Not happy with how many message responses you’re getting on your online dating account? Wanting to get higher quality message responses? Yea, we get that. A lot of people get turned off from online dating pretty quickly when they don’t get the results they want. But, we’re here to tell you that the reason a lot of people don’t get the results they want is because they aren’t doing the simple things they can to improve their chances and get more message responses.

In this guide, we’re going to cover five simple things you can be doing right now to get more online dating responses. The good news is none of this costs you any money or requires any hard work. They’re simple quick-fixes that will not only improve the number of online dating responses you’re getting, but will also improve the quality of the singles getting back to you.

Make Sure You’re Using a Quality Dating Site

You can’t get quality messages back from quality singles if you are looking somewhere that has quality singles. With hundreds and even thousands of online dating sites, it can be hard to know if you’re looking in the right place for Mr. or Ms. Right. Before we get into the nitty-gritty of things you need to change to get more online dating messages, we wanted to make sure that you’re at a quality online dating site.

Below you’ll find our top three favorite dating sites where we personally and people we know have had the best results and gotten the most responses. If you’re looking for something more specific, make sure you check out our complete list of the top 10 online dating sites.

Improve Your Online Dating Profile

Now that you’re squared away about where to look for the highest quality singles, let’s talk about what you can do to get more messages and more people to respond to your messages. It all starts with your online dating profile. Your dating profile is the first chance you get to show someone what you are made of. It’s almost like an advertisement for the best thing on the planet, you!

If your profile is incomplete, you’re not going to get many responses. If your profile is boring and lacks any sort of emotion or thought behind it, you’re not going to get any messages back. If your profile looks outdated or like you generally just didn’t put a lot of time or effort into it, yup, you’re not going to get any responses.

You HAVE to dedicate some time to making your online dating profile pop. Even if you’re not the most interesting person in the world or don’t have a lot going on, you can still showcase yourself in a great light while still being honest. If there is one thing you’re going to look at after reading this guide, it should be this. Take a look at our guide to writing the perfect online dating profile. This guide is THE BEST resource on the planet for getting your dating profile up to speed.

Have Great Online Dating Photos

Having a great online dating profile is big. But, you’re not going to get many responses if you don’t have any photos attached to your account or those photos aren’t of at least a decent quality. To be clear, this has absolutely nothing to do with how physically attractive you are or think you are. People are realistic when they date online, and they message people that they would normally match with in real life. Also, people aren’t as shallow as you think.

If that’s the case, then why does it matter if you have any pictures up there? It matters for a few reasons. One, it proves that you’re a real person. The internet is a shady place at times, and it’s really awesome to be able to put a face with a profile. Without pictures, it’s tough to try and start building an idea of what you’re about or to get excited about responding or reaching out to someone.

You need to have about 3-10 pictures, they need to be from within the last year, and they need to clearly show you. Group shots are okay for some of your pictures as long as it’s very clear which one in the picture you are. Your pictures also need to be “honest” which means they need to show what you really look like.

If you’re serious about getting more responses, you need to get your online dating pictures squared away. Our 10 Commandments of Online Dating Pictures guide is an incredible resource to help you get the best photos up that will give you the best chances of getting more online dating responses. You don’t have to be a supermodel to have great online dating pictures. As long as you follow the 10 guidelines we lay out in that article, you’re going to be seriously increasing the number of responses you get when you send out messages (or people that message you first).

Send Out a Quality First Message

Once you have your profile and your pictures squared away on a good dating site, it comes down to that first message that you send to the people that you’re interested in. If your profile and photos are great, but your first message stinks, you are not going to get much in the way of a response. In fact, they probably aren’t even going to look at your profile or photos if your first message is that terrible.

So, what do you say? Well, we didn’t want to just give you a quick answer here as this is so important. Instead, we’ve put together a fully dedicated guide on how to send the perfect first message. We’ll go over everything you need to know and give you a tried and true formula to send perfect first messages every single time.

Surprisingly, it’s a lot easier than you think. As long as you can show excitement, demonstrate you read their profile, and give them an easy way to continue the conversation, you’ll be set. We cover every single one of these steps with a ton of real-world examples in the guide listed above. This is really a game changer and is going to go above and beyond to getting you more online dating responses.

Play the Numbers Game

The final thing we want to talk about to help you get more online dating messages and responses is how the whole process works. You see, a lot of the profiles you see on some dating sites are from people that might not be as active as you are. The quality sites we recommended above do a good job of removing inactive profiles, but not every dating site does this. Also, people find love online every single day. You never know if the person you messaged is already dating someone or is already talking to someone. Also, people have lives, and they get busy and can be really slow to respond. Also, some people get a ton of messages and just don’t have time to get through all of them.

We could go on and on. The point we are trying to make is that the chances of getting a response on a single online dating message are lower than some people think. It’s all due to things that are outside of your control. So, what can you do to increase your chances of getting more responses? You can play the numbers game.

Don’t just send a message to one person. Send a message to 10 people. Find more people that you’re interested in and send them a message. Remember, don’t make it a cookie cutter message as we covered in the last section. But, if you send a bunch of well-planned and thought out messages, you’re going to greatly increase your chances of getting more responses from your online dating matches.