Do women from OkCupid put out more, and does myBestFace work?

Anonymous writes:

I love your book: short and sweet. I came to the same conclusion on sending a generic first email, but was looking for someone who ran the experiment that I wanted to run. Now that I see you did it, I can rest easy.

Question: It makes sense that the women on match.com who are paid members would be more likely to respond and follow through on meeting you, but my how much more or less likely are they to put out quickly compared to the ones from say okcupid?

My theory would be that they are less likely to put out quickly because they are paying and expecting more commitment. But you actually have experience. Are there any noticeable differences?

He continues by offering a couple links on another topic from my book:

Okcupid myBestFace features is pretty useless:

http://jesse.la/okcupids-mybestface-would-be-awesome-if-it-worked/

https://www.joshsway.com/articles/view/stop-using-okcupids-mybestface

First of all, Mr. Anonymous, thanks for reading. I'm glad you like the book. How about a positive review on Amazon? Anyway now that that shameless promotion is out of the way, let's take these questions one at a time.

Why Most Online Dating Advice is Crap

There's a lot of online dating advice out there. The problem is, most of it is crap. Why? Well it's the same reason that most information on the internet is crap. People tend to get too caught up with what they want, rather than focusing on the truth. The result is that most advice is anecdotal or more of a personal desire than actual advice on how to act for success. Here's what I'm talking about:

This guy complains that he get's too many matches and emails with women he doesn't like. From his sample size of... wait for it... three he infers that he should answer online dating profile questions oppositely of how he truly feels. The better advice would be to stop waiting for women to contact you!

Why You Should Date Black Women

I've had a lot of success in online dating. Shit, I even wrote a book about it. But recently I've had even more success. How? By dating black women. Now, before you get all worked up, this wasn't a conscious decision I made one day. It's just something I noticed. I sort of though something was going on, but I didn't really pay attention until one of my friends whispered to me that he'd noticed that black women seemed to love him. When I started to keep track, I realized that I was having a lot more success with black women than any other race. But why? It turns out there are two factors at play here:

What’s the average online dating email response rate?

Match.com, like many other sites, has something called “winks” that you can send to other users. It’s basically a quick way to let someone know that you’re interested in them. Now, when you receive a wink, a screen pops up asking if you’d like to email and stating that:

She’s 15X more likely to respond to an email.

(At least that’s what happened for a male match.com member at the time of this writing.)

Think about what this implies.

The Online Dating Email: Personalized vs Generic

The following is an excerpt from my new book, A Hacker's Guide to Online Dating: How to Train Your Computer to Get You Dates. In it I discuss all my tips and tricks learned over years of online dating, how to optimize your online dating strategy, and how to automate the whole process.

So you want to know if your online dating emails need to be personalized? You want to know whether you need to read her profile to craft an eloquent essay about all the things you have in common, or if you can get away with sending a generic, cut-and-paste email to everyone. It’s an important question. Crafting that perfect personalized email takes a lot of time. And if you consider the fact that even with a perfect email, the likelihood of a response is fairly low, you’re going to have to send somewhere between 5 and 20 emails to get one response. All that time writing emails adds up fast.

If you do some research online, you’ll probably see a lot of articles written by women whining about how generic emails are such a turn off, how unromantic they are, and how no one wants to respond to them, yada, yada, yada. Some articles are less emotional, but also conclude that generic emails are less likely to get a response, usually using a mixture of opinion an anecdote. But those people are missing the point. They’re answering the wrong question. The question isn't, Do people prefer personalized emails to generic ones? The question isn't even, Are people more likely to respond to personalized emails than generic ones? No, the relevant question is much more specific: Is the increase in response likelihood gained by a personalized email over a generic email worth the time it takes to write it? The answer to that question is an unequivocal no. Here’s how I know.

Ask Men dating survey results

As I mentioned earlier, Ask Men has partnered with Cosmo to put together a great survey on the dating habits and tastes of men and women. Check them out if you have the chance. For now, I'll summarize the best results relating to the topics of this blog:

On marriage:

• To the question of whether or not they believe in marriage, 85% of women say “Yes, definitely!”, while only 66% of men say they plan to participate. Hmm, I wonder if that is a reflection of who is favored by the rules of engagement.
• How important is a prenup? 32% of men say somewhat or very important, versus only 26% of women.  Do you see a trend here?
• When asked which sex gets screwed in divorce courts, 79% of men and 41% of women say men get screwed. 1% of men and 18% of women think women get screwed. So both sexes agree. Men get screwed. Can we update these laws now? Waddya say we make things a little more fair?

On infidelity, sex, and attraction:

This week in...

...sex

• Is casual sex worth it? Yes, yes it is. Any other questions?
• If you’re going on a date sometime soon, think about incorporating some of these libido boosters. Hint: wear red, hold her hand, and get her adrenaline pumping.

...alimony

• It’s gonna happen! The end, er, restriction of lifetime alimony in MA. Catch the fever!
• Just when it looked like Arnie was going to stand up against alimony, he pussed out.

How do you measure up?

From our friends at Freakonomics, here’s a handy chart of average penis size in various countries around the world (Warning: holding your wang up to your computer screen may cause an unsightly smudge). If you’ve read SuperFreakonomics, you remember the hilarious story about the condom program in India failing because the condoms, made for African men, kept slipping off.

The latest online dating statistics

1. Zoosk on cell phone usage on a date. Hint: it's annoying.
2. It’s Just Lunch says there's a trend towards gender role reversal. If only.
3. Thanks to tastebuds.fm, we already know Coldplay fans don’t put out. Now we know Adele fans are the most likely to find a date.
4. Match.com has survey results that tell you how to dress for a date.
5. So far, Google+ is a sausage-fest.

Three reasons online dating is never dull

1. Online dating is great, unless your date turns out to be a terrorist.
2. Want syphilis? Try this satirical dating site designed to increase STD awareness. Oh those crazy Canadians.
3. More statistical insight from online dating site Tasebuds, which lets you connect with singles who share your musical tastes. Apparently Coldplay fans don’t put out. But we didn't need sophisticated statistical research to tell us that, did we?

New research from OkTrends

OkTrends, the research arm of online dating site OkCupid has 10 Charts About Sex. In light of this research I recommend trying to date vegetarians.