Online Dating: 8 Ways to Create Trust With Your Profile Picture
20. May, 2010 
7 Comments
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First I want to start off with your profile picture.
When I used online dating, I would come across tons of guys who totally turned me off with their profile pictures. Not because they were unattractive in their pictures but because of how overwhelming their pictures were. There were guys on there with 800 pictures of themselves, at all different angles. Some had 12 pictures of their dogs, not standing with them but ALONE. Others had gross pics of them with their possible girlfriend. Why would I ever want to see that? One even had a picture of him getting a lap dance!!!
Let me also note, that I was doing online dating to meet someone. To have a relationship. I was not on there for friendship or one night stands. If I was then I would have been looking with a different eye. But I still know that all of the above would have turned me off!
The truth is that most of these guys had pretty good profiles and had they not totally turned me off with their pictures, I may have dated them.
Pictures are supposed to paint a picture of who you are and what you represent. If you are a dog lover and have a dog, then post ONE PICTURE of you and your dog. Not 4! If you are into motorcycles, great, but show me one picture of you on your bike not 20 different shots of you in a race with a helmet on.
The other important element you should consider is whether or not your picture elicits a sense of trust. Meaning, as a woman, do I trust what I am seeing is real and do I trust that this guy is really for me.
1. Show your trustworthy family! If both of your parents were married for 30 years or more, that is great! If you both have a great relationship with a sibling, that is great, too! If you have happy family photos, you can include them as additional photos in your profile. This embeds you in the world not as an “online guy” but as a genuine human being with a family. Totally relatable.
2. Employ trust words. “Family, integrity, real, authentic, no game playing, girl next door, a best friend.” Look at the profiles of women you’d like to meet and identify her trust words. Use the best in your profile, then, when you write her, mirror them back to her if they are authentic to you, too. Remember, there is a fine line between creating rapport honestly and manipulating/fooling a girl to get something from her. It is a GREAT idea to reflect back to her the very words she uses, tradition is onto something when it endows the smile “with the power to attract and fascinate, to stimulate desire.”
3. Show a photo of you with your guy pals doing guy things – on a boat, playing b-ball, painting a room together. NOT sitting around with drinks at a club or bar patio. As I say over and over, positive guy association removes you from the stalker/lone-wolf realm and places you safely into a team of guys, implicitly already trusted by them.
4. Show a photo of you with gal pals. Not a gal pal, but some, in a social setting. If you put on a photo of you with a former girlfriend, now you’ve created a story they are going to want you to explain – you’ve lit up her imagination. But in the wrong direction. Avoid the trouble. The image – the fantasy – you are constructing the group-gal pal photo is that you are TRUSTED by other women. That they like and trust you but that you have been clearly saving yourself for right now – for this woman looking at you from the other end of the fiber optic cable.
5. Extra points! Have those gal pals be as attractive as the level of girl you are searching for. If you use them honestly.
6. Smile! You don’t have to show teeth. But give up on the sunglasses resting low on the bridge of the nose, side-glance thing. It’s very Disco Stu and it does not create trust. A nice open smile sets off a whole series of neuro-chemical reactions in the viewer. For example, a Buddha smile immediately communicates peace and tranquility. Trustworthy.
According to Angus Trumble, in his weirdly interesting book, A Brief History of the Smile, the Western romantic Because a really beautiful girl, on a gut level, will not want you if she sees you hanging out with culturally unattractive women. And a normally attractive woman will consider you a player or out of her league if she sees you hanging out with models. Plus, she will probably be insecure enough to imagine a whole scenario in which you’ve had sex with those models. Because that’s what models do, isn’t it? Ruin the lives of all the other normal-looking women in the world. So keep the girls in the photo at the level of female attractiveness you are seeking. Which means you have to be honest with yourself about what you are attracting.
7. Another bonus tip! The above lesson goes for typology as well as hotness factors. If you are seeking a sophisticate, include a gal pal photo with sophisticated women. If you want a granola chick, show yourself with your hippie chick gal pals at the local folk festival or volunteering at the organic farm. You get the picture
8. BE HONEST. So many guys lie in their profiles. In fact, it is the two biggest complaint hot women tell me, along with guys being too sexual too fast. Be honest from the start. Do it because good to be honest, it creates gain trust and it helps you authentically claim the moral high ground, which is where you want to be. Both for moral reasons and for attraction reasons.
As I said Adam is VERY experienced in the online dating world. As am I. He has created a couple of amazing HOW TO programs for all steps of online dating.
DO YOU KNOW THE #1 SECRET THAT BUILDS ATTRACTION ONLINE?
WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW TO FIND OUT:
This is all great but the bottom line with online dating is about looks, looks, looks. Women will look at photos and see if you are good looking guy, then they will look at your height and anything else physical. Then they will look at the other stuff. I know this from experience. And men are supposed to be the shallow ones?
Mike is completely on target! I have tested this theory with one handsome non dancing non anything friend. I Dance competition and can go into a dancing enviroment and go home with almost any woman…all women say they want a man that can dance,ha ha post online even with Grant Adams,Adam Gilad material,he even helped me clean up my profile….and very little.
It always seems that men are to do this and do that , and always lacking in some department.Guys go spend your time and money traveling to a foreign country, and see how natural women react… it will amaze you what feminine women are all about…and how it makes you feel like a man again.
You are so right, man..i give so much personality to these girls but none of it matters they just look at my pictures and there decision is made..right there on the spot. Then theyll send me some shallow 6 word replys so i just gather any dignity i have left and just end the conversation. And then theyll see some twit that they think is attractive and boom she spills everything to him and considers him her soul mate haha anyways..ur right on the money
It’s kind of sad that the two of you think that way. I just had a whole conversation with 3 of my girlfriends and my sister this evening on this exact topic. We all agreed that yes LOOKS drag us in initially but if there is nothing behind the looks we drop off quite quickly.
You may have to look at how you present yourself online. It sounds to me as if there is some anger and frustration that unbeknown to you may be coming across in your correspondence online.
Listen, we are not saying that attractive people don’t have an upper hand because they do. If a person is hot they are going to get more views of their profile BUT if a guy knows how to handle himself well online he can kick any pretty boys ass in seconds by getting way more attention.
If a girl is sitting browsing the dating site, then yes you are probably right, but lets face it – you probably wouldnt be being exactly truthful if you dive straight in to a girl’s profile to read all about her first and then start looking at the pictures… so try not to get too hung up about this if you think it’s a stumbling block for you (it’s far more of a problem for females on dating sites than it is for guys).
The crux of this article as I read it is that your profile pics should neither be the sole selling point, nor should the quality and impression be totally ignored because of the so called differences in attraction rules between the genders.
I’ve found that ultimately my profile is something that will be referenced *after* I’ve sent someone a message. I personally dont expect to post up a profile, sit back and wait for the flood of girls trying to contact me.
I will be TOTALLY HONEST in my online profile when women wear no makeup in their profile pictures.