My date with a celebrity Part 1

A few weeks ago I put up one of my shortest, shallowest, and to the point ads ever and got EXACTLY what I wanted.

Now the strange thing about Craigslist is that you really never know what will work until you try it. For this reason I always encourage people to experiment and once in a while try just saying exactly what's on your mind. Now that doesn't mean just post "I want sex." Sure you could try that but the problem with it isn't what you probably think. It's ok to want sex but realize that women looking at the personals already know that most guys come out of the womb wanting sex.. well practically. So that statement doesn't really set you apart at all.

What does the trick sometimes is making the person on the other end feel like you want in a woman exactly what she has. Think about that for a minute. Have you ever read a job description and thought "That's me!" Hopefully it has happened but regardless here is what went down when I decided to request a very specific "type."

REDHEAD WANTED..

That was the exact title that I used. I went on in my description to explain that I realized how it sounded shallow and that I didn't care. A brief description of what I liked about red heads followed and that was it. It was literally one paragraph long.

The responses were varied but there were quite a few to choose from. As usual I ignored everything that came through without a photo, passed on the less attractive ones (funny thing about true red heads, most are either very hot or ugly as sin, not much in between) and ended up with three finalists. For some reason one of them looked very familiar but I didn't think much of it at first.

After sending my standard response which I will post in a private area soon, it hit me. The girl I recognized was a local minor celebrity! Imagine that. Someone who is hot, semi famous, and single is on Craigslist looking for a date! I had to think this one out a bit. Should I proceed as usual or was some special treatment required for a woman of this caliber?

Now most guys would be extra nice to any hot girl but we all know that doesn't work. Too many nice guys boring the hot women to sleep. No. I decided to play it the opposite way. Now I don't mean I would treat her badly, I just wasn't going to chase her or try to impress with money or favors. Obviously a woman like her gets that stuff from every other guy out there. My plan was to play hard to get...

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.

The first date

First off I want to update one very important piece of information. Over the last two months I have seen a decrease in the signal to noise ratio in the responses to my personal ads on CL. I am not getting fewer legitimate responses, just consistently more spam. Last year I would get roughly 40% real women responding. Now it is closer to 25%. That is a BIG difference. Setup those filters and follow my anti-spam posts if you want to save yourself a lot of time. The good news is that meeting 3-4 real, attractive, and qualified women per week is absolutely realistic. You'll just need to have the time to actually meet with them and...

Know what to do next

I'm gonna skip the email and telephone steps for now and write about that later. For those of you who have been asking, here it is... my game plan for the first date after finding a worthy prospect.

I advise against the traditional "date" as far as buying dinner or going to a movie because, well it's just kind of lame not to mention expensive at times. It also sets up way too many expectations for both people. Don't get me wrong. Buying a girl a drink when you meet up with her is fine. Just stay away from the idea that you have to pay for everything or plan some elaborate evening to impress her. The purpose of meeting is so that you can decide whether or not to proceed towards whatever your intended outcome may be. I don't care if you're looking for a girlfriend, a wife, or a one night stand. In the short term, you follow the same steps in order to become acquainted with her. My first meets run me about $25. They are short and sweet and in my experience leave her wanting more. This is a good thing.

Decide on a location. It can be a lounge, coffee shop, mall... whatever makes you feel comfortable. Just avoid noisy environments. Plan on spending up to an hour or so unless it seems imperative that you invest more time. It's ok and in fact preferable that you have other places to go and people to see and that is why you structure the meeting this way. You are a busy guy with important things to do. Next time you meet her (should you choose to) you may allow more time but don't wear out your welcome on the first night or make it seem like this is a big deal to you. Don't tell her that you are screening her but in fact you should be. By that I don't mean asking twenty questions about her background. Find out a little about her and talk about something that you feel passionately about. Some physical contact is good but don't take too many liberties. If she reciprocates, fine. Otherwise try to be aware of when it's a good time to back off. Make her laugh. A sense of humor is very attractive and eases the tension. I don't mean tell her a bunch of jokes but rather point out the funny things about life or your environment without coming across as negative. Trust me, women are nervous about first dates too whether they act like it or not. She may even behave in a standoffish way as a defense. Resist the temptation to act the same way toward her. Be assured and confident in yourself without acting cocky.

Cut the date short before she does. It's an old strategy but it works wonders to this day. Tell her that you really enjoyed her company and will contact her in the near future so that you can spend more time together.

Start thinking about what skills you possess that can be demonstrated on your next meeting. Are you a great dancer? Can you cook? Play an instrument? Next time you see her, make it in an environment where you can demonstrate this skill without looking like you are trying to show off...

Always post two ads simultaneousy (CL)

Even if one of them is a complete "dummy" ad that expects few or no responses. In fact, make one purposely bad and post it along with your legitimate ad. This will allow you to easily recognize the bots that automatically respond to every single post. When you see two responses in your mailbox that look identical, you can be certain that no one ever actually read what you posted and you can just hit the "This is Spam" button.

Lots of new stuff soon...

Hey people. I haven't taken a lot of time to blog lately not only due to the lack of time but also because I type slower than a WalMart cashier rings up merchandise. I'm getting a dictation program in a couple days so I will be able to do this a lot faster. Stay tuned...

Defeating spam

When you employ the techniques that I describe here probably the first thing that you will notice is spam. There is a ton of it on CL. The good news is that it's pretty easy to identify if not avoid altogether. While I can't publish all of my best ideas, tips and tricks for meeting the hottest women on the internet I will freely tell anyone who listens how to greatly reduce the amount of spam in their lives because I despise it so much... except when I employ it for my own personal gain. Yes, it's a double standard. Life is full of them. Get used to it.

Always post at least two ads at the same time from the same account. When you get two responses with the same content you will know that it's coming from someone who took no time to actually read your post. That means it's either a bot or someone who is replying to all ads, i.e. a guy working for a porn site or a girl who is desperate. None of which you are interested in.

Include a request for specific information in your ad. If it's a close call as to whether the responder is real, asking them to call you by name, reference something in your ad or simply answer a specific question will make it easy for you to tell if a real person actually read your ad or not.

Set up an auto responder. If you don't want all of your ads to sound the same you can always ask her to answer your questions after she replies. Mine says something along these lines:

Hey there! Thanks for replying. Before I can decide if you are the woman of my dreams or not I need to be absolutely certain that you are real. I'm an optimist so I hope that you are but before I tell you my life story...

You get the idea. You can even include a different email address in your auto responder that you actually use and let it "screen" your responses before you waste any time on junk mail. It's exactly what the spammers do. Beat them at their own game!

Gotta start cooking dinner for a hot Brazilian Babe. I'll be back with more later.