3) Your Opening Line

DON’T do what everyone else is doing. By that I mean don’t rely on canned lines, don’t stop after hello, and don’t be a slimeball. There are thousands more men than women using online dating sites, so she WILL have heard your borrowed material, she WILL get 100 messages in her inbox just like yours with nothing more than “hello”, and she WILL screenshot your creepy messages to ridicule you on social media.

We rest our case.

And definitely DON’T USE THESE CREEPY YELLOW FEVER LINES!

DO pay attention, be original, and either make her smile, make her laugh, or make her think. Don’t just tell her she’s hot—every guy does that—tell her that she looks absolutely stunning in that butterfly dress in her profile picture. It sounds both more genuine and like you’re actually paying attention. Don’t try telling her some corny and overused joke about a chicken crossing the road—she’s not fourteen years old any more—tell her that something you read in her profile reminded her of something you did in college one time that was totally hilarious. You’ll get brownie points for paying attention to her profile and for telling her something she’s never heard before. Don’t send her your rambling treatise about chemtrails and global warming—even if she is interested in the topic, nobody wants an encyclopedia in their inbox—ask her for her opinion on something she can talk about, like a thought-provoking topic she mentions in her profile or something that happened in a favorite television show she mentions.

Not the best first impression.

BONUS POINTS: Pay attention. Far and away the best way to get a girl to agree to meet you is to start by getting her to talk to you, and the most effective way to do that is to actually read her profile. Millions of men browse through these sites and message girls based on their looks alone without ever looking at the girl’s profile. But by bringing up something from her profile, you’re not only separating yourself from the creeps, you’re also validating her efforts and telling her she’s worth being interested in.