1. What to Expect

“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.” — Bruce Lee

Meet "John". He's one of the beta-testers for this guide who made sure that the research we did actually translated into the real world.

For his privacy's sake, we'll keep his name as "John" — that's not his real name.

He started the guide with no prior experience with online dating and was unsure where to start, what to say, and what to do.

We expect that many of you are in the same position as only three-in-ten adults say they have ever used a dating site or app [1].

If you're one of these people, we want you to first understand what's possible in regards to finding love online.

And if you're already using a dating app or site, we want to prepare you for what to expect.

Along with a few dozen others, John tested this guide for a total of six months. Their combined data combined with dozens of published research papers confirmed which dating profiles work best, which pick up lines to use, and the easiest way to turn an online relationship into an offline one.

And after following along with the research outlined in the following pages, we are extremely happy with their results, especially John's:

For those who aren't familiar with this screen, it's from a popular dating app in the United States called "Tinder".

Like many other common dating apps, users either "like" or "dislike" other users profiles to indicate their interest in, er, a potential mate.

As you can see in the screenshot of John's Tinder message board, he's matched with over 500 people in 24 weeks!

Additionally, there are over 99 users who have already liked John's profile to express their interest. We imagine that John will have a hectic dating life in the near future—lucky him.

In case you think we are cherry-picking, John wasn't an anomaly (a rare case) in our dataset. Out of the dozens of people that helped test this guide, the average likes over many different dating apps and websites were 412 people!

And by the way, John and the other beta-testers didn't just like every dating profile they saw. We'll explain why that isn't a good strategy soon.

Here's the good news: Each like John got on Tinder is a potential mate, maybe for life. Or if he's feeling a bit frisky, a potential hookup — we'll get into this later.

Now for some bad news: We can't guarantee these results for everyone. Life isn't fair and you might get more likes than John or maybe less. But, here are a few things that we can guarantee:

• Roughly six-in-ten online daters (57%) say they have had an overall positive experience with online dating [1].
• More than half of Americans (54%) say that relationships that begin on a dating site or app are just as successful as those that begin in person [1].
• A majority of online daters report that it was somewhat easy to find people on dating sites or apps who they found attractive and shared common interests with [1].
• About one-in-ten U.S. adults (12%) say they have been in a committed relationship with or married someone they met through a dating site or app [1].

All the bullet points boil down to one main idea: You can and should seek out love online. Dating apps and websites are tools to be used in order to maximize your chance of finding "the one" you want to spend the rest of your life with.

In the next 10 minutes, you'll consume dozens of research papers all condensed into actionable steps that you can use today. Here's an overview of what you're about to cover:

Prerequisites

This guide doesn't have strict requirements, but still, we'd hate for you to go through the entire thing just to find out that you can't use it.

If you can check off both of these boxes, sweet. If not, you won't be able to complete the guide but there's still a ton of tips and tricks you can learn for your daily life. With all that out of the way, let's actually get started.