Most women look great when they’re all done up, with all their makeup on, in a little black dress, tan skin, and in 3-inch heels.

That’s not how most women look most of the time though.

Fine. Most guys accept and understand that. What’s hard to stomach is how drastically different women can look when they’re at their best compared to what they look like on an average day.

Everyone hates a bait and switch.

Unfortunately there’s a lot of that happening on dating sites.

Many women post only pictures they look great in, forgetting they hardly ever look like that. That allows those women to get massive amounts of attention and ends up disappointing a lot of guys when they meet those women in person.

So how do you figure out what she really looks like?

Some guys recommend asking women for more pictures. The problem with that philosophy is she could send you more of her best pictures or simply choose not to send more pictures, at which point the interaction ends.

Asking a woman for more pictures simply doesn’t work very well.

There’s a much better option available.

Although most women will post pictures of themselves that look much better than they do on their average day, most women will also throw in a picture or two of them that show what they normally look like.

These are the pictures to judge a woman’s looks by. After all, what woman is going to post pictures that she looks bad or fat in if they don’t really look like that?

That’s right; no woman will post bad pictures of herself if that’s not what she really looks like.

Judge a woman’s looks based on her worst picture in her profile because that’s what she looks like on a daily basis at best. This will save you a lot of time and disappointment.

Don’t be fooled by the other 10 pictures where she looks smoking hot, because that’s what she looks like only when she dresses to the nines or what she looked like a few years ago when she was working out 7 days a week and starving herself prior to a vacation to Cancun.

Something else to watch out for is when a woman posts only one picture.

Really, what woman that is online today has only one picture of herself? Unless her profile on a dating site is brand-new, there is always something up when a woman has only one picture in her profile.

Save your time and avoid disappointment by simply skipping those profiles.

Use the two techniques in this article to look passed the trickery going on in many women’s profiles, and you’ll end up meeting more women that look like their profile pictures.

Brandon Duran

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This past week I got some great questions from a reader named Droog.

Before we get into Droog’s questions, I want to show him some respect for trying out something new. He read about some new techniques on this blog and then tried them out immediately. That’s how to do it!

Trying new things that have been proven to work is the easiest way to jump to the next level in your game.

I pass along only techniques, mindsets and tactics that I have used over and over to meet new women. Everything I share with you has been proven to work, and it all still works today.

I’ve set up this blog to help you meet more women on dating sites. One of the best ways I can do that is by answering your questions and helping you get passed your current sticking points and hurdles.

If you’re stuck at a certain level with online dating, let me know about it and your questions might be featured on the blog.

Without further ado, let’s get to Droog’s questions.

Question:

Ok I just did my first split, if possible can I have some feedback?

The constant variables (PoF) were
Male looking for Female 18 – 30 Images only, up for anything
The message was the same for both
“Hey I am moving there soon and wanna meet some people, how you going?”

I sent 20 messages to Melbourne with the tag line – “Your Match of the Week”
Then I sent 20 messages to Sydney with the tag line – “Hey”

I messaged the first 20 I was able to in each and disregarded any other aspect of their profile to get a proper random sample.

I am testing tag lines and I am assuming the open rate and response rate will be way higher on “Your Match of the Week”. I am not using this on local girls because there isn’t enough to mass email for a test.

Could I do this better, is it more rigorous to send all 20 messages to girls in the same city or even to the same girl?

Also how long should I wait to get responses before taking what I got as my result?
Cheers again,
Droog

Answer:

You’ve got some good questions here.

I’m glad you included the information you used to search for women.

When you conduct split tests, you want to make sure you’re conducting them on your intended audience.

Your intended audience is the group of women you want to meet and date.

Different types of women respond to different things. Of course, there are some things that most women will respond positively to, but there are little differences for different groups of women.

I like to take as many variables out of the equation, and one of the easiest ways to do that is by only conducting split tests on the kind of women you want to meet and date.

If you’re really interested in meeting women that range in age from 18 to 30, that’s fine. Conduct splits on all of them. However, you’ll want to split those women into several groups.

The mindset women in the age range of 18 to 30 varies greatly.

Women in their early 20’s respond differently to the same stimuli than women in their late 20’s will.

I’m on the cusp of being 30, and I have noticed huge differences in the psychology of women in the age range of 20 to 30.

I’m generalizing here, but this is true more often than it’s not. Women in their early 20’s are much more worried about just having fun, “playing” with their friends, and they love being the center of attention. When you think of bratty women that play games, this is the age group that has most of them.

As women get a little bit older, they tend to stop being so selfish and self-centered. As they get closer to 30 and beyond, their priorities shift dramatically.

They seem to be much more open to finding a serious relationship and they tend to look more critically at each guy they date. Rather than dating just any random guy they meet, they tend to at least consider the long-term potential of a relationship with a guy before getting in too deep with him.

I can’t speak for women in their mid-thirties or older since I haven’t dated very many women in that age range, but I’m sure the psychology of those women differs from other groups as well.

Once again, these are just generalizations; however, I’ve seen these behavior patterns over and over.

Why are these behavior patterns important? Because women with different behavior patterns will respond differently to the same message or stimuli. This is true whether the groups are broken down by age, cultural differences, or whatever.

Women in different age groups will respond better to different things. Knowing that, you can focus your messages and profile specifically to the needs and wants of the women you’re most interested in to get more responses from them.

I realize you might have used the age you listed just to get a larger sample size rather than being interested in women throughout that whole age range.

However, I wanted to emphasize how to separate your split tests to cater to the needs of specific groups of women so you can get the most responses possible from each group.

Moving on.

You got the idea of split testing the subject lines right; everything else should be the same.

I can tell you right now that the subject line “hey” will easily get demolished by almost any other subject lines you test against it besides maybe “hi.” Those are two subject lines most guys use, and because of that, they have no impact and women easily dismiss them.

I like the second subject line (“Your Match of the Week”). I’m guessing that somebody has already tested it and it has done well.

In my previous article on split testing I mentioned emailing 20 women (10 for each variable of the split test you are testing) only to give you a starting point.

Sometimes it will take 20 emails or more to determine with any degree of confidence which version in a split test works better because of how close their response rates can be.

You could start by sending three to five emails of each version of the split test you’re running until you can confidently determine a winner.

That would be a lot less work initially. If you can’t tell which version gets more responses from that small of a sample size, you could then email more women until you determine a winner.

On to your last question. You asked how long to wait before tallying up the final numbers of a split test and determining a winner.

Three days is long enough for most tests. That gives you enough time to wait for women to respond and also gives you quick feedback.

For example, if you send out emails on Sunday, you could reliably tally your results on Wednesday night or Thursday morning.

Question:

I have been contacting women in other states to get a bigger sample size but I was adding an extra variable (their state). I think I will change my plan to contact six women a day, three with one split, three with another and then track the results.

Answer:

I understand your point about the extra variable you add when you email women from another state, but it doesn’t have as big of an effect as you might think.

What is more important in terms of the reliability of your results is the age range or other psychological differences I discussed above.

When I used to travel a lot for work I would conduct split tests on women throughout the U.S., and my results were very consistent.

I would keep my real city listed in my profile. Many women asked about that and it caused some problems when it came time to meet up with those women because they knew I would only be in town only for a few days.

However, the point of my split tests was to get their numbers, so if I got that far I was happy with my results because I could then send out those same emails to women when I got back from my trips.

You could also make profiles for each city so the women don’t even question it. Of course, you would then take your results from those split tests and apply them to women in your hometown.

Question:

I have been testing different pics on hot or not and have some decent ones and I got a friend who is pretty good at this stuff to write my profile so I am getting about a third of my emails responded to on plentyoffish.

My main problem is I have no idea where to take it from there. I tend to fluff a bit and the girl responds a few times then she fades. I need to start have a clearer idea of the purpose of each message.

What are your thoughts?

Cheers again mate,
Droog

Answer:

I tried testing my pictures on Hot or Not a few times but got pissed off because a bunch of dudes kept voting my pictures “1s” and skewing my results. Lol!

For the most part, I think most people know when they look good in a picture.

Put some pictures in your profile that you think look good and then work on the wording of your profile and your emails. Then when you get your emails and profile tweaked enough to start getting more responses, then you can test different pictures.

One way I like to test my pictures is by swapping the main profile picture.

I noticed a huge increase in winks and women emailing me first when I went to a close-up picture of my face where I had a huge smile on my face.

According to a survey done by OkCupid, that picture shouldn’t have done as well as some of the other types of pictures I had in my profile, but it did. I’m guessing this was just a very good picture of me. (This is the whole purpose of testing.)

I discussed the kind of pictures that work best on dating sites in another article – Are Your Profile Pictures Really That Important?

If you can’t guess which pictures you look best in, ask a few female friends or coworkers (preferably the type of women you’re attracted to) which pictures they like most. That will suffice until you get the other parts of your profile and emails together. Then you can test individual pictures.

If you’re getting a third of your emails responded to right now, that’s great news. Once you get better at getting those women’s numbers, you’ll end up meeting more women that you have time to date.

You mentioned that you end up losing a lot of those women though because you don’t know where to guide the interaction after they respond to your emails.

I had a lot of trouble with that too when I started.

Your question makes me realize I’m going to need to post an article with a blueprint of how to proceed once you get a response from a woman.

But let me give you a quick peek of that blueprint here right now.

Email a woman until she responds (up to three emails with no response). Once she responds, build some rapport by asking her a few questions. You could ask her about her favorite music, movies, or something she said in her profile.

When she answers your questions, she might have some of her own questions for you. Briefly answer her questions and briefly comment on her answers to your questions. Then tell her something to the effect that she sounds interesting and you’d like to learn more about her over a drink. Then ask for her number. (That should all be done in one email).

Try that out and I’ll put together a blueprint that explains these steps in more detail.

All right, great questions, Droog! And once again, props for taking action. Keep taking action and your results will keep improving.

If you are getting stuck somewhere when emailing women (or anywhere else), I want to hear about it. Let me know what your biggest hurdle is.

You can leave a comment below or click on the “Ask Brandon” tab at the top of this page.

See you in a few days,

Brandon Duran

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Recently we talked about split testing to get more responses from women on dating sites. There is one more thing you need to do to get more responses from women – track your split tests.

I’m not going to geek out on you in this article. We’re going to go over just the essentials so you know the easiest way to track your split tests so you can quickly identify what gets the most responses.

Split testing seems simple enough – you test two emails (or profiles or whatever) against one another to determine which one gets more responses.

By doing that you’ll experience an immediate increase in responses from women, but the real value of split testing comes when you break down those results over a few weeks or months.

Compiling the information you get from your split tests allows you to spot trends in what is working and gives you clues about other things that might work too.

I’ve tried some crazy things that have worked very well, but I never would have given them a shot had I not tracked the results of my split tests.

When you combine split testing and tracking, you’ll quickly find the best emails, and once you do, you won’t have to write more emails until you get the bug to do so, or your emails stop working.

Let’s go a little deeper on how to track your split tests.

Just The Facts, Sir

In this article I refer only to tracking email split tests, but you can track other things too, like your profile wording, profile pictures, headlines in your profile, ways to ask for phone numbers, second emails, no response emails, text messages, etc.

Let’s start with a definition of “tracking.”

Tracking is simply another word for logging information. However, tracking goes one step further than logging by arranging the information in a specific order that allows you quickly make comparisons.

The easiest way I have found to track emails is by putting the information into a spreadsheet.

I use Microsoft™ Excel but if you don’t have this software you don’t need to buy it. You can get free spreadsheet software at openoffice.org that is comparable to Excel.

The purpose of using spreadsheet software is so you can easily log information into a few categories. Then, once you have tracked the information for a few weeks or months, you’ll be able to easily track trends.

There are a few categories you’ll want to create in your spreadsheet:

• Date of when you send the first email to a woman
• Screen name of the women you email
• Title of the emails you’re testing
• Any differences you’ve made to the emails
• The woman’s response (most important)

This might look like a lot of information, but it’s actually quite simple.

Let’s break down each of these categories.

Date of when you sent the first email to a woman – You’ll want to track the date you send first emails because it determines the flow of the rest of the emails.

If a woman doesn’t respond to an email, you’ll wait three days before sending her the next email in your sequence. Tracking the date prevents confusion over when to send the next email.

Logging the date will also allow you to identify certain parts of the week, month and year that work better at getting responses. For example, you’ll get a lot more responses around certain holidays. In a future article we’ll talk about the best day to send a woman the first email.

Screen name of the women you email – Logging women’s screen names allows you to quickly identify which women you have emailed and which emails you have sent to each woman.

This is also important because it’s very easy to mix up which women you have emailed once you have been on a dating site for a few months. Emailing a woman the same emails twice is tacky and a waste of your time.

Title of the emails you’re testing – Logging the titles of the emails you send is critical because it allows you to determine which emails are getting the most responses.

When you factor in that you can send each woman three to four different emails, and each email can have two versions, you can very quickly get lost in data if you don’t track the names of the emails.

This probably sounds much more intimidating than it actually is in practice. Stick with me and I’ll show you a screen shot that will greatly simplify this.

Differences you’ve made to emails – Even though you’ll be sending out template emails, many times you’ll make small changes to the emails. You’ll want to track these changes because some of them get higher responses than others.

You can implement those changes into your templates to get higher responses.

The woman’s response – This is the most important information you’ll log into your spreadsheet.

Observing how women respond to different emails is the most valuable information you’ll track because it gives you the emails that get the highest responses.

You can then send those emails over and over to new women. This is how you consistently meet women on dating sites and the whole purpose of split testing and tracking your emails.

Putting in a little work in this one place will allow you to meet many women later. You’ll have to conduct multiple split tests, but once you find some good emails, you’ll be able to meet women forever without having to come up with anymore emails.

If your emails stop working, you can repeat this process to create other emails that get high responses.

A Visual Example of Tracking

Here is an example of how I log my information into a spreadsheet using the categories I described above. (Click on the image to see a bigger and clearer version.)

This information is just an example, but it reflects how I really track my information.

To save space I used only four women, but when you log your information your spreadsheet should have more women.

I recommend sending each version of an email to 10 to 20 women when conducting split tests to accurately determine which email performs better. See my article about split testing for more information.

I tried to simulate how women actually respond in this spreadsheet. You’ll notice a few of the example women emailed back but didn’t give their numbers until two more emails.

That’s somewhat normal and demonstrates why you should continue emailing using all of your emails until you get a number. (I stop emailing a woman after I have sent her three emails without receiving a response from her.)

Don’t worry about the particular names of the emails, they are just examples; however, notice how I named specific emails to keep track of them.

In this example the only two emails being split tested are the first emails. The other emails (Haha! Mod 2; 2nd Email Template; and Adventure Mod 4) stay the same. This ensures you’re testing only one variable.

If you wanted to conduct split tests on the other emails, the only difference in your sequence would be those emails.

For example, if you wanted to split test the email “Haha! Mod 2” against another email, you would keep every other email you send women the same except “Haha! Mod 2” and the email you’re testing against it.

The Big Picture

I know this might seem very intimidating, but the take-home lesson is you want track the split tests you conduct so you can identify which emails get the most responses.

Without tracking the information from your split tests, it quickly gets way too confusing to determine which emails get the most responses because there is too much information.

Once you identify some good emails, you can simply copy and paste those emails to meet more women. It’s really as easy as that.

And it doesn’t take very long to find good emails.

Take the information I’ve given you in this article and start using it immediately.

You’re on dating sites because you want to meet more women, and this is how to do it.

I’m certain if I didn’t split test and track my emails, there is no way I would be able to meet all the women I do.

Split testing and tracking your emails is the “magic bullet” of online dating. Do it and you’ll meet more women. Period.

See you next week,

Brandon Duran

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