I’ve seen several “coaches” and bloggers in the online dating niche give the advice to test your profile pictures on picture rating sites like www.HotOrNot.com to find out which pictures are your best.

Testing is always a good idea because it will increase your results when done consistently and in the right way (see How to Get Women to Email You Back).

However, when you conduct tests you want to make sure the conditions for the test are as close to the real world as possible. Testing in “practice” or manufactured environments can give you very misleading results.

My Results On HotOrNot.com

A few years ago I tested my pictures on HorOrNot.com and had to laugh at the results. I was routinely rated in the range of 2 to 4 out of 10.

I by no means have model good looks, but I would have to resemble Sloth from The Goonies to be in the 2 range.

Back when I tried HotOrNot.com there was a function where you could see individual ratings for each number from one to 10. In other words, you could see how many people rated you a 9, 10, 1, 2, etc.

When I looked at the range for my various pictures I found a few votes in the 5 to 10 range, and a cluster of votes in the 1 to 2 range. Hmm…

I find it very unlikely there are scores of women rating guys 1’s and 2’s consistently. I’m just guessing here, but I think it’s much more likely those votes were coming from guys with fragile egos.

Skewed results like that don’t teach you anything. The reason I’m fairly certain the ratings on my pictures were bullshit was because of the feedback I got from real women on dating sites about my pictures.

I sometimes get comments like “Hey, handsome,” or “Great smile!” or “You’re welcome for the wink! You’re a very good looking guy” on dating sites. If I was really a 1 or 2 I would never get emails like that.

The point is if I were to rely solely on feedback from the picture rating sites I would likely be mislead as to which pictures are good and which are bad.

The Worst Thing About Picture Rating Sites

There is an even bigger problem with picture rating sites, which is you have no idea what kind of women are rating your pictures.

Now read closely, this is the important part.

If you’re conducting tests with the goal of increasing responses, you want to make damn sure you’re testing the right audience. In this case, that means conducting tests on the kind of women you’re interested in.

Testing on anyone other than your intended audience will skew your results.

The Easiest Way To Get True Ratings On Your Pictures

Rather than posting your pictures on sites where anyone from 10 year-olds to grandma’s to closet gay guys trolling male pictures can rate your pictures, test your pictures on the kind of women you’re actually interested in.

How do you do that?

The simplest way to get only women you’re interested in to tell you which pictures are your best is to…
ask them.

You can do this on dating sites (or Facebook) by emailing or IMing them and asking them something to the effect:

Subject: Can I ask a quick favor?

Message:

Hey,

I just got on here and I’m trying to decide on a few pictures that “show me off.” So the quick favor is: would you check out my pictures and tell me which two are best and which two I should take down? I’m not looking for a therapist here, just a quick female opinion.

You won’t offend me, so feel free to be completely honest.

Thanks, you rock!

[Your name]

Send that to 10 women of the caliber you’re interested in. Maybe just two out of those 10 women might email you back, but those two opinions will be worth more than the garbage results you get from picture rating sites.

Send it to a few more groups of women and you’ll find out very quickly which are you best pictures and which pictures suck.

The women you email can be from anywhere, that way you won’t waste any opportunities with women in the area where you live.

Pictures Aren’t Going To Get You Laid

Remember though, your pictures will get you only so far, unless of course you have model good looks. In that case feel free to email “duh” to women and you’ll still get numbers.

If that’s not the case, you’ll want to focus more of your time on writing emails that get you to the next step in the interaction with women. If your emails rock, you can have mediocre pictures and still get lots of numbers.

Of course, you want to give yourself every advantage, so definitely pick some pictures that present you in a good light.

Till next time,

Brandon Duran

This entry was posted on August 19, 2010 at 10:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.