Best Successful Dating Apps
Check out the best dating apps for finding new friends, hook-ups and romantic partners, whether you're looking for a long-term relationship or just a quick fling. 11 Dating App Success Stories That Will Make You Seriously Appreciate Tinder. Love actually.is. all around us. Anyone who's used a dating app knows that online dating love can be seriously. When it comes to finding love in the mobile age, it's hard to topple Tinder, one of the biggest and best dating apps that also enjoys a wide reach.
Dating apps are great in many ways, but they can also be confusing and time-consuming. As a professional matchmaker, I look at people’s profiles all day long and have learned a lot about how to get the most out of looking for love online. Here are some of my best tips.
Mystery is key.
When writing your bio, avoid rambling. The purpose of a bio is not to tell your life story, all of your interests, or your relationship history—it’s to pique curiosity. Long bios end up coming across as overeager and inauthentic. Plus, you want to maintain a hint of mystery to entice swipers to actually message you. Your bio should be short and sweet but give a suitor something they can mention when they first message you.
While you shouldn’t give TMI, you do need to give some.
While you don’t want to say something like, “Just broke up with my ex of 5 years, looking for someone to bring home for Passover next month. Crohn’s survivor!” you also don’t want to be bare-bones about it. I see women who have just a few nonsensical emojis in their profile. This makes it seem like you aren’t taking the dating app seriously and with no information on your profile, it’s pretty difficult for anyone to strike up a conversation.
Don’t state the obvious.
I can’t tell you how many profiles I’ve come across that say something to the effect of, “Love to travel, but also love Netflix!” Virtually everyone loves to travel and watch Netflix. Not only does this make for a boring bio but it will also get lost in the thousands of other people who say the exact same things. Instead, try something that tells more of a story like, “Looking for someone to watch the Dark Knight trilogy with.” You can also try something that adds a call to action like, “Who wants to help me eat all of this chocolate I brought back from Belgium?”
Be strategic.
Since you want to keep your bio pretty short, you can actually pack a lot of information into your profile in other ways. Adding your job and university gives people a good idea of your interests and where you’re from. An interesting job or educational background can also give swipers something to use to start a conversation. I went to school in Europe, so plenty of guys open the conversation by asking where exactly my school was, which easily leads to conversation about travel or what I studied.
Be authentic.
Probably 8 out of 10 women’s profiles are basically exactly the same basic stuff. It’s boring, gets lost in the crowd, and worse, it makes you seem inauthentic. It might be true that you have a dog and love to travel, but try to put a more unique spin on it. The best way to stand out is by being yourself. Your bio should be honest and have your own unique flavor while your pictures should show your genuine interests. Instead of yet another selfie, make sure at least one picture shows you doing one of your favorite activities. This will help you connect with people who share your interests and give them something to open the conversation with.
Ditch the vanity and choose normal photos.
Choosing Instagram model pics for your dating app profile may be sexy, but it’s not necessarily the best move. People tend to roll their eyes at blatant social media vanity even though we all partake. No one wants to date a narcissist. Plus, your high glam pictures don’t always make you look very approachable, which means you might get likes but few messages. Instead, choose pictures that make you look friendly and open. Rather than looking away from the camera or giving your best Blue Steel, you should be smiling or laughing. Make sure you’re showing your teeth and the whites of your eyes for the most impact.
Treat it like a job.
One of the biggest complaints I hear about dating apps is that people get burned out too quickly and then just want to give it up. A trick to avoid burnout is to limit the amount of time you spend swiping. Basically, you should treat dating apps like a job. Decide on an amount of time you’re willing to spend at it each day, then turn off notifications. Once you’ve put in your time, resist the urge to answer messages or swipe more when bored. If you’re at it all the time, you’re going to end up giving it up. Balance is key here.
Get clear on what you’re looking for.
When it comes to swiping, you should have some strategy. Most people treat dating apps like throwing spaghetti at a wall and going with whatever sticks. To have success on dating apps, you need to get clear on what you’re looking for and stick with it. If you’re looking for an active gentleman who wants a long-term relationship, swipe left on the hot homebody who’s “just here for fun.”
Look past presentation.
Not everyone is a content marketing genius, so you need to look past their online presentation to find the diamonds in the rough. Unflattering pictures and a cringe-worthy bio make most people swipe left, but try to look past their marketing skills to see what’s underneath. Pictures out of focus but fosters puppies in his free time? Hell yes. Gym selfie but has an MA in English lit from Yale? Worth a shot. An open mind is your pathway to love.
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Online dating has shaken up the romantic world in ways both good and bad. But whether we like it or not, one thing is for sure—online dating is here to stay.
Not one to get left behind, I’ve been trying my luck on a smorgasbord of dating apps over the past few months. And being the gigantic nerd that I am, I turned the entire experience into one big social experiment.
Today, returning as a battle-hardened veteran of love, I’m going to share with you my personal experiences, and tell you which apps I think you should get, and which apps I think aren’t worth your time. Juicy statistics included.
THE SETUP
Location
I’m currently living in a relatively conservative Asian country. So naturally, that’s where I was swiping from. The residents here are pretty closed-minded for the most part when it comes to things like dating and relationships. Doubly so for more promiscuous activities like casual sex. That being said, there seemed to be a substrata of people that were more down with the times, so to speak. These people were my target demographic. More on this later.
I also live on the outskirts of a city, so I had to broaden my search radius quite a bit to actually find people to match with.
Apps Used
I used 4 dating apps in the experiment, they were:
- Tinder
- Coffee Meets Bagel
- Bumble
- Hinge
Most dating apps are badly designed and are headaches to use. I chose these 4 because I felt they were the least buggy ones out there (spoiler: they were still pretty buggy).
I also picked these apps in particular because they were primarily designed to be used on mobile devices. Who even uses dating sites anymore?
Orientation
I was swiping as a male looking for a female.
Age range
18-32. I needed to cast a broad net because so few people were on dating apps.
Distance
I set my search radius to 50miles. This is a really, reallywide range. You wouldn’t normally need to do this if you live in a city, but I don’t. So, I had to cast the widest of nets. I did end up going downtown for most of my dates (~20 miles from me), but thankfully never had to go any further.
Ethnicities
Yup, you guessed it. I was swiping on all of them.
Pictures
I used 5 pictures on my profile. I thought 5 was the perfect number because it didn’t seem like too few, nor did it se— Ah, who am I kidding? I’m not particularly photogenic so I wasn’t spoiled for choice here. I took my best 5 photos, slapped them on the apps, and called it a day.
The first picture was a half body shot showcasing my face, the next 3 were travel pictures, and the last one was a group shot with my friends in which you could clearly identify which one I was.
I won’t post my exact pictures for obvious reasons, but I’ll do the next best thing—show you some pictures very similar to mine so you get an idea of what kind of profile I was rocking.
Just imagine the poses in pictures 3 and 4 in front of interesting travel backdrops, and in 5, I was the only guy in focus so you could easily identify which one I was. Also, the pictures I used were pretty average quality. They weren’t shot with a Canon-MP9001-with-automatic-hot-ification like these ones. That being said, they weren’t gas-station-bathroom-selfie-quality either. If you do have the option to use great, professional-looking shots, then you should definitely use them.
The Bio
Again, I’m going to completely fabricate a bio for you in the same style as the one I used. So, it’s not going to be my exact one, but something closely resembling it.
8’10 Martian, majored in Intergalactic Gender studies
Worked as a former cow abductor back in the day, but wasn’t quite feeling the vibe of the job. I’m an accountant now.
I like working out, doing math, and drawing giant dicks on the cornfields of nearby planets with my spaceship’s laser cannon
Your mom will love me 😉
The idea was to give the ladies an idea of who I was, and what my life was about while throwing some humor into the mix. If you bore them, you’re as good as gone (unless you’re hot). To be clear, I had my actual life story in my bio. The alien stuff was a fabricated example.
The Prompts
Some apps give you the choice to answer a few fun questions about yourself to give your potential matches an idea of your personality. Definitely use them if you have fun answers. These are the ones I used (also fabricated but in the same style).
2 truths and a lie…
I dated both twins of the same family, I’m a professional chess player, I send chain mail for fun
I appreciate when my date…
Takes care of herself and can handle my jokes
Which Dating App Is The Most Successful
I like…
Big butts and I cannot lie
As you can see, the prompts were all pretty lighthearted and most importantly, not boring. In hindsight, I probably spent way too much time crafting those.
THE GAME PLAN
Competition Analysis
The first thing I did on my online dating journey was to suss out the competition.
How did I do this? Well, I did a little recon. I borrowed some pictures from one of my female friends and set up a dummy profile for her on Tinder (remember to ask for permission). Doing this, I gained first-hand insight into what my competition was like.
And it wasn’t pretty… for them.
I mentioned this before, but swiping from a conservative Asian country reduced the size pool of my potential matches by a shit ton. Just because so few people were on dating apps. But, unbeknownst to me, my terrible location also had a silver lining: My competition was way worse.
Most guys on online dating had terrible profiles. A handful had high quality shots, but most were weird selfies or pictures that didn’t even show their faces.
Competition was low—moderate at best. Good news for me.
The Ranking System
Seeing as how I lived 45 minutes from civilization (and also with my parents) at the time, I had to come up with a very unique dating strategy if I was going to get any private time with my dates.
What followed was a deviously simple but effective ranking system to prioritise which dates were worth bearing the 2 hour long journey downtown for, and for which matches I’d be better off staying put at home.
The ranking criteria were as follows:
- Coolness – This is a measure of how ‘cool’ the potential date was. So things like looks, similar interests, and background all played a role in their cool score. This was the #1 priority
- Logistics – Simply put, this was whether the potential date lived alone or with their parents
- Everything else – This includes things like whether the girl had 3 legs, didn’t speak English, or lived in a dodgy area of town. Just everything else really
The importance of coolness is self-explanatory, but I put so much emphasis on good logistics mainly because I’m kind of an introvert. I’d take a quiet date at home with soft music cooing in the background over seeking out adventurous and potentially life-threatening experiences any day.
I believe this more low-profile type of date helps eliminate distractions from the outside world so both parties can more easily focus their attention on each other. And also, privacy is good if things take a romantic turn.
Quick disclaimer: Inviting a girl back to your place for the first date isn’t a great idea. I would suggest doing this on the 3rd or 4th date.
So, when I was chatting to potential dates on the apps, I ranked them and prioritized them accordingly, going out with the ones with the highest ranking first, working my way down the list. Don’t get me wrong, the list was either non-existent or very short most days. I’m not a giga-chad by any means. But it did come in handy a couple of times (mostly to decide whether it was worth going out at all).
Swiping Strategy
My strategy was to only swipe on members of the opposite sex I found attractive. For the first few days, I swiped until I ran out of likes on every app. This turned out to be way more draining than I thought.
Very quickly, I came to realize that Hinge didn’t have a particularly large user base in the country I was in. I ran out of people to match with within a day. For the remaining 3 apps, I continued swiping until I ran out of likes for 3 straight days.
After that, I cut-back on the swiping on Tinder and Bumble (liking ~10 profiles a day now instead of 100), while pretty much still swiping through my daily set of Bagels on CMB (liking ~7 profiles a day).
After a couple weeks, I looked at the results I got (number of matches) and decided to drop Bumble from the running for reasons I’ll explain later in the article. Now, only 2 apps remained: Tinder and Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB).
I carried on swiping on the 2 apps for a few months.
First message
In an effort to be as efficient as possible, I thought of the most original lame joke I could, and assigned it to a keyboard shortcut on my iPhone. I would then send this message to every single one of my matches when we matched. The exception was if they had something that I found really cool on their profile, then I commented on that instead.
Vibe
I tried to keep the vibe of the text conversations fun and casual. It was usually a few get-to-know-you style questions mixed in with some banter. I also tried to get as much information as I could during these exchanges on 1) how cool they were and 2) their logistics situation—in as much of a non-creepy way as possible. The whole name of the game at this stage was to get the girl on the other side of the app comfortable enough with me to agree to meet.
Asking for the Date
After a few rounds of back and forth, I would start to hint at the idea of going out on a date. How much back and forth I needed to do depended completely on the individual match. Some were comfortable meeting within 3 exchanges, while others would seem to never want to hang. I also came up with a pretty lame-but-endearing way of asking them out, and stuck that onto another keyboard shortcut on my phone to save labor.
THE RESULTS
I’ll keep this section short and sweet, only showing the outcome of my online dating adventures. Check out the next section for a breakdown of these numbers and a short review of each dating app.
The Success Rates
Raw Data
BREAKDOWN OF EACH APP
Tinder
Tinder fared decently with a match rate of 6.53%. This was the lowest out of all 4 apps by far, but I still say “decently” because it’s still pretty good considering when I last used Tinder, I got something like a 1.50% match rate. Since then, I got better pictures, actually wrote a bio, and moved to Asia, where the competition is absolute garbage. I suspect the combination of these 3 things improved my chances to what they are now.
Anyway, from these matches, I got the phone number at an 11% rate, which was alright. But the real magic happened when trying to convert the numbers to dates. Almost half of the girls who gave me their numbers from Tinder eventually agreed to meet. This was the highest of the 4 apps by a mile.
I have this sneaking suspicion that the reason why girls on Tinder are more likely to meet is because they’re looking for hookups more than anything else. And when you’re on the lookout for hookups, you don’t screen your matches nearly as hard as when you’re looking for a relationship. This lowered bar was probably the main reason that more girls were more willing to meet with me (yay for low standards).
Coffee Meets Bagel
CMB felt like my secret weapon. With an astoundingly high match rate of 15.5%, I was in match heaven. From the matches I got, I number-closed 1 in 10, and slightly over a third of those numbers turned into dates. Pretty good odds considering the sheer volume of matches I was getting on the platform.
I think people are more willing to swipe right on CMB than the other platforms simply because the app limits the number of profiles you have access to in a day. Unlike Tinder or Bumble, where you have 100 right swipes and infinite left swipes a day, CMB only shows you 25 profiles. Take ‘em or leave ‘em.
Bumble
Best Successful Dating Apps 2020
With Bumble, I got a match rate of 11%, got the phone number from my matches 18% of the time (about every 1 number for every 5 matches), and from those phone numbers, 3/10 of them turned into dates.
Bumble was weird. I was getting match after match the first 2 weeks I was on there. After that, nothing but crickets. It seems like Bumble gives a boost to their new users and promotes their profiles to more people during the first one or two weeks. But when this newbie boost ends, then you’re doomed to the bottom of the pile—unless you’re hot.
Hinge
Unfortunately, Hinge doesn’t have a large enough user base in the country I’m in. The sample size was too small to pull out any meaningful data from. However, when I was using Hinge in the past in countries with much larger user bases, I did experience a decent amount of success. In fact, more success than the other 3 apps at the time. So, definitely don’t count Hinge out if you’re swiping from the US/UK.
CONCLUSION
After 4+ months and over 15,000 swipes, I can safely say that the apps that yielded the best results for me were Tinder and Coffee Meets Bagel. Bumble was great for the first week or two, but then completely flatlined. And there weren’t enough people on Hinge where I live for it to compete with the others.
I found that CMB gets you more matches, but girls from Tinder are more likely to want to meet. Also, the matches from Tinder seemed to primarily be looking for entertainment and not a serious relationship. The matches from CMB on the other hand, were mostly looking for serious relationships. Surprisingly, the matches I got from Bumble seemed more open to casual relationships. Less so than the Tinderinas, but more so than the CMB-ers.
The Best Dating Apps
This makes sense if you think about it. Apps like Tinder or Bumble let you choose from hundreds of profiles every day, and people looking for hookups will appreciate the wide selection. While people looking for something more concrete will appreciate the pseudo-commitment CMB is designed to offer by limiting the number of people you can interact with a day. This makes it more likely that you’ll talk to your already existing matches instead of just running off to find someone new the second you get bored.
So, which app(s) should you use? I’d personally recommend Tinder & Coffee Meets Bagel. Bumble falls off way too hard after a week if you aren’t gorgeous. And there’s no one on Hinge where I’m from. Also I should note, if your pictures aren’t great, then Tinder is going to be horrible for you too—speaking from experience. So if your photos are bad and you don’t want to take better ones, try CMB (and Hinge too, if you’re in the US/UK).