In most cases the bio is boring. It lists facts, it sounds like every other man's, and it gives a woman nothing to react to. The other common causes are three. The bio is too blunt about sex. The bio is fine, but it sits under photos that sell you short. Or nobody reaches the bio at all, because the first photo loses them. Work out which one you have before you rewrite anything.
First, check whether anyone reads it
A woman reads your bio only after your photos have earned a second look. If you get almost no likes, the bio is not the cause, because nobody is getting that far.
a dating coach puts it as simple math. Enough people see your page, a share of them look deeper, a share of those like it. If the first number is low, you have a photo problem, or you are not in front of enough women. If the first is fine and the second is low, the written part is the problem.
So count for a week. How many likes did you get, and how many women opened your page? Fix the step that is weakest.
Fault one: the bio is boring
This is the most common one, and it is not the same as bad. A boring bio is not off-putting. It just looks like every other man's, so a woman swipes on out of habit.
Boring bios list facts. Your job, your favorite food, a book you loved as a child, a dream time to travel to. Every one of those can be true and still say nothing about what an evening with you is like.
The classic version is a line saying you are a gentleman who knows how to treat a lady and will be good to her. It is meant kindly, but she reads it dozens of times a day, and it does not give her anything to answer.
Fault two: it pushes sex or tries too hard
Some men swing the other way and open with a blunt sexual line or a boast. A woman wants to be attracted without being able to point at what you did to cause it. A line that is overtly sexual or overly smooth shows the effort.
It also shrinks your range. A bold, cocky line may attract a certain kind of reply, but it puts off the larger group who read it as pushy and a little unsafe, even if they liked the photos.
A teasing line works better than a blunt one. It suggests you are fun and a little hard to impress, without announcing it.
Fault three: the photos undersell the words
Sometimes the bio is fine and the whole page still reads as less than you are. Dim light, a selfie taken from under the chin, a cluttered room and a group shot where she cannot tell which man you are all make a man look like he does not have his life together.
a dating coach's point is that women respond to how you present yourself, not to your true value. A good man shown badly looks average. The same man shown well looks like a catch.
If your bio is decent and your results are flat, replace the weakest two photos before you touch the writing.
What a bio should do
a dating coach says a page should do a few things. It should make getting your attention feel like a small win. It should show what dating you would be like in an interesting way. And it should give her something specific to respond to.
That is why the choice of prompts matters so much. A favorite color tells her nothing. A prompt about what you are looking for in a woman, or what you will not put up with, gives her a reaction. Give a reason with your answer. "The pyramids" is a fact. "The pyramids, because I would like to see something that took a lifetime to build" is a person.
Fix it one change at a time
Do not rewrite everything on Sunday night. You will not know which change helped.
Change the first line, hold everything else still, and watch a week of likes and replies. Then change one prompt answer. Write down what you did and what happened, so you can go back. a dating coach says the best judge of any page is results, and a week of notes is better than a week of opinions.
Read the bio out loud before it goes live. Anything you would not say to a woman across a table comes out.
When the bio is not the problem
If you have fixed the writing and the photos and the numbers still do not move, the issue may be where your page appears. Check your location and your preferences, and look at whether you like so many women that the app treats you as unselective.
At that point a second pair of eyes helps. A reviewer with real results, or a full rebuild of the page by someone who does it daily, will see what you have stopped noticing.
Written by Matthew Stevens, Co-Founder & Head Coach. More than half a decade coaching men across the US and worldwide.
Everything here comes out of real coaching work: the approaches, dates, texts and profiles we go through with the men we coach.