Lonely Guy Can't Get A Date on Plenty of Fish

Just found this video of another guy ranting on about his woes and lack of success using Plentyoffish. It's kind of sad and I feel bad for the guy but from watching the video it's clear why he's not getting any dates from the site, which I'll explain afterwards, but first check out his video rant.



Wow, right? There's a number of things I could easily point out with this guy about his lack of success, so lets just get right into it, shall we?

1. Physical Appearance

This should be obvious to most people but if you're a 4 on the rating scale then you shouldn't be expecting to be snagging women that are an 8 or 9. It's just not realistic in terms of one's standards in the opposite sex. Of course, this is a shallow thing to say but the guy is not good looking and a bit unkempt. And as we know, online dating is much more shallow and based on looks than traditional dating methods. It's been said many times but much of online dating, particularly on free dating sites like PlentyofFish, your pictures are ninety percent of the game. If you don't have good pictures, where you make your best efforts to look good, then you will struggle to attract any attention.

Now, I'm not saying this guy is hopeless in terms of looks, in fact I think he could easily clean himself up and improve his attraction rating by at least 2-3 points, maybe more. If he got a decent haircut, shaved off that scraggly facial hair and put on some decent clothes he'd already be making some good progress short term then could improve even more by hitting the gym as a longer term goal.

2. Desperate Nice Guy Syndrom

In this guys video he professes many times that he's a "nice guy" that never cheats and treats all women with respect, bla bla bla... The problem here isn't that he's a nice person who is being ignored by women, the problem is he uses the Nice Guy facade as a disguise for his desperateness and lack of confidence. The whole video just oozes a desperate vibe, even towards the end when he actually asks for women to please contact him. I'm not saying he should be a jerk, a la the whole nice guy vs. jerk debate, but really he just needs some balls and stop acting like a dog begging for a bone.

To fix this, I think his first step would be to delete the damn video of him bitching about his failure at using Plenty of Fish to the entire world. Seriously, there's no need to exacerbate one's lack of confidence by publicizing it all over the place. Second, though more difficult is a change in mindset and attitude. Instead of coming from a place of neediness and despair, he needs to act as though he doesn't even need online dating, act as though it's just something he's messing around with. From my experience, women can smell needy guys from half way around the world (thanks to the interwebs) and will quickly put the guy on the Creepy Loser List.

So those are the main points but I think it's pretty clear why this guy isn't getting the results he wants and it amazes me that men are unaware of this stuff. However, obviously there are plenty of guys on Plenty of fish like this, a good example is another POF Youtube rant I posted about some time ago.

Of course I'm not the only pointing out these errors, as you can see in the next video from Player Supreme, he rips these guys apart on the same things that I just pointed out, though much more harshly.

Examples of Good Male Dating Profiles

Over the past week, I have been scouring through tons of Male Plenty of Fish online profiles. Not that I'm checking out guys or anything (I love the ladies) but I was trying to look for some examples of great male dating profiles. To do this, I browsed through as many guys as I could and anyone that had 10 or more favorites, I jotted down in my spreadsheet for later analysis.

First off, I would just like to say that finding male profiles with more than 10 favorites was quite a difficult task. There are not many at all. Just a rough calculation, I'd say that for about every thirty male online profiles I visited, only one would have 10 or more favorites.

Now on to my findings, which will basically be a quantitative and qualitative analysis of about twenty different mens' Plenty of Fish online dating profiles that indicated a high female attraction rate.

Age Level

The first thing that stuck out to me was that the age range of all the men were almost all between the ages of 30-35 with a couple in their late twenties and a couple over 35. This makes some sense to me as it would seem that the 28-35 is still young enough for women down to their early twenties to date, yet at the same time much more mature than your typical college frat guy. In this age range they are likely to be down a solid career path and have experience in the dating scene.

Height Level - Tall Guys and Short Guys

One thing that I was expecting was the heights of the 20 men to be tall but this was not true. Though there were certainly a number of guys that were all around 6 feet, there was a decent group of shorter guys from 5'4 to 5'8. So, even though taller guys have an advantage in online dating, it is not unheard of for a shorter guy to attract women on PlentyofFish.

Profile Pictures

I know what your going to say, these guys were all naturally handsome. I thought of that and yes some looked like they were borderline male models, but not all of them. I'd say half of these guys were average looking at best. Some even had their picture ratings averaging around 4 on a 1 to 10 scale! However, the one thing that they all did have, were decent pictures of themselves. None of the typical cellphone in the mirror with your shirt-off picture, nor the grainy, "I'm half in the bag at my favorite bar picture." They weren't professional looking but they were good pics, usually with a simple profile shot looking relaxed with a nice smile.

Body Type

For the body type category, a large majority were "Athletic" with the rest being listed as "Average." One guy listed "Thin" but his pictures actually looked pretty athletic to me.

This brings me to a personal issue that I just realized. I am a competitive long distance runner and though I am quite thin, I am pretty lean. This whole time I've been listing myself as thin, when really I could probably get away with listing athletic if I wanted to, after all my abs are coming along quite nicely:)

So the lesson learned here is get off your asses guys and get to the gym. If not for your Plenty of Fish profiles then at least for yourselves!

Relationship Type or 'Looking For

For the relationship type, "Long Term" and "Dating" were the two most common listed in the "Looking For" section with one guy listing "Friends." This was interest that long term relationships were valued almost equally as the guys just listing the dating option. I suppose this would prove that women are looking for guys that can be in a committed relationship. Also, it's important to note that the other categories like: intimate encounters, activity partner, hang out, talk/email, and other relationship were none existent in this group of guys.

Example Male Dating Profiles

Now on to the written part of the PlentyofFish profiles, the 'About Me' section. These are a little harder to quantify and there wasn't anything specific that stood out, with the exception that all 20 profiles had excellent spelling and grammar. None of them were overly long, usually only two to three maximum of paragraphs, while a couple were shorter with only about one paragraph. Positivity and good outlook on life were typical and most men seemed to have "confident" profiles as in, they knew what they wanted out of life and out of a relationship.

In the interest of privacy, I'm not going to link to all the profiles, but I will give you some excerpts from some of the About Me sections that I thought were good. Also, PLEASE, do not copy these, they're just examples, you need to write your own unique online dating profile that is congruent to your personality.

Sample Male Profile #1

ABOUT ME: As a person I like to think of myself as confident but not a ****. I'm a very humble man. I understand that there's a time to give and be loving and understanding. I also believe in standing up for what I believe and not being walked on. I'm always there for my friends and loved ones. I don't run from adversity. I care what people think of me because I believe in being the best man I can be. I want people who come across me to think "hey what a cool guy". It's not about attention for me. It's about the importance of ones own honor and respect for those around him.

GOALS: Looking to find a way into the music business. At what capacity, I'm not sure yet but I'm exploring many ideas. I really want to find a woman to love and share in the beauty that is life. I also want to continue to help those around me I care for to achieve their goals.

WHAT MAKES ME DIFFERENT: I was raised by a single mother. Watched her get hurt many times. Made me believe how important it is to treat a woman right. My mother also taught me how to have inner strength and not to get walked on. I'm covered in tattoo's and it's made me understand just how fickle society is. I'm a TRUE heavy metal fan. I've had to overcome some shitty things in life and in doing so it's made me a much stronger man.

Music: As I've already stated I'm a huge Heavy Metal fan. I'm a guitar tech (in training) for the signed band --------. I'm very passionate about the tattooed and heavy metal communities. We get a bad rap sometimes and it's a shame cause there's some really beautiful people within these realms of society.

What I like about this guy was that he really showed a lot of passion for life and compassion for women. And mentioning his mom in there was pure gold, who wouldn't want to be around a guy like this?

Sample Profile #2

A little about myself…

I am a very hard working dedicated person and I live life to it's fullest. I laugh often and am very optimistic. I think my smile is contagious :) I have young children, ages 8 and 11, that I simply love. My 11 year old is soooo smart that we are able to have intellectual conversations (or does that mean I have the intellect of an 11 year old?). My 8 year old is fun too but is the complete opposite of the other.

I am a lifetime student and I have 2 undergrad degrees, one graduate, and I'm working on my MBA now. I tell myself I will stop after this one. I guess I just like the challenge :)

In my free time I spend lots of time with my children (they don't live with me, but they live very close by), play the piano and drums, exercise daily, mountain bike, ride jet skis and 4 wheelers in the summer and snowboard in the winter. I always try to keep busy doing something. Oh and I LOVE to cook.

I enjoy helping others more than anything else. I would put everything I'm doing on hold if someone I know needed help with anything at all.

I love to travel (the Caribbean being my favorite) and while my immediate family all live here, I have family on the east coast, west coast, and in Southern France. I visit them all as often as possible.

I am incredibly honest and trustworthy. I would expect my match to have the same qualities. That is extremely important.

I have a great, maybe sarcastic, sense of humor (some would say disturbing). My humor is along the lines of Simpsons, Reno 911, Chevy Chase, Naked Gun, Seinfeld, stuff like that.

By the way, this guy is 5'6 and had about 40 favorites on his PlentyofFish profile. What I like about this one is that you can tell he's a super great Dad, which is important for a lot of women and he shows how active and fun his life is.

Sample Male Profile #3

Who am I? . . . I'm Spider-Man. Wait, no, that was a movie! . . . . . I would describe myself as stable in my career and goal-oriented. I enjoy making people laugh. I am intelligent and can carry on meaningful conversations. I care about other people's feelings. . . . . . When I'm with someone special I like being spontaneous, adventurous, romantic, surprising them with little gestures, sensual, playful, and basically having that type of fun you see two people who just met in the movies having! Someone to laugh with, hang out with, be spontaneous with, and have fun with! I'm looking for someone who has similar qualities and desires someone who they can connect with . . . . . . I feel there has to be mutual physical attraction for there to be good chemistry between two people. So being fit and having good looks are important, as well as sensuality and affection. . . . . . Having some similar interests helps--some things I enjoy are fine dining, walking at the beach at night, going dancing, watching movies including foreign films, travelling, going snowboarding, going on day trips to local attractions, having romantic nights at home, cuddling, and basically having a blast together. . . . . .

This one was my favorite out of all of them. He really hit everything on the head, covering a great deal about him and what he was looking for in a short amount of space.

Final Statements

So there you have it folks. It's a lot of information to cover, especially since the sample size of this was 20 male profiles, but please keep in mind that these guys were the cream of the crop... or shall we say the sharks of the sea. Also, I know I left out a bunch of categories like religion, race, have a car, etc, etc, but that would take up way to much time right now and I think I already covered the basics.

In the future, I'll likely expand on this study to include both a larger sample size and include more category data. Collecting this type of information on Plenty of Fish takes a long time, so if anyone out there is interested in collaborating on a larger scale study similar to this, please let me know.

As far as helping figure out what the perfect online dating profile is, I suppose we can say that it helps if you are a 30-35 year old male, good profile pictures, athletic, looking for a long term relationship and have a well written profile, then you are golden. For everyone else, don't despair, take what you know and adapt as best you can to compete, after all, there are plenty of fish in the sea.

Making First Contact on Plenty of Fish

You have your Plenty of Fish dating profile setup perfectly and it's likely you are starting to attract a little bit of attention, but in order to ultimately utilize this site you'll need to make first contact. Aside from your profile, this is the second most important aspect of online dating. Unfortunately most people, especially guys, also mess this part up big time!

Why is this step so crucial? Because, your first contact is only meant to accomplish one thing only and any other message you try to convey will likely be futile. So what's the one thing you ask? Simple, all you want to accomplish with the first message is to get your prospect curious enough to look at your profile. It's a bait and hook maneuver. That's it!

The bait and hook is crucially important on the Plenty of Fish dating site. This is for multiple reasons. The big one being that, assuming you're a guy, the women you are contacting are receiving tons of messages each day. Most of the time they are getting the same old ridiculous emails over and over again. So the trick is to set yourself apart from everyone else with a short yet intriguing message.

Here's a few examples of what has been getting good responses for me:

Pick several things from your prospects "interests" list that you have in common and use the following type of message

Subject: Hmmm, that's interesting...
Body: You like [interest1] and [interest2]! How come we aren't best friends yet!?

That's it short sweet and simple. Remember you aren't trying to make the girl fall in love with you on the first email. Your only goal is to get her to read your message and get her to check out your Plenty of Fish dating profile.

Let's break down why this works.

The first thing we want to accomplish is to get her to click on your message in her already stuffed inbox. This accomplished with the subject line. By implying that there is something interesting, but not stating what it is, you are giving her a lot of intrigue. It's likely that she can't help but read your message right away.

Second, now that she is reading our message, we quickly show her that we have some things in common and then give her a "call to action" by asking her a question. By giving her a simple question to answer, it's more likely that she'll respond with something. It's also more likely that she'll check out your profile, which is key.

Now assuming you setup your profile correctly, it will already do a lot of the leg work for you.

So, in the next couple of posts will look at some examples of what not to do and some of the next steps to take for dating on Plenty of Fish.

Plenty of Fish Dating Statistics

Before venturing off into the great unknown of Plenty of Fish dating, I first want to take a look at some of the current online dating statistics for this particular site.

This first thing I want to highlight is the number of users on Plenty of Fish. By taking a look at Google trends and comparing it with the other top online dating sites, we can see that Plenty of Fish is the second most visited dating site behind Match.com.


So, because POF is the second largest online dating site, we can only assume that size of our potential dating pool will be quite significant. This is important because as we continue to experiment and refine our dating system, we are going to need to interact with a large quantity of potential dates.

Second, if we look at the registration page for Plenty of Fish, you'll notice that they cite two interesting statistics which you can view in screen shot below:

Largest Dating site in the world generating over 300,000 relationships a year, larger than all other free dating services combined.

49% of women who leave plentyoffish.com found their boyfriend here. Love really IS just a click away.

The first statistic of being the largest dating site in the world conflicts with the Google trends data, but it's difficult to say how accurate either is. One thing is for sure though, Plenty of Fish has A LOT of users!

The second statistic cited is also interesting. I'm not sure how they got this number, I'm assuming through some type of survey, but if it is true than it is quite impressive. 49% of women, almost half, find a boyfriend through Plenty of Fish. That's pretty damn good if you ask me. Although, I'd be much more impressed if the success rate for men were that high. However, for some reason this number is not shown, but I'm guessing it's much lower.

So as we can see we're not messing around with some rinky dink dating site. The pool from which to draw dates from are in the millions. Certainly enough women that we can essentially screw up several hundred times and not be concerned about our prospects for dating on Plenty of Fish.