Whether you’re new to online dating or you’ve been at it for awhile, there are some common practices you should follow to ensure you’re making the best impression. You may not know where to start or you might just not be getting the responses you’d like, so starting out strong or even trying a new approach may help you meet the woman you’ve been looking for.

Honesty Is the Best Policy

Meeting people online may seem like a good opportunity to reinvent yourself and maybe falsify a few aspects of your life to seem more interesting since the person on the other end can’t see you. While fudging the truth might make you feel more confident and draw more online attention to yourself, it can come back to bite you if you ever want to meet the woman you’ve been talking to or start a serious relationship.

Using misleading photos or claiming to have an important job title with a large salary could be very awkward to try explaining when you go out on your first date and she realizes you aren’t who you say you are. Your best bet is to be yourself and make a strong connection with someone who wants to meet the real you.

Honesty regarding your expectations is very important as well. You can save a lot of heartache and hurt feelings for both parties if you’re clear about your thoughts on dating a single parent, a divorcee, or someone who smokes or drinks. You don’t need to make a big red warning sign to post at the front of your profile, but gently putting your requirements out there will weed out the people you just won’t be compatible with.

Quality over Quantity

Rather than sending out a mass e-mail to every woman you find attractive, take the time to read through their profiles and determine first if you think they’d be a good match for you. If so, send a personal message and add some tidbits in there that show you’ve read her profile and have taken a sincere interest. Sending her something that is easy to respond too, for example asking her questions regarding something you’ve seen in her profile, could make a response more likely.

If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again

With online dating, you’re not always going to get a positive response from someone you message. Don’t let interactions like this discourage you. The best approach is to show your interest, but avoid sending e-mail after e-mail if she doesn’t reply back. The beauty of online dating is that the possibilities are endless, so while one woman may not be interested, you have the opportunity to meet many more who may be.

Just like dating out in the real world, online dating has its own set of rules and customs. Quite often these rules will be the same, but in some cases there are a few guidelines you may want to follow that wouldn’t always apply to your everyday, offline life.

Online Etiquette versus Offline Etiquette

Some people may think that because you’re talking to someone online and you aren’t face to face, you don’t have to be polite. When chatting online, manners and courtesy may even be more important. Because all of your contact is through messaging and e-mail, a lot of your tone may be lost so acting even a little snotty could make you sound extremely rude. And if you don’t care how you sound, keep in mind that getting a bad online rep for yourself may limit your chances with some of the nicer guys out there.

Chivalry and Being a Lady

This isn’t old fashioned dating and you don’t have to wait for the guy you have your eye on to message you. Since he can’t see you batting your baby blues at him from across the room, sending the first message is perfectly acceptable. On an internet dating site, everyone is there to meet someone. Making the first move as a female is not only okay, it’s expected. You can make your profile stand out as much as you want, but there’s no way to know if he’ll ever stumble across it, so even if you want to still have a lady-like demeanor, send him a short and sweet message expressing some interest.

Be Honest and Be Yourself

It can be tempting to stretch the truth a little when talking to someone online since they have no way of seeing you or verifying who you are. However, if you have any intention of ever meeting up with anyone you’ve met from an online dating site, being honest is your best bet. It might be very difficult to try to explain yourself if any inconsistencies are discovered later on. Besides, if you’re trying to make a connection that could turn into something serious, wouldn’t you want them to be interested in the real you?

The main thing to stick to when dating online is just to be generally respectful. Sometimes you may get rejected, or you may reject someone else, but not everyone is going to be compatible and there shouldn’t be any hurt feelings. Accepting that someone may not be interested in you and being polite when turning someone else down will give you a much more positive online dating experience and will just get you that much closer to finding the right person.

Whether you’ve been in the online dating game for awhile or you’re just starting out, there are a few common mistakes you might be making that can easily be avoided. If you aren’t getting as many messages as you’d like or you aren’t getting the responses you’re looking for, now may be the time to change your technique and try a new approach.

You Don’t Have a Picture Posted

If you’ve got a great profile set up with no picture and you’re wondering why you aren’t getting many messages, this could be the reason. A lot of people out there don’t want to message someone they can’t visualize. This doesn’t mean they’re shallow or appearance focused, but having no picture could make them think the worst. Even if you don’t like photos of yourself, having any picture on your profile is better than having nothing at all.

You Aren’t Being Completely Honest

You don’t have to lay out your entire life story on your profile or make a checklist of all your flaws and secrets, but being honest about who you are will make things easier for you if you’re looking for a real connection. Trying to explain later why you no longer have the job you said you did, or what happened to your amazing car you mentioned, could be awkward and will make you look dishonest and untrustworthy.

Misleading or incredibly old photos can also be a bad idea when it comes time to meet your online interest. You may have developed a deep enough connection for them to look past the fact that you’re no longer 20 with a full head of hair, but in most cases, it makes a bad first impression to arrive to a date looking nothing like they expected.

You’re Too Hard on Yourself

Nobody expects you to be perfect, but filling your profile up with a list of your flaws, shortcomings, and bad habits might scare people away. You do want to be honest, but you don’t need to slander yourself. If there’s something you really think people should know, by all means put it up there, but for the most part you should make your profile as flattering and friendly as possible. They’ll have time to learn about your quirks once they get to know you, so give yourself the opportunity to get to that point.

It’s good to be clear about you want and be as straightforward as you see fit, but you want to remember that the person you’re talking to doesn’t know you yet so building a little bit of trust first will result in a better connection. Sounding jealous or desperate to someone you’ve just met is a good way to get yourself on their block list, so online or offline, keep things light with the people you’ve just met and take the chance to learn more about each other.