Tips

We're officially obsessed with online dating, but that doesn't mean we're any good at it.

According to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, one in five adults between the ages of 25 and 34 has used an online dating site or app. We're almost all on board with the idea of meeting through the Internet. We've become expert swipers, but we haven't become experts in presenting our best selves.

Are you making any of these common online dating profile mistakes?

1. Choosing the wrong photos. Your profile picture is the first thing anyone sees, so make it count. It should be flattering but accurate, not outdated or heavily edited. Include a range of images – casual, dressed up, in different settings, doing different things. Don't post group photos in which it's unclear who you are.
2. Being too generic. Everyone enjoys a good meal and spending time with friends. What really makes you unique? If you want to talk about food, mention specific cuisines or restaurants you enjoy. Paint a picture of the taco that changed your life. Universal interests don't offer any insight into who you really are and don't build a solid foundation of compatibility.
3. Lying about yourself. Shave off a few pounds here, add an inch or two there – it's an easy mistake to make. You want to make a good first impression and score the greatest possible number of dates. But in the end, you're setting yourself up for disaster. Sooner or later your lies will be exposed, and when the real-you doesn't match the profile-you, everyone loses. Dishonesty wastes your time and your dates'.
4. Leaving your profile empty. This should go without saying, but a surprising number of people choose to leave their profiles blank. Your profile exists to tell the world about yourself. You wouldn't want to date someone you knew nothing about, would you?
5. Writing a novel. On the other hand, there's no need to go overboard with your profile. Attention spans are increasingly short and schedules are increasingly packed. Few potential suitors have time to read your entire life story. Besides, if you say everything up front, there's nothing left over for the date.
6. Being too picky. It's good to be somewhat selective when it comes to your love life, but your profile shouldn't include a laundry list of deal breakers. There's a fine line between high standards and unreasonable standards. Focus on who you do want to date, not who you don't want to date.

Avoid these common online dating mistakes and you'll be well on your way to making a great first impression.

Swipe, swipe, swipe. It may seem like a small gesture, but too much of it is mentally and emotionally draining.

Sustained effort is the key to success in all areas of life, including love, but if dating has become a part-time job, it's time to step back and hit the cosmic refresh button.

When you feel online dating fatigue setting in, try these strategies for getting back on track.

Refresh your profile. Maybe all you need to get excited about dating again is a makeover. Not the kind you get at a Macy's counter – the kind you can do from your couch. Swapping out your profile pic makes a new first impression and gives you an instant lift in attention. And while you're at it, switch up the written part of your profile. There's bound to be something outdated that needs a delete.

Cultivate other interests. Remember when you enjoyed things that didn't involve staring at a screen? It's time to bring those back. Step away from the digital device and recharge with something fun, challenging, calming – whatever it takes to make you feel rejuvenated, like a mental spa day. This is the perfect time to indulge in an old passion or test out a new one.

Schedule vacation periods. There's a reason you have vacation days at work. You can only do the same thing for so long before it drives you insane. Pencil in online dating freeze days every so often and use them to recharge. Work out, read, take a class, go shopping, or just veg-out on the sofa. Do whatever makes you feel good during your dating downtime.

Slow down. How many dates did you go on last month? Can you remember the last time you had coffee alone? Can you remember what it's like to ride public transportation without obsessively swiping? Too much of any good thing is a bad thing, online dating included. If you find your emotional energy feels drained, give yourself the gift of some much-needed alone time.

Revise your mindset. Dating – online or off – is rarely smooth sailing. You'll burn out quickly if you don't acknowledge the reality that, yes, sometimes it will suck. Sometimes you'll be bored. Sometimes you'll be hurt. Sometimes it will feel hopeless. Stay positive, have a sense of humor about it, maintain a balanced perspective, and manage your expectations in a healthy way.

Date offline. If you're tired of dating online, just... don't. Join a club, attend a meetup, go to the park. Meet dates the old-fashioned way and call it charmingly retro. Do people still say “duh?”

Online dating fatigue: it sounds silly, but it's a real phenomenon. You can only spend so much time in cyberspace before your head starts to spin and arthritis sets in on your swiping hand.

When burnout begins, it's time to take a hiatus from the smartphone. Do yourself a favor and delete your dating app.

Yes, I said it. It may sound drastic, but it's the only way to be 100% sure you won't succumb to temptation and start swiping again.

How do you know it's time to take such a radical step? If any of these signs sound like you, your dating app belongs in the bin.

You're logging in out of habit, not out of interest.

It's hardly news that we're addicted to our devices. We check Facebook every 30 minutes and our email every hour. And our online dating apps? They're right there in the same boat, squeezed between Instagram and Vine. Dating should never be done on auto-pilot. When checking your app becomes a habit or an obsession, not something you're actually invested in, it's time to take a break.

You've resorted to stock messages.

The copy/pasted greeting is never a good look. Creating a great introduction isn't easy for everyone (or maybe anyone), but it's essential. If you're not taking communication seriously, you're not taking dating seriously. Go on a dating diet until you're ready to read profiles and put real thought into your messages.

You immediately look for what's wrong instead of what's right.

Being too picky can be just as bad as not being picky enough. If you're experiencing online dating burnout, chances are your subconscious will subtly sabotage your efforts. Instead of looking for the good in each potential date, you'll zero in immediately on the negatives. Your brain is looking for any excuse to avoid yet another tedious date.

You're desperate for a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Wait, isn't finding a relationship the point of online dating? How can wanting one be wrong? Well, it isn't. “Desperate” is the key word here. If you're too focused on that specific outcome, you're more likely to settle for someone who isn't right for you. A title should never be more important than actual compatibility.

You're on there for a reason that isn't dating.

Be honest. What are you really looking for? Do you respond to messages? Do you go on dates? If not, you're wasting your time and everyone else's. It's tempting to use dating apps for validation – who doesn't love be on the receiving end of a right swipe? – but it's unfair to users who are looking for real connections. And don't even get me started on the evils of catfishing.

Don’t you wish you could tell if someone on an online dating site was lying, or if all the information provided was accurate and up-to-date? Well it seems there’s an app for that.

Been Verified is targeting users of online dating sites in its marketing campaign. The service provides online background checks to help people “discover, understand and use public data in their everyday lives.” Basically, Been Verified consolidates data from many sources of public records, providing a background check on potential dates, including police records, mortgage deeds, and social networking profiles.

If this is unsettling, remember – it is all information that you volunteered or that is automatically public record. So, everyone is searchable, but sometimes it’s difficult to gather all of the information that’s out there. Been Verified just makes it easy – one-stop shopping, if you will.

Been Verified has dealt with a lot of fake profiles and scammers, so they wanted to get the word out to online daters about how to protect yourself. Following are some tips they recommend:

• It’s a big red flag if your online interest asks you for money, especially if it is early on and if you’ve never met face-to-face. Scammers will often ask for money on behalf of a sick relative, a short-term loan to pay rent, or travel money to visit you if he lives out of state.
• Be careful if he avoids meeting you, especially if he states he will be out of the country. There is a reason that scammers don’t want to meet face-to-face.  If they are running a game, they will come up with all kinds of excuses to avoid meeting. Some may use work travel as an excuse, others may say they have shared custody of his kids and it’s his weekend to keep them, or that an ill mother needs to taken care of. Listen carefully to what they are saying.
• To avoid identity theft scams, try Google's reverse image search. Take a few minutes to search the profile's pictures, and if the reverse search shows up across hundreds of pages, it is highly likely that the person is being deceitful and is using someone else’s images as his own.
• When chatting online, make sure the flow of conversation makes sense to ascertain if you’re talking to a live person or a robot profile. Mix up the conversation; see if the person continues to track with you. If they are unable to switch gears, it could be a robot responder giving predetermined responses.
• If his profile is comprised of only one photo and the text is basically empty, they could be a scammer. People who don’t want to be held accountable to the content of their profile will simply leave it blank. If they are too lazy to take the time to self-disclose and post some self-descriptive text, then you should probably take a pass.

Been Verified was founded in 2007 by Josh Levy and Ross Cohen with a mission to help people discover, understand and use public data in their everyday lives. With millions of app downloads and millions of monthly visitors, BeenVerified allows individuals to find more information about people, phone numbers, email addresses and property records.

You've heard that you need to put your best foot forward online. So, thinking you were doing exactly what you're supposed to do, you agonized over your username, your self-description, your photos. Every detail of your profile was carefully reviewed and redone until you felt confident you'd achieved perfection.

What if all of that was unnecessary? According to research from the University of Iowa, appearing too perfect online can actually work against you.

The study found that daters are distrusting of profiles that are too flashy or flawless. Instead, the most successful profiles are those that offer an authentic look at who a person really is.

"We found people want to contact a person who appears to be accurate in what they are saying about themselves online," said one of the study's authors, University of Iowa communications professor Andy High, in a statement. "It's tough when it comes to dating profiles because we want someone who seems like an amazing person, but we also hopefully will have a relationship with this individual, so we want them to exist."

To test how daters respond to different types of dating profiles, the researchers created 8 fake OkCupid profiles (4 men and 4 women) with combinations of two possible orientations. The first was “Selective Self-Preservation.” Profiles with this orientation highlighted the good aspects of the person's life while downplaying the negatives. The other kind of profile, “Warranting,” contained information that could easily be traced to a real person.

150 men and 167 women were asked to review the profiles and decide which ones they would contact. The majority chose profiles of the second type – those that did not present the person as perfect, and contained info that made the person feel more real.

In other words, people were turned off by profiles that appeared too good to be true. When stories of online love gone wrong come out on a daily basis, it's hard to blame them for being wary.

“Users of online dating sites are aware that people misrepresent themselves, and inaccurate profiles are one of the biggest drawbacks to using online dating sites,” the study says.

It's a difficult position to be in. Paint an unattractive picture of yourself and your profile won't get very far. Paint a picture that's too attractive and you're in the same boat. So what's an online dater to do?

“You want to balance all that is wonderful about yourself with some things that aren’t negative, but more humble or realistic about yourself,” says High. “It’s important to put your best foot forward, but maybe not in your best pair of shoes.”

Let's get this out of the way right now: it's what's inside that counts. I know that. You know that.

But we also know that no one's going to get to the inside if they don't like the outside first. It's not pessimistic or cynical, it's just honest.

Your picture is one of the first things people see when visiting your profile. And if you use a service like Tinder, it's practically the only thing they see. It's hard to overstate the importance of a photo under those circumstances, isn't it?

The good news is, there are plenty of ways to catch someone's eye, and they don't have to be complicated or expensive. Here are a few things to consider:

• Your profile picture should just be you. You may love a picture of you and your bestie, but you don't want visitors to waste time wondering which one you are. They'll swipe left simply out of frustration. Once you're past the main profile picture, feel free to include photos with friends. They show off your social side and prove you aren't a narcissist who only snaps selfies.
• Include a variety of photos. A collection of headshots – each one exactly the same except for a slightly different angle – says nothing about who you are. (Or maybe it does, and it says “boring.”) Mix things up a bit. Have one picture with a pet, another engaged in a hobby, and a third showing off your silly side. Visitors get not only a better idea of what you look like, but also a better sense of your personality and lifestyle.
• Show off your face and your body. I know. It's scary. It feels vulnerable and you're worried someone will criticize you, or move on without taking even a second to read your profile. But think about it logically. You can't lie or hide when you meet someone in person, so you might as well be totally honest up front. You'll waste less of your own time and everyone else's.
• Stay current. Some people intentionally put up photos that are outdated. Others simply forget that they haven't refreshed theirs in a while. The same rules as above apply. Lying by omission is not a good way to start a relationship. And who knows? A feature you don't like may be incredibly attractive to someone else. At the end of the day, almost nothing is sexier than confidence.

In the competitive world of online dating, making a memorable first impression – and making it the right one – is critical. Choosing the right photos gives you a powerful leg up.