What Is a Good Headline for a Plenty of Fish Profile?

A good Plenty of Fish headline is one short, true line about something specific in your week, written so a woman can answer it in a few words. It is the reason she opens your page instead of the one above it, so make it about one real thing and leave the rest to the description.

The headline sits near your name in several places around the site, so it is one of the first things a woman reads. On Plenty of Fish she often reaches a page through search by distance and age, not through a swipe. That means she may see your headline in a row of results, with a small picture and a handful of words, before she ever opens your page.

Two things follow. The line has to work with no context at all, and it has to be short enough to be read at a glance. A headline that needs the rest of the page to make sense is wasted on a woman who has not opened it yet.

Its only job is to make opening your page feel easy and interesting. Instead of selling yourself in twelve words, you are giving her one small thing to react to, and the rest of the page does the explaining.

That is why a joke built to impress often loses to a plain, odd fact. A joke that lands leaves her nothing to do except admire it. A true detail leaves her with a question, a correction or a story of her own.

Before you write, finish this sentence honestly: on a normal Tuesday I am the guy who ___. Fill it with a job, a habit or a small obsession, not an adjective.

A short list helps. Think of your work, a place you go every week, a hobby you do badly, a food opinion you will defend, and a thing friends tease you about. Pick the one a woman could ask a follow-up about without feeling foolish.

Then check it against your photos. If the line says you cook and every picture shows a gym, she will notice the gap even if she cannot name it. The headline should be the first line of a story the rest of the page keeps telling.

These are examples of the shape, not lines to copy. Use your own facts.

• The tradesman: "Plumber who has never once fixed his own sink."
• The runner: "Slow runner, fast eater, loyal to one bakery."
• The new-in-town man: "Six months in this city and still lost without my phone."
• The cook: "I make one excellent pasta and I will tell you about it."
• The teacher: "I teach eighth grade, so nothing you say will shock me."
• The traveler: "Three countries this year, and I still pack badly."
• The dog owner: "My dog has more friends in this neighborhood than I do."
• The late starter: "Learning guitar at forty, apologies to my neighbors."

Each one names something a woman can ask about. None is trying to be clever. Each admits a small flaw, which sounds more honest than a boast and lowers the effort of replying.

Some lines have been read so often that they carry no information. "Looking for my partner in crime," "just ask," "here for something real" and "fluent in sarcasm" all read as blank space.

Cut the negatives too. A list of what you do not want, or a line telling women to swipe left if they cannot hold a conversation, tells her about someone who has had a bad stretch. She has no interest in joining it.

Cut the apology. "Bad at writing these" asks her to lower her expectations before she knows you. And cut the long headline. If it runs past about twelve words, it has stopped being a headline and started being a paragraph.

The headline gets her in. The description is what she reads once she has opened the page. Keep it to three or four sentences. Give one fact about your week, one about your day off, and one small request she can answer, like a recommendation or an opinion about a small thing.

a dating coach's advice for any page is to be specific and give her something easy to answer. My example of a weak line is the man who calls himself a gentleman who knows how to treat a lady. Women have read that sentence many times. A man who writes that he has repaired the same kayak three summers running has written something they have not.

Change only the headline. Leave the photos and the description alone for seven days, then look at what changes. A line that works shows up in what women write: they quote it, they argue with it, they ask about the thing in it.

Count likes sent, matches, replies and dates planned before and after. If the numbers do not move, the headline was never the main problem, and the lead photo is the next thing to look at. A clear picture of your face in daylight will carry a plain headline further than a clever line will carry a poor picture.