Sprucing Up Your Online Presence

Finding your man online is really possible; you just may need a little help with your profile.

Though we don't all admit it, many of us have spent some time on various Internet dating sites. Influenced by those friends or friends of friends who swear that so-and-so met the love of her life that way, we've signed on, pulled out the credit card, and attempted to summarize ourselves in the pithiest way possible.

The result? Well, I can't imagine I'm the only one out there who, after a day or a week or a month or a year of seeing the men Internet dating sites had to offer, shook her head and swore, Never again.

According to Evan Michael Katz, the author of I Can't Believe I'm Buying This Book: A Commonsense Guide to Successful Internet Dating and founder of e-cyrano.com the problem may not be the sorry assortment of men on those sites. The problem, you see, might be us.

It's not that we're not fabulous. We are. But sometimes we're not as good at getting that across as we could be and thus, the utterly amazing men on those sites get distracted by, say, 22-year-old BarbieBody69, leaving us stuck with the ones who don't know the difference between they're and there (never mind their) and tell us repeatedly how good their sense of humor is without once giving as any evidence of it.

"Women--even attractive women who have plenty of men contacting them--don't realize how valuable their profiles are," Katz says. "Quality guys care about what you have to say. And if your profile sounds like everyone else's, it's probably not going to be effective."

The key, according to Katz, is specificity. "While it's great that you're nice, smart, and family-oriented or that you like hiking, biking, music, movies and travel," he says, "that doesn't differentiate you in any way from any number of other people out there."

What we need to do, Katz says, is get across our core attributes by telling stories that showcase them. "Rather than saying 'I'm adventurous,' think of a specific time you were adventurous," he explains. "'I bungee jumped off a 200-foot-high bridge in New Zealand' is a lot more interesting than 'I'm adventurous.'" Yet since we, as women, tend to be able to spin a good yarn, Katz cautions that brevity is a key component. "Keep it to one line," he says

Rest assured, it's not only the fairer sex that needs coaching. "Men need more help than women," Katz admits, "but women ask for help more often." For people who can't seem to navigate Internet dating waters on their own, Katz offers a $2,500 package that includes new pictures, a new profile--written using the client's words--and four weeks of phone coaching; he estimates that 70 percent of the people who use the service are women.

If you want to benefit from Katz's wisdom without shelling out roughly 10 times the amount of what an annual E-Harmony subscription would cost, then it's important to heed his most important bit of advice: "When you contact a man online, make sure your tone is coy and flirtatious. Make him feel like it's his lucky day," Katz implores.

Who knows? Maybe if we all had that attitude, we could keep BarbieBody69 single forever.