4 Online Dating Hacks

The Ultimate Online Dating Video Course is coming March 18. In the meantime, I’m going to give you four online dating hacks that I know for a fact are working right now.

As I’ve mentioned in my books, blogs, and Youtube videos, online dating is more difficult now than it has been in the past. That said, all game has become more difficult. Certainly, COVID is an issue, but online dating is the most COVID-friendly way of meeting new women in terms of your dating life.

When I developed material for the Ultimate Online Dating Course, I talked to a lot of guys. Since then, I’ve talked to even more guys who are killing it right now with online dating, and these are the things that almost all of them said are working.

Hack #1 — Automate Your Swiping/DMs with Technology

It’s strange to me that men are still not doing this. If you’re serious about making online dating work, you have to make sure you’re swiping (or messaging, depending on the app) lots and lots of women. It’s a numbers game—always has been—and it’s even more of a numbers game than it ever was before.

You can install an app on your phone that mirrors it on your computer, then use macros to swipe, respond, and have all those things running in the background. It automates the process so you don’t have to sit and swipe manually for 17 hours. It’s really smart; guys who do this let it run overnight, and by the next day, they’ve matched with 200 or 300 women.

You can also do things that automate (or at least improve) your DMs, like copy and paste messages. I’ve talked about this a lot; you should have a spreadsheet or some kind of Word document from which you can copy and paste common responses to common questions you get from women. And if you’ve done a lot of online dating like I have, you know you can often anticipate the kinds of questions they’re going to ask. Because of this, you can set up a lot of canned responses to these questions in order to set up first dates.

Automate this stuff as much as you possibly can. The more you have to do this stuff yourself, the more frustrated you’re going to be when you don’t get the results you want quickly. This can lead to burnout.

Hack #2 — Use Voice Notes When You Respond to Women

I’ve never done this, but as I spoke to guys about it, this is one of the most commonly recurring techniques they mentioned. Voice notes tend to get better responses and tend to maintain women longer so you can pitch that date. It’s a big improvement over just responding with a text.

Definitely use these. Plus, some guys even automate that. They have voice notes recorded as MP3s and use those as canned responses, where appropriate. If you don’t want to go that far, that’s fine. But using voice notes when you respond to women makes you more human, more real, and less threatening when they can actually hear your voice. You want the woman to feel safe enough to meet up with you; if there’s any hesitation, she’s going to say no. Voice notes really help with this.

Hack #3 — If Necessary, Change Your Photos!

This should be obvious, but guys aren’t doing this, and I can’t figure out why. If you’re not getting any matches or any good responses to your openers, change your photos. Get new pictures taken and use those instead! In the upcoming video course and in the book, I have an entire section on how to do photos.

If you’re using good photos already and still getting bad results, use a different photo from the same shoot and test that out. There are too many of you guys who are swiping like maniacs, getting no responses, and not changing your photos. That’s why, during your photo shoots, you need to get several photos instead of just two or three—if the ones you think will work don’t go over well, you have some alternates.

Throughout my entire online dating career, I saw lots of guys change nothing but their photos, and their results instantly improved. Be aware of this and don’t forget about it.

Hack #4 — Start with Women of Your Own Skin Tone

This is for you guys who are not white. I’ve heard from a lot of guys who tell me, “Well, I’m (Indian, Mexican, Black, or otherwise dark-skinned), and women don’t like me, so online dating probably isn’t for me.”

Incorrect! I have personally worked with and coached men who are all of these colors and races, and they are fucking killing it with online dating. Sure, they do everything correctly, but here’s something they all do: They start by focusing on the women whose skin tones roughly match their own.

Let’s say you’re a dark-skinned Hispanic guy. In that case, you should start by focusing on the dark-skinned Hispanic girls, the Indian girls, and darker-skinned Asian girls. Then move toward the white girls (if you want to). This works for two reasons: You’ll get results much faster, and you’ll gain confidence with the white girls once you’ve experienced some success with other types of girls.

Use that sequence of events instead of launching yourself right at all the white girls. But if you are non-white, the using-good-photos rule goes triple for you if you’re going after any women who aren’t of your own race. Your photos must be amazing; they account for 80% of your success (or failure) with online dating. Everything else only accounts for 20%. You must focus on those photos.