No Matches on Dating Apps: Am I Ugly or Is It My Profile?

It is almost never your face. A woman sees a few pictures and a few lines of text, and she decides in a second. Men with ordinary faces and good pictures do better than good-looking men with bad ones. The faults that sink a profile are a dark or cropped lead photo, a set that all looks the same, and a bio and prompt answers that give her nothing to respond to. All three are fixable, so work through them before you decide anything about your looks.

Looks do count for something, and a dating coach says so. He also says that after twenty years of online dating he has heard every version of "I am too short, the wrong color, not good looking enough." It does not hold up. He calls himself a pretty average-looking man who still did well online.

His point is that the photo is not the same thing as the face. He describes a friend who is a professional photographer. In My opinion the friend is not particularly handsome, yet he does very well, because he knows how to take photos that make him look good. You can do the same with a little time.

So the useful question is whether your pictures show you at your best rather than whether you are ugly.

She sees your lead photo first. If it turns her off, she moves on before she reads a word of your bio or opens the second picture. Everything behind that first photo is wasted.

coach lists the usual faults. Bad light. Odd shadows around the eyes. A bad angle that makes a decent-looking man look heavy. A forced or apologetic smile, or the blank stare of someone who is thinking about nothing. A former Tinder employee has named too few photos and a low-quality page among the most common mistakes men make. None of these has anything to do with the shape of your jaw.

Open your page as a stranger would, and ask five things.

• Is your face clear in the lead photo? Daylight, eyes visible, no hat or sunglasses, no friends beside you.
• Is it recent? If you have changed your hair, your weight or your beard since, she will notice.
• Do the other photos differ? Five shots from one afternoon read as one afternoon.
• Can you say what each photo tells her about you? My test is that every item should convey something specific, and if you cannot say what, leave it out.
• Does your bio give her something to answer? "I like food and travel" gives her nothing. A real detail does.

If you fail two or more, you have found your problem, and it is not your face.

One photo carries most of the weight, so start there. Take it outside in daylight, from slightly above eye level, a few steps back, with your whole face in view and a real expression.

My method is to take a lot of pictures and keep very few. Even professional photographers do not take one shot and use it. He suggests asking a friend who takes good photos, or paying someone who knows what they are doing. It is also worth practicing in a mirror, because most men are bad at posing. His own trick is to have a thought in your head when the shutter goes, a cocky one or a funny one, because the camera picks it up.

Choose three or four more pictures that each answer a different question. One full-length. One with other people. One of something you do. coach says photos where you are doing something that looks good, or are with attractive women, help you, and a picture you cannot explain should go.

Then rewrite the bio the way you would talk on a good night. Give a stranger one real detail she can respond to, such as the dish you cook badly or the band you drive too far to see.

Sometimes the page is fine and the results are still thin. Check three things before you blame yourself. Your distance and age settings might be so narrow that the pool is tiny. You might be on an app with few active members near you. And you may be liking too many women, which coach says makes the app read you as less selective.

coach also suggests finding which part of the process is failing. If you are getting nothing at all, the fault is early, in the page itself, and that is where to spend your time.

Change one thing at a time, and give each change a week. Start with the lead photo. Count the women who like you back before and after.

If the numbers rise, keep going. If they do not, change the next thing. A man who works through the list for a month will know more about his own page than any article can tell him. If you want a stranger's honest view first, ask a woman you trust to look at your page and say which photo she would skip.