will never be time to date them all – even if by some miracle they all wanted to date you. You might want someone who lives to work and climbs the corporate ladder with ease, you might want a political activist who wants to change the world, an artist or musician. Do you want a deep thinker who will match profundities with you all night at the coffee shop or a weightlessly hedonistic hardbody to dance with you downtown? Someone with a passport full of stamps or someone who can dress a carcass after a hunt?

You get the idea – and I’m getting sick of trying to pose examples of mutually exclusive personality types.

You don’t need to compile an entirely comprehensive list of all possible desirable traits in a mate – but you should think of some characteristics that would be high on your wishlist because the next order question is “what is the type of person I’m looking for looking for?”

Once you’ve psyched yourself out with all this self-reflection, you’re ready to start typing!

Rule 2: Don’t self-characterize

OkCupid and Match, and probably other sites, all ask you to summarize yourself. A lot of people take this too literally and write something like:

“Oh, I hate talking about myself! But my friend told me to join, so here goes: I am funny, sarcastic, quirky, open, honest, I am a hard worker, my friends would say I’m dependable. I’m a shoulder you can cry on, I love family, and I’m all around AWESOME!”

Yeah, alright.

There are a couple big problems with self-characterization like this. The first is that it’s off-putting – while online dating inherently requires a degree of self-promotion, when else would you feel comfortable asserting to strangers that you possess a bottomless supply of desirable personality traits? English 101 taught us “show, don’t tell” when writing creatively, and the same is true about profile construction. You should be able to demonstrate your sense of humor through your profile, or someone should be able to infer your commitment to earnest sincerity or personal growth from what you have to say, not just by saying it.

The other huge problem with self-characterization as a cornerstone of a profile is that it provides no common ground that someone cool could start from. Even if you’re hilarious and incredibly honest, a visitor to your profile can’t craft much of a message around that.

You can boil this down to the advice of talk about what you like instead of what you are. What’s a fun weekend to you? What do you want to accomplish in life? What values do you hold dear? Which brings us to…

Rule 3: Be specific

There’s a prompt on OkCupid that’s called “the six things I could never do without.”

Some make a pretty lame stab at being funny and answer literally (“1. water, 2. food, 3. air..”), but nearly everyone else answers with a near total lack of imagination. Countless people answer with “family,” or “the internet,” or “my iphone,” or “coffee.”

I guess if you want to cast a net wide, you’re not gonna alienate anyone by saying you like your family or coffee, but it’s not gonna help you connect with anyone that actually may share some real, deep-level compatibility with you.

You should take some risks in your profile and try and identify parts of you that are controversial – issues/values/choices/lifestyles that not everyone shares. If you have interests a lot of people profess, take it a step further. Everyone in the world (if online dating profiles are any guide) loves “travel,” but does travel mean taking an RV to Mount Rushmore, pub hopping in Dublin, taking ecstasy at a beach rave in Thailand, doing missionary work in Uganda, or what? (I have a near 100% response and subsequent date rate of return when messaging with women who have been to the same countries I’ve been to)

You gotta strike a balance, though, and make sure to remind yourself of the question “will this help someone identify/connect with me?”

For a good example of pointless specificity, look to the profile of any dude who holds forth on the finer points of his taste in beer:

“I like my IPAs hoppy, but I also tend toward the Belgians, but lately I’ve been enjoying the subtlety of a good pilsner.”

Lots of dudes seem to think this crap is important. Have a lot of successful marriages been based upon the cornerstone of shared opinions about beer? I doubt it.

Rule 4: Play to your strengths (sincerely)

After 10 months of online dating I’ve safely come to the conclusion that the most three valuable words in my profile are “I am feminist.” Woman after woman has either commented on that during the messaging process, or has later revealed that that was one of the big reasons they chose to meet me.

That said, I am feminist, and it’d be a pretty bad idea to strike that pose if you couldn’t back it up. Being acquainted with a number (more than one!) of people who are working on or have completed PhDs in feminist theory, I can string together a sentence or two if someone asks me what I mean. And I mean it!

A lot of people are bashful about hyping themselves up – but this is online dating and everyone knows you need to self-promote yourself a little bit. Do some bragging – if you have accomplishments it’s fine to share them. If you’ve cultivated refined interests/knowledge show that off too (within reason).

Think of what makes you distinctive and valuable – and make sure that comes out in your profile.

These ideas are a basic primer. Profile construction is a tricky hit-or-miss process. Hope these ideas have been helpful to you as you get started.