You are only as good looking as your worst picture

Online dating is all about minimizing risk. Particularly, minimizing the risk of wasting your time with someone you are not going to be interested in. That's why in this environment, your profile pictures become fundamental.

We live in times of brutal competition. And Online Dating is just another example of it. At the click of our mouse, one is able to find hundreds, even thousands, of potential partners, all of whom live within a reasonable distance.

As a result of the overwhelming amount of options, online daters have become more demanding than ever before. Nice and decent looking doesn't cut it anymore. Online daters are not looking for a reason to pick you; instead, they are looking for a reason to get rid of you. With thousands of other profiles to go through, this attitude is just common sense. Thus, it's imperative not to give them what they are looking for. The good news is that you have all the time in the world to select what pictures you will put up in your profile. And better news yet, I will help you make the right choices!

You are only as good looking as your worst picture

In any other situation, a bad picture would only be that. A bad picture. However, the rules of the game online are a whole other story. A "not-so-good" picture may mean many things, but almost all of them are bad.

It may mean that you didn't take the time to think about your profile enough, so one may assume that you are not taking this seriously. Hence, why should anyone take you seriously?

It may also mean that you have hinted how you are going to look at say 7 am on a Sunday morning. While you probably don't look your best at that time of the week, why on Earth would you want to remind that to anyone?!? You are only making their decision easier.

Finally, having a not-so-good picture on match may also translate into people thinking that without makeup, glamorous lights and photoshop editing that's how you REALLY look... Everybody has one good picture. But when you have many of them, it's not about the photographer anymore, it's about the model! So, in the eyes (and minds!) of the majority of online dating users, believe me when I say that you are only as good looking as your worst picture!

And the natural consequence of that is that your worst picture will definitely be the #1 reason why someone will pass you by. Hands down. It's the #1 limiting factor for many promising profiles.

I still remember my time in business school, when they were trying to teach us how a system will only go as fast as the speed of its bottleneck. In other words, if the oven is slow, there's no point in hiring more personnel, as the oven (bottleneck) will set the pace. Well, this is no different. In this case, the slow oven is your worst picture. Improve your worst picture and your entire profile will get much better results.

The big Take-Away from this Post would be to stick to your best pictures. Sometimes, online daters don't have many great pictures of themselves and they assume that they need to add some other "decent" looking photographs. This ends up hurting their profile in the long run. So, when it comes to online dating, Less can definitely be more. Three/four great pictures of yourself are much better than a mix of seven/eight decent looking ones.