How to Set Up a Plenty of Fish Profile?

Set it up in this order. Start with a clear main photo of your face, then add three or four more photos. Write a short headline about something specific and a three-sentence description that ends on something she can answer. Then add your interests, set an honest distance and age range, and finish with the verified badge. Photos come first because nothing else is seen without them, and you need a main photo before you can send anything at all.

On Plenty of Fish a woman often reaches your page through search by distance and age, with no swipe involved. She sees a small photo and a few words in a row of results, then opens the page or moves on. Each step below earns the next one: the photo gets the click, the headline keeps her reading, and the description gives her a reason to reply.

Work in that order, because a fine description on a bad photo is never read.

POF's guidelines ask for a main image that shows your face clearly, with nothing in the way and nobody else in it. Sunglasses, a low cap, a shot from across the room and a group picture all break the rule, and all of them also make her work harder.

Pick a daylight shot from about the chest up where you look relaxed and are the only person in it. POF accepts jpg, jpeg, bmp, gif and PNG files between 100kB and 5MB and at least 400 x 400 pixels. If an upload fails, the file is usually too small after a chat app squeezed it, or too large straight off a new phone.

A standard account holds up to 8 photos including the main one, and an upgraded membership raises that to 16. Use the room you earn, not the room you have. Five strong photos beat the same five plus eleven that are merely fine, because a woman judges the set and one weak photo drags the others down.

Aim for different ground in each one:

• A full-length shot that shows your build and how you dress.
• One of you doing something you actually do, in a place you actually go.
• One with friends where she can still pick you out at a glance.
• A different outfit and a different day from the main photo.

a dating coach's rule is that she judges you by your worst photo, so leave out anything you hesitate over.

The headline sits near your name in several places around the site, so it is among the first things she reads. Make it one true line about one specific thing in your week, short enough to read at a glance.

"Line cook who eats cereal for dinner on his night off" gives her something to ask about. "Looking for a good woman" gives her nothing, because it could belong to any man on the site. Skip lists of what you do not want, and skip any line that has to be explained by the rest of the page.

Three or four sentences is enough. Nobody reads an essay, and a long page reads as a man with a lot to prove.

Answer three questions in plain words. What do you do all week? What do you do on a day off? What would you like a woman to ask you about? Turn the answers into sentences. End on a question, a joke or a request for a recommendation. A statement gives her nothing to answer, and a request does.

My example of the opposite is the line that calls the man a gentleman who knows how to treat a lady. Many men write it, and women skip it because they have read it many times. Read the finished description aloud. If it sounds like an advertisement, rewrite it the way you would say it to a friend.

Interests fill in the rest of the picture, so choose the one or two you would happily talk about for ten minutes. "Music, movies, travel" tells her nothing, because everyone writes it. "Slow cooking and bad chess" tells her something she can use.

Check them against your photos. A claim to love the outdoors beside six restaurant photos reads as a man describing someone else.

Search filters by distance and age, so set both honestly. Choose a distance you would really travel for a weeknight drink, since a woman an hour away is a hard date to arrange however good the chat. Choose an age range of women you would genuinely take out.

Plenty of Fish may widen those filters to show you more people, so you may see women just outside what you set. Count only the ones who truly fit before you decide the site is busy or quiet.

Open the Safety Toolbox, tap Get Verified and record a short video selfie. POF compares it with your main photo, and a match adds the badge. The selfie is not shown to other members. If you later change your main photo, the badge comes off until you verify again, so verify after the photo is final.

The badge says the man in your main photo is the man holding the phone. It does not make you a better date, but it answers a worry women have about fake accounts before they have to ask.

Open the site as a stranger would. Look at the first photo alone, then the headline, then the description. Ask a friend to guess what you do for work and on a weekend. If the guess is close, the page is telling the truth.

Then use it. Like women in Meet Me whose pages give you something to say, and write to your matches the same day. Run the page for two weeks, change one thing at a time, and count the likes, the replies and the dates you set. If you change the headline and the numbers stay flat, look at the main photo again, because it is almost always the main photo.