What the text is for
Photos decide whether someone opens your profile. The text decides whether someone writes to you, and above all, who. It is the only place where you can say what you are looking for and what your life looks like. Leave it empty or fill it with a one-liner, and you leave that decision to chance.
A good profile text has two jobs. It shows the direction, meaning that you are looking for something serious. And it gives the other person something to pick up on. A text that does only one of these is only half done.
What it does not have to do is describe you completely. Nobody enjoys reading a CV, and nobody falls for a list. It is enough if someone finishes reading and thinks: I would like to have a coffee with this person, and I already know what we could talk about.
Your intent in one calm sentence
Your intent belongs near the top, in a single sentence. ‘I’m looking for a committed relationship and I’m taking my time with it’ is enough. It says what you want without sounding rushed. Anyone who reads on knows from the start what frame everything else sits in.
Say what you are looking for, not what you do not want. ‘No hookups, no games, no pen pals’ only lists what has gone wrong before. The reader learns little about you and a lot about your disappointments. One sentence about what you hope for replaces every list like that.
If the app has its own field for intentions, use it, and do not repeat it word for word in your text. The field is for filters, the sentence is for people. In the text, your intent can sound more personal, for example: ‘I’m at a point where I’d like someone by my side, including for the boring Tuesdays.’
Show, don’t claim
Most profile texts are made of adjectives: honest, funny, loyal, spontaneous, close to my family. The problem is not that they are untrue. The problem is that almost everyone writes them. A trait that appears in lots of profiles sets you apart from no one.
Replace each adjective with a small scene. Instead of ‘close to my family’: ‘On Sundays I cook with my sister, and we usually argue about who used too much garlic.’ Instead of ‘sporty’: ‘I run before work, even in November, and tell myself every time that I enjoy it.’ Then the reader sees you rather than just taking your word for it.
Scenes have another advantage: they show values without naming them. If you mention that you call your grandmother every Wednesday, you do not need to write that family matters to you. And the reader can decide for themselves whether they like that.
Leave something to reply to
A good text has places where someone can hook in. These are concrete things: a book you recently gave away, a place you keep going back to, a habit your friends tease you about. The more specific the detail, the easier the first message becomes.
On some apps the text is literally the door. On Hinge, people respond to your answers to short prompts. On embla, which has not launched on the App Store yet, contact only starts from a specific sentence or photo of the other person. Where that is the case, you only get messages if you offer sentences people can actually reply to.
Test your text with one simple question: what could a stranger write to me after reading this? If all you can think of is ‘Hey, how are you?’, a hook is missing. If three different questions come to mind, the text is working.
What to leave out
Some things seem harmless in your head and off-putting in a profile. That includes demands about other people’s looks, minimum heights in the text and lines like ‘If you’re not going to message, don’t bother liking’. They sound like a bouncer, not like someone you would want to get to know.
Your last relationship does not belong in your profile either, not as a warning and not as a hint. ‘After bad experiences I’m finally looking for someone honest’ says more about the past than about you. And irony about dating apps, such as ‘Let’s see what this is all about’, undercuts the very sentence in which you just explained your intent.
Be careful with your CV, too. You can mention your job, your training and where you live, but a paragraph about career steps reads like a cover letter. If you write about your work, write about what it means to you or what you enjoy about it. That is more interesting than the job title.
The right length
Too short is a text that tells nobody anything. Too long is a text nobody finishes on a phone. There is plenty of room in between, and for most profiles a few sentences per field are enough. What matters more than word count is that every sentence says something new.
If the app offers several short fields or prompts, use them instead of one long block. Small sections are easier to read and give people more places to reply. One field for your intent, one for your everyday life and one for something that makes you laugh already add up to a full picture.
When you revise, cut everything that could just as well appear in a stranger’s profile. ‘Open to new things’, ‘I love to travel’, ‘Life is too short for bad coffee’. What is left afterwards is usually shorter and almost always better.
Write the way you talk
A profile text should sound like you on a good evening, not like a cover letter. Read it out loud. If you stumble somewhere or feel a little embarrassed, it is probably not your voice. A sentence you would never actually say will not represent you on a first date.
Humour is welcome if it is yours. A dry line about your cooking says more than a joke people have already read in plenty of profiles. The only thing that matters is that the humour does not hide your intent. Someone who laughs should still know you are serious.
Stick to the first person and the present tense. ‘I like cooking for friends’ is livelier than ‘People say I’m not a bad cook’. And ‘I’m looking for’ is clearer than ‘I might possibly like to find someone’. Cautious wording does not protect you from anything. It just makes your text quieter.
Get a second opinion and sharpen it
Give your text to a friend and ask two questions: what do you know about me now that you did not know before? And what do you think I am looking for? If the answers do not match what you meant to say, the problem is the text, not the reader.
After a few weeks, take a second look. Which sentences do people respond to, and which does everyone skip? The messages you get show which parts are doing the work. Keep the ones that start conversations and swap out the ones nobody mentions.
And update the text when your life changes. A profile that talks about a move that happened long ago, or a hobby you have given up, looks careless. A current text is a quiet sign that you are really there.