Post your Online Personal Ad

Find a Place to Post your Online Personal Ad

Personals OnlineThis is the key to meeting the kind of people you want to date. There is such a variety of possibilities when deciding where to post your online personal, you'd be a fool not to do a bit of research before selecting the personals site you'll utilize. Maybe you're greatest interest is finding a free site -- such places do exist, though your options will be limited. Even more likely, you're looking to meet people from a certain lifestyle. Your options are limitless here. From sites for people looking for fetish based relationships, to dating sites based on religious or political values, personal ads can be placed at any number of topic specific online locations.

One reason it is important to find the right place to post your online personal is that the site you post your personal ad will determine the kind of responses you get. If you're not interested in dating Christians, don't post your personal ad at ChristianDatingService.com -- seems pretty simple, but the principle is the same for all manner of online personals. If you're looking for a purely sexual relationship, post your online personal in a location that specializes in "adult dating" or "erotic relationships" -- a few good examples of these are eroticy.com and adultpersonals.com. Placing your online personal ad in the wrong location can potentially ruin the entire purpose of placing an online personal, so this first step is the most crucial.
Determine Your Audience

Once you've found the online personal site you want to post at, use this information to "figure out" who your potential dating pool is -- your "audience". If, for example, you're looking to date Jewish women, and you've decided to post your personal ad at JDate.com (a popular online Jewish dating service), this will seriously impact the kind of online personal ad you write. You may want to mention your "level of faith" in Judaism -- there are Fundamentalist Jews, Messianic Jews, and a wide range of other sects of Judaism -- or how often you attend synagogue, or how important a person's faith in God is when looking for a mate. Similarly, if you've decided to post at a "fetish" site, you should determine what type of "audience" you're looking to capture. Your online personal at a fetish site should be specific enough that you don't have to waste time wading through responses that don't match your desires. All of this "audience determination" thinking will lead you to your next big step -- writing your online personal.
How to Write Your Online Personal

When writing your online personal ad, it is important to use the knowledge of your audience (based on the site you're going to be posting on) and to use specific language. You want to be sincere and honest, without coming off desperate. A trick I've found helpful is to write the way that I actually talk. My first draft of an online personal ad is written like a one sided conversation -- sometimes, this first draft doesn't need any improvement at all. Why write this way? It will do more to show your actual personality than attempting to sound "romantic" or to write like other online personal ad writers do. If you are a funny type -- a jokester -- feel free to make jokes in your ad -- just make them appropriate to your audience. If, for instance, you're looking for love on an erotic site, you might want to make the jokes a bit off color. However, if you're posting at a less sexually themed site, sincere but slightly self-deprecating or sarcastic jokes can go far, as no one wants to date someone who takes themselves too seriously.

Figure out what makes you different from everyone else -- remember, no matter what site you're using to post your online personal ad, there are thousands or hundreds of thousands of other users for your audience to browse through. Use your individuality to your advantage. Stay away from generic or cliche adjectives when describing yourself ("handsome", "fun", "happy", etc) and focus instead on stories and real honest details about yourself. Taking your audience into consideration, come up with something interesting to say, at least one really engaging story to make your ad stand out. Just be careful to stay consistently positive and confident without crossing the line into annoying and arrogant.

Unless you're posting at a BDSM site looking for someone to dominate you (and there are penty of sites for this), you should be proud of who you are, what you do, and the details of your life, and wear these things confidently on your sleeve -- your confidence will show in your language and the tone of your online personal ad. Most importantly, you should have fun writing your profile. If you have fun writing your online personal, the audience will likely have fun reading it

Once you begin to date people you meet from placing your personal ad online, you will see the benefit to online personal ads. You've most likely met people more in line with your sensibilities than if you'd just placeed your personal ad in the classifieds, and as your life changes or your interests change, you can easily edit your online personal to match. Hopefully, using the tips above, you've been lucky and met many new potential dates and quite possibly made some friends as a result of your online personal. The rest is up to you.