“I Improved My Tinder Profile, But Nothing Really Changed”

I just had a conversation with an acquaintance, who was fuming that improving on Tinder is impossible. According to him, he had tried improving his profile by a mile. He said to have implemented all suggestions including higher quality photos, friend photos and in midst of action.

But he was pissed. Nothing really had changed. He still wasn’t getting dates he wanted.

So I asked to take a look at his profile.

He indeed had implemented those suggestions. But separately from each other. He had basically resetted his work every time.

He had taken higher quality photos of him with a DSLR. But had still stood awkwardly in a spot. He felt they were bad, so he tossed the higher quality idea.

He had taken photos with friends with someone’s smartphone. But others said that the photos weren’t that good, because he wasn’t easily recognizable. So he tossed the friend photo idea.

He had taken photos while doing an activity. But the photos were of poor quality. You probably can guess what he did? Yup, he tossed the idea.

So each time, he went back to his selfies that he had always used.

His reasoning? None of the improvements resulted in an order of magnitude (10x) difference in the number of matches.

He was basically looking for a single magic trick that fixes his problems. And I can promise you, that doesn’t exist. But there still is a trick.

Your efforts should build on top of each other

Every time you aim to improve your profile, you should aim to do it better.

But each time you try something, don’t discard the skills you learned from previous attempts. Use your experience, and make every attempt a tiny bit better than the previous.

For example, I’ve improved tons of skills to make build the profile I have now. My clothing style, my physique, my photo ideas, my photoshoot directing skills, my posing, and my editing skills. None of these skills have made a 10x difference by themselves.

But when I use of them all at the same time, they make a huge difference.

Every attempt builds upon all previous attempts. A single 1% increase is stupidly miniscule. You don’t even notice it. But if you make one each day for a year, you get a total of 37,8 (1,01³⁶⁵). Now that’s a clear difference compared to the start, right?

Because the changes build on top of each other, nothing visible might happen in the beginning. A 1% change when starting is just that, 1%. But, 1% at the end of the year is 37% diff (1,01³⁶⁴ –> 1,01³⁶⁵ is +0,37).

In other words, the more improvements you stack on top of each other, the more visible they become.

Then suddenly, the change is more massive than you could’ve first imagined. Even if each improvement is of similar size proportionally.

Even if it’s hard to quantify a skill, I’ve noticed this plenty of times.

In weight loss, first the change is minimal. But the more I worked on my eating habits, easier it became to lose weight. Suddenly I noticed I’ve lost more than 50kg (~110lb).

In photography, at first my photos were horrible. Point the camera to a direction, and hoped for the best. But the more I took photos and the more I challenged myself, the better my photos became. Suddenly people are interested in paying me to take photos for them.

Stacking Your Efforts Into Skills In Dating

Taking this idea into dating profiles. During the first week, you learn about what and how to improve e.g. from my guide, and you start using those techniques. You might start looking what clothes you could buy, or what photoshoots you could organize. Thus you might be see some changes, but they are still quite small.

After the first month, you might’ve already achieved noticeable improvements. Maybe you bought tons of new clothes and your wardrobe looks completely different now. Maybe you did couple photoshoots and each were just a little bit better than the last, so you might have some good Tinder photos. Regardless, you might see you’ve achieved a concrete change when you look back a month.

In 3-6 months and beyond, the process of improving probably comes naturally to you. You’ve learned skills that feel like a natural part of you rather than something alien. Before it felt weird to wear completely new style. Now everyone probably know you as the guy who dresses attractively. Your Tinder photos probably have taken leaps forward, and your dating life might have changed drastically.

All these improvements should compound to making better and better photos. Every time, a tiny bit better. This is probably also why your first change to your dating profile seems to have no effect. Just keep piling up improvements upon improvements. The first improvement is just the start of your journey.

People overestimate what they can do in a week or two. On the other hand, they underestimate what they can do in 3-6 months or longer time periods. For example, I turned my dating life around in 3 months in 2022 from meh to meeting hot girls who specifically into BDSM and I really enjoy being with. But even that builds on top of building a gym habit over a year in 2017, reflecting on my relationship with towards food and losing 50kg over 6 years (2016-2022), and revamping style over 2 months earlier in 2022.

So you will get there, it just takes time and many improvements.

What helped me a ton was that I had a clear North Star towards which I worked – I want to choose who I date. It helped against the negative thoughts like “Is all this effort for uncertain reward worth it?” or “What if I never achieve what I want?”. I preferred to die trying than ever be dishonest to myself again that I’d be OK with a poor situation.