A good Raya profile is a short, honest slideshow. Your photos play one after another over a song you choose. Other members also see your first name, age, city, hometown, a brief bio and your Instagram username, plus any accounts you both follow. The photos carry almost all the weight, because they play with no text on the page. So build the profile around a handful of photos that show your real life, then pick a song and write a bio that fit them.

What a woman sees when you come up

Raya's privacy policy lists what other members can see. That starts with the photos you upload, your first name and your age. It also covers your city of residence, your hometown, your biography and your Instagram username. Raya also shows things you have in common, such as Instagram accounts you both follow.

Garbo describes the result as a slideshow of photos set to any song the member chooses. Women's Health adds that the photos play with no text on the page.

That last detail changes how you should build it. On a lot of apps a clever line can rescue a weak photo. On Raya the photos run on their own, so they have to do the talking.

Order the photos like a short story

Think of the slideshow as ten seconds of your life, told in order.

Open with your face. The first photo should be clear, well lit and recent, with you looking relaxed rather than posed. If she cannot tell what you look like from the first frame, the rest is working uphill.

Then show your life. Your work if it photographs well, a trip, a hobby you actually do, you with friends at a table or on a trail. Each photo should answer a different question about you. Five shots from the same afternoon answer one question five times.

Close on something warm. A photo where you are laughing with people who clearly like you is a good last frame, because it is the one she is left with when the song ends.

Candid beats staged

a dating coach's work on dating photos keeps coming back to one finding: the strongest dating photos usually look like a friend snapped them on a phone, with none of the gloss of a studio. Heavily produced photos look like you are posing for her, and she notices.

The same goes for how you show value. A hard display, like a close-up of a watch or a posed shot beside an expensive car, tends to read as trying too hard. A soft display, where the good life is simply in the background of a real moment, reads as confidence. On Raya this matters even more, because Raya's own About page lists excessive shows of wealth as something it does not want.

The photos that hurt you

A few types of photo cost men on Raya more than anywhere else, because there is no text to explain them.

Group shots where she cannot tell which man is you. Old photos that no longer look like you. Gym mirror selfies. A single formal shot in a set of casual ones, which looks like a wedding rather than a way you dress. And anything that hints at a status you do not have. Raya's terms ban lying about who you are, your status, your qualifications or the groups you belong to.

The song and the bio

The song is the soundtrack to her first look at you, so choose one you genuinely like that fits the mood of your photos. A calm, warm set with an aggressive track, or a playful set with something heavy, sends two messages at once.

The bio is short. PureWow describes it as two to three sentences at most. Use it for what the photos cannot show: what you actually do with your days, one specific thing you care about, and something easy for her to reply to. Skip the job title and the list of adjectives.

Your Instagram is part of your profile

Because members can see your Instagram username and your mutual follows, your grid is effectively page two. If the slideshow is all dinners, trips and friends while the grid is a few old gym photos and a meme, the grid is what she trusts.

Make the two agree. Recent posts, your face, your real life.

Test it before you trust it

Show the slideshow to someone who does not know you well and ask what they think you did last weekend. If the answer is close, your profile is telling the truth. If it is way off, something in the set is describing a different man.

When you change things, change one photo at a time and give it a week or two. Replace the whole set in one go and you lose any way of telling which photo did the work.