After you have downloaded the “Tinder” app and quickly created a Tinder profile, you can hardly wait for your first matches. But nothing happens. You wait for hours. You’ve given dozens of women a swipe right, but you still can’t get a match. And if you ever get a match and send them an icebreaker, you rarely get a reply.
Many men prefer to spend their time hoping for more matches instead of optimizing their Tinder profile to make their profile irresistible for women. Either men don’t know that they can improve their matches with some changes or they shy away from investing the effort. Consequently, this is a grave mistake for your success On Tinder. To sum up, women can only make a decision whether they like you based on your Tinder picture and your Tinder bio.
Your Tinder profile is the reason why you have no matches!
Our last blog article, we looked at the main reasons why men have no matches on Tinder. If you haven’t yet read this blog article, I recommend that you read it first and then continue reading here.
To sum up, the big winners in the Tinder world are the 20% of the most attractive men. Therefore, 78% of women fight for the 20% of the most attractive men! An attractive man receives a Tinder match approximately 22.6% of his swipes, while an average man only comes up with a meager 0.5% match rate. Conversely, this means that the average man has to swipe 200 times before he gets a single match.
Tinder can actually work. However, only if you are an attractive man. Your Tinder photo is the most important success factor. If you look like a male model, you can write almost anything and still get a woman’s number.
Looking good in Tinder photos is largely a question of ability and barely of looks.
Most people don’t realize that photos don’t show us the way we really are. Looking good in photos is largely a question of ability, which can be learned through a lot of practice. Thanks to sites like Photofeeler, you can have your Tinder photo rated. Photofeeler is a website where you can upload your photos and get them rated by a defined group of people. For example, you have the possibility to have your pictures rated by women aged between 18 and 34.
In order for you to be one of the 20% of the successful men on Tinder, you need at least one photo of yourself, which is judged to be very attractive. For this reason, it is recommended that you upload several pictures on Photofeeler and have them rated. If there is one of these pictures that achieves a value of at least 80% on the attractiveness scale or better at least 90%, then you are ready to add this picture to your Tinder profile. If all of your photos are rated below 80%, then you should definitely take better photos of yourself before you even think about installing Tinder.
What makes a Tinder picture attractive?
The Unravel research team used neuroscience to find out what constitutes the perfect Tinder photo. In their experiment, they measured the brain waves of people who looked at the profiles of other people on Tinder and swiped either to the right or to the left. In this first neuroscientific study on online dating and Tinder, they were able to find out what factors matter, if you want to leave a great digital first impression:
- High contrast: The person should have a high contrast to the background. Light hair and /or light skin with a light background are disadvantageous.
- No distractions in the background: A background filled with too many stimuli is more of a distraction. A plain background without many colors and shapes is better.
- No other people in the picture: Show no other people in your main picture. The brain has to identify who the main person is in a millisecond.
- Upper third of the body: Our brain shows a clear preference for photos of where the upper third of the body can be seen. Therefore, you should not let yourself be photographed from too far (whole body) or too close (only face).
- No sunglasses: Your face shouldn’t be covered by anything – neither sunglasses nor a hamburger.
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A smile can make your Tinder photo more attractive
Have you ever heard the advice that you shouldn’t smile on your Tinder picture and look away from the camera? This tip was published on the blog by the online dating platform OkCupid in 2010 and has been cited thousands of times since then. Unfortunately, this recommendation turned out to be wrong. A recent study by Photofeeler shows that it doesn’t matter whether you smile or not and whether you look into the camera or away from the camera.
However, a researcher who formerly worked at Tinder and Bumble, even claims the opposite: According to her, a smile can increase your chance of getting a match. A smile makes people look friendlier and more accessible, while too many people try to look like a model in their Tinder pictures and therefore reveal no emotions on their photos.
At the moment we can’t make a clear recommendation for smiling or against smiling. Ultimately, this depends on the individual case. However, it is very clear that a smile on a Tinder photo will definitely not harm you and that you can smile on your photos. In order for this to look as authentic as possible, you should follow a few rules for smiling.
Tips and tricks for the perfect Tinder picture, which helps you to get significantly more matches!
For a great Tinder photo, it is recommended to hire a professional photographer. If you don’t want to spend money on it or don’t dare to go to a professional photographer to take pictures for Tinder, then I would like to show you at least some simple tricks that will make you look more attractive on your photos.
1. Camera
If you don’t want to hire a photographer, then you should at least use a good camera. If you don’t have a good camera, you can borrow one from your friends. It is difficult to take a good portrait photo with the camera on your smartphone. Mobile phone cameras are usually equipped with wide-angle lense. This means that you can take beautiful landscape photos with it, but for portrait photos, this feature is extremely disadvantageous, as it strangely distorts your face.
To illustrate this, you will find an animation below. A photographer has photographed the same portrait with different lenses. The lens with the focal length of 16 mm often corresponds to the smartphone cameras and distorts the face in portrait photos. The higher the focal length, the more natural the person looks in the photo. Many photographers prefer a focal length between 50 and 80 mm for portraits.
2. Light
Natural daylight is best suited for portrait photos. Especially the soft daylight on cloudy days. The best time for a photo shoot in the fresh air is just after sunrise or just before sunset. This is also called the “golden hour” in photography. Therefore, you should definitely avoid taking full sunlight (during the midday hours) photos, and using the flash of the camera or taking pictures in poor light conditions (e.g. in the evening in an apartment).
However, you can also take great photos in your apartment. You can achieve the best result by taking a photo directly opposite a window during the day so that the natural light from outside illuminates your entire face without casting a shadow.
3. How to take great photos at home alone
It is possible to take above-average photos for dating apps without having to leave your home. First you have to create a suitable scenery. Imagine you were a director of a movie. You would not leave anything to chance. Everything that can be seen in the picture was placed there on purpose. The scenery you need is as follows: You are at home with at least one other person and they have taken a photo of you while they are there. This could be like holding your guitar or just sitting there looking at the camera with a smile on your face while holding a coffee mug. Whatever you choose, it should look natural.
You have to decide for yourself which room in your apartment is the most suitable. Basically, a living room is better than a bedroom. However, the most important element is light. To get the best lighting, you need to sit across from a window. If you have to move your sofa for this, then the effort for a good photo is really worth it. Logically, you have to take the photo during the day when it is light outside and the apartment is lit up through the window.
To create the illusion that someone else took the photo of you, you need a tripod. Selfies are out of place here because they distort the proportions of your face and make your forehead and nose appear larger than they really are. You can also recognize a selfie immediately.
Set the timer to approx. 3 – 10 seconds and move into your position. It is a little simpler with a small Bluetooth remote control, with which you can take the photos. Take lots of photos to make sure you have some good shots. And last but not least, you need to test your photos. Use a service like Photofeeler for this.
4. Two tricks from professional photographer Peter Hurley
Peter Hurley is considered one of the world’s best portrait photographers. He has two tricks to take your photos to a new level. The first trick is called the ” squinch”. Most people tend to open their eyes in photos. It doesn’t look natural, nor does it look good. With the “Squinch” the lower eyelid is pushed up slightly. In principle, it’s like squinting your eyes slightly, with the difference that you only push up the lower eyelid. This looks more confident and gives the person a completely different aura. Peter Hurley explains the “Squinch” in detail in his Youtube video.
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His second trick is to emphasize the chin area and especially the chin line and to avoid a double chin on photos. You can do this by pushing your forehead forward and slightly lowering your head. Fortunately, Peter Hurley also explained this trick very clearly in a YouTube video.
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Fine tuning with the right Tinder bio
Most dating apps offer the possibility to write a short bio about yourself in addition to uploading your pictures. In one study, among other things, it was investigated whether the presence of a Tinder bio had an influence on the number of matches. In this study, two identical profiles were created with the same photo. They only differed in the bio. The first Tinder profile didn’t had a Tinder bio at all, while the second profile contained a brief bio that said “Hello” and that the person is from London. The first Tinder profile received 16 matches, while the profile with the short bio received 69 matches. This little difference resulted in 4 times more matches.
Nevertheless, the result of this study is to be viewed critically. As we know from other studies, an average man only achieves a match rate of 0.5%. For him, four times more matches would mean that every fiftieth like is a match. The bottom line is our recommendation is that a bio in your Tinder profile doesn’t harm you and maybe you can increase your success on Tinder with this small change. You should still put your main effort on reasonable photos.
The best Tinder alternative
If you simply cannot manage to optimize your Tinder profile so that you are one of the 20% most attractive men, then you should move your dating activities into everyday life. In everyday life, the physical attractiveness of a man doesn’t play such a major role for women. Instead, there are other factors that determine whether you succeed in getting a woman or not. In the book “The Psychology of Flirting” (advertising link to Amazon) , the author evaluated the most important findings from psychological studies and summarized them in an understandable and pragmatic way.