An email is worth a thousand words

Something interesting hit my inbox today. It was a response from an obviously real woman. One easy way to determine the authenticity of a reply is whether it came from a subscription based account. For example if you get something from a person with earthlink.net at the end of their address, chances are it's legit. The vast majority of gmail live.com and yahoo mail accounts are coming from e-whores. I'll cover this more later including more sophisticated ways to avoid them.

She sent a description, her picture, and as luck might have it her real name in the signature. Most of you already know this but google a person's name and you can learn a whole lot about them. That is if they are someone. Well turns out she is. I found out just a while ago that this was an oversight on her part. Sometimes it can be intentional though. There's a great article on why people can't seem to resist putting their real life info on everything that they do online. I'll try to find it later.

Anyways, long story short she works for a government agency. Not surprisingly, her salary information among other interesting details are all available to the public. She was very surprised that I knew her last name when we spoke on the phone. I did tell her how I knew and she didn't seem upset by it just a little surprised.

She is well educated and makes quite a good living. She could be the one!

Classic mistakes

I'm posting ads for a couple of friends at the moment. Right now there are just too many girls that I am following up with myself so I figured why not do my buddies a favor. Before putting up any ads I always browse the category and location to see what I'm up against. Never hurts to know your competition. It's interesting how most of the guys posting to CL make the same mistakes. Here's an example of what not to do and why. My comments in italics.

Title- My name is Eric whats yours?

How exciting. You have one shot at grabbing her attention and standing out in the crowd and you offer... your name. Ok I don't want to sound harsh but remember my post about the restaurant sign? Well unless she already knows who Eric is and why he is so cool NOBODY CARES! Your name will rarely attract or intrigue her unless you put some sort of creative spin on it. Use a headline that says something. (Ask me privately for examples.)

Body-

THIS IS A REAL AD.....

Really? As opposed to what a fake ad? But couldn't a fake ad say the same thing?

I am looking to find a cool girl that has the same interests as I do and I hope to hit it off with her as friends or more. I enjoy taking the boat to the lake, B.B.Q. ing, camping, off-roading, entertaining friends at the house, watching a good fight on t.v., bowling, beer, etc.

So far the best, if not most exciting part about your ad. If she got this far then the previous sentence will go over decent.

I am vey laid back not into crowds so much. Please respond with a photo thanks for taking the time to read my posting I hope to get a good response.

Well this last part doesn't really communicate anything but I suppose it serves as a courtesy. What is vey? Always spell check!

Here's where, despite this eloquently written masterpiece, ahem... he blows it completely.

NOTICE! I DO NOT WANT TO SEE YOUR WEB CAM, I WILL NOT GO TO ANY OTHER SITE TO CHAT WITH YOU, I WILL ONLY RESPOND TO EMAIL, I AM NOT LOOKING FOR A PROSTITUTE OR TO PAY MONEY FOR YOUR TIME, AND PLEASE SEND A PHOTO IF YOU RESPOND THANK YOU.

Ok dude word of advice. Never, and I mean never bitch about porn, hookers, cams or anything else that does not involve your REAL prospects. Bots don't read your messages so the only person who does is a girl who might be considering replying to you. What is the point of telling her how much you hate... well, anything? I am telling you from experience that virtually every post I have ever made containing this type of complaining gets little to no response from anyone except for spammers. Don't bother. Read my defeating spam post instead.