Writing Successful Personal Ads
& Writing that First Letter

· Make it unique. "Looking For Love" or "Seeking My Match" is too generic and won’t set you apart from the crowd. Remember that your headline is one of the first things other members will see; set aside a few minutes to make it special.

· Play up your best features. Pick the most appealing or distinctive aspect of your personality. "Warm, Affectionate Man Seeks Hand To Hold In His," "Gourmet Wants To Cook Romantic Dinners For Two," "Yes! There IS A Woman Who’d Love To Watch Football With You Every Sunday!" It’s important to send a message that your match will receive loud and clear.

· Be clever but clear. Don’t assume strangers will understand your sense of humor. "Clever Headline TBD" doesn’t give anyone a reason to read your profile. "Fat, Ugly And Stupid Seeks Thin, Gorgeous And Brilliant" doesn’t work either (would that make you want to click or move on?).

· Be realistic. "Prince Seeks Princess" and "Looking To Live The Fairy Tale Life" suggests that you need to get your feet back on the ground. Try not to set yourself up as an object of pity by using the words "lonely" or "desperate," as in "Lonely Lady Seeks LTR" or "Desperately Seeking Soulmate." Are you looking for someone who is lonely or desperate? Neither is anyone else. And surely there are more enticing ways to describe yourself!

2. Your personal ad profile. Once your headline makes someone want to learn more about you, the trick is to keep his or her attention. Don’t feel like you have to sell yourself; just be open and honest. Ask a friend to help you write your profile, and have another friend read it afterwards. Keep the following advice in mind to help you create a winning profile.

· Get to the point. Avoid beginning by complaining about how hard it is to write a profile or find a quality mate; everyone here has to do just that. Dive right into describing yourself and what makes you tick.

· Focus on your strengths. Write about your hobbies, involvement in your community, interesting work or travels—whatever it is that makes you special. Think about your ideal match, and write as though you’re talking specifically to that person.

· Be honest. An "avid tennis player" is not someone who started taking lessons last weekend. The walk from your desk to the parking lot—no matter how briskly you do it—does not count as "exercises daily". Remember that your match will assume everything you write to be true; once you decide to meet offline, you don’t want any uncomfortable surprises.

· Be realistic. The words you choose in your personal ad can alienate potential matches, so go easy on phrases like "drop-dead gorgeous" and "looking for the perfect mate." Set your expectations high, but keep them real too.

· Describe what's important to you. Don’t be afraid to mention qualities that are important to you in a relationship; loyalty, the ability to communicate and listen, intelligence and humor are good examples. Put those qualities front and center, and avoid emphasizing characteristics that are less important to you. Give some thought to why your best relationships have worked well and why the worst worked so badly; maybe you’ll discover a pattern there.

· Check your spelling and grammar. Your personal ad profile tells your potential matches what to expect from you in an offline conversation; it’s all anyone really has to determine your personality and your ability to communicate. Although it might be completely unfair to assume, misspelled words can make people judge you as being uneducated or illiterate. Take a few extra minutes to check your spelling. Try writing your profile in a word processing application first; run spell check, make corrections and copy the text into your profile.

3. Your photo. Did you know that profiles with photos are eight times more likely to generate responses from other members? And as with all other aspects of your profile, the photo you choose says something about you; make sure you’re delivering the message you intended.

· Keep it real. Don’t be deceptive with your photo choice. That means everything from not choosing a clean-shaven photo if you’ve just grown a goatee to not posting a photo from two years ago, right after you lost all the weight that you’ve since regained. And please, whatever you do, don’t use someone else’s photo instead of your own. Remember that you’re going to have to live up to the image you present, so make sure it resembles the real you.

· It’s all about you. Choose a photo that features you by yourself. A group doesn’t make you the center of attention; in fact, it may even make it difficult for your match to determine who you are. Would you want to make it all the way to a first date only to find that your match actually was interested in your friend, the one who was third from the left?

· Go in for your closeup. Photos taken from a distance end up stealing the focus away from you. Even though you’re proud of your new car or boat or your recently acquired ability to hang glide, keep in mind that your matches want to see your face; they want to be able to associate what you look like with how you describe yourself in your profile.

· Focus on quality. The attention your photo gets should be positive. Choose a good, clear, current close-up of your face as your primary photo; additional photos can include full body shots or pictures of you with your pet. Make sure the photo is well-cropped and doesn’t cut off the top of your head (leaving your matches to wonder if there’s hair there). And remember to smile! (article from Match.com)

Corresponding by mail is like anything else; the more experience you have with it, the easier it is. If you're finding it difficult to express yourself in your first letters, you might like to try an uncomplicated, straightforward approach. For example, try beginning with a simple "Hello, my name is so and so" followed by such biographical old reliables as your age, height, weight, occupation and marital status. Next you might throw in something about the city or town you live in, what it's like to live there, what rivers or lakes it's near, what makes it unique and what are its attractions. From there you can move on to your interests and hobbies. Don't be put off if your favorite interests don't conform to theirs. Having different likes can make you more interesting to each other, and finding a carbon copy of yourself is probably not what you're looking for.

Tell her about your life, your goals, your job, your friends, how many people are in your family, what things elevate your soul. Tell them what an average day is like for you. While you're at it, ask them a lot of questions, too, starting with what a day in their life is like for them. If you know what their occupation is, ask them to tell you all about it. Do what you can to be polite and respectful in your letter. Asking her about a negative topic you may have heard about their country could offend them. It's best to stick only to positives until you know the person better. Be as honest about yourself as you can and speak from the heart, but stop short of revealing your past relationships or any skeletons in your closet at this point. The people you'll be introducing yourself to will, with few exceptions, be very serious about marriage and finding a good partner. A "playboy" is not what they are looking for or expect. Take care not to mislead them or make any promises you are not likely to keep.

You needn't tell them everything about yourself in your first letter; that can wait till later letters as you slowly reveal more and more of yourself and build your relationship. For now, the idea is to introduce yourself in this first letter-probably in no more than five pages and perhaps ideally in two pages. The main thing is to give the person you're writing a clear idea of what sort of person you are and enough information so they'll be able to decide if you appeal to them. (You may also consider asking for their phone #, fax #, or e-mail address.) If you write a polite, good-natured introductory letter, most of those you write will answer you back. If you're starting out by writing to many different people, there is a natural temptation to send off the same typed form letter. This might be a good idea for the first letter since most people learn English from the typed form. Before hand-writing a letter (which is seen as more personable), find out if they know hand-written English. It's also important to write as legibly as you can out of consideration of the person who will be reading your letter.

Try to avoid the possibility of confusing them by staying away from any use of idioms, slang or colloquial references. Also remember to put the name of your country in your return address; unless a person you're writing to already knows you, they may have no clue what country to send a reply to.

Consider it standard practice to include a photo of yourself in your first letter -- if not an original, then a color-copied one. Be sure to send only recent photos. To keep your costs down, you might get 10 or 15 different photos of yourself and arrange them on a sheet of paper; then take it down to your local printing store and ask them to run off about 10 color copies of the sheet. This will give you 100 to 150 color-copied photos ready to send off. Plain black-and-white photocopies are not likely to be well received.

Unless you've led the sort of life where you're used to hitting the jackpot lottery in anything you do, you'll be better off not limiting yourself to writing only one or two people. The more people you write to, the greater are your chances of finding the right person. Putting all your eggs into one basket is even more futile if you end up traveling all the way to a faraway country to visit just one person only to find out that you're completely wrong for each other. Writing to more people will give you a chance to narrow down your choices in the months prior to a trip. Then when the travel day comes, you can have in your hand a list with your 5 or 10 most-preferred people to visit. You may find that the "long-shot" one on the bottom of your list turns out to be the one who's most suited to you.

Post Card Suggestion
It's a good idea to follow up your letter a couple of days later with a post card to inform her that you have sent a letter, and to let you know if she does not receive your letter. We have heard that most of the letters coming from the West are still opened when going into the former Soviet Union, especially if they look as if there might be something of value in them. (Don't send anything that has value like money or stamps; the letters will probably be stolen.) These openings may delay your delivery, or perhaps even stop it. A post card has a much greater chance of delivery for this reason - nothing to open!
from Scanna International