I met Blaine through my client Trevor. In fact, Trevor hired Blaine before he hired me–she’s the one who told him he needed to hire a professional dating photographer ASAP. Naturally, I was curious about her so I reached out.
Blaine helps high-achieving men transform their dating lives by being their best selves. She developed her proprietary methodology, the 5Es, through years of helping guys from diverse backgrounds dramatically improve their outcomes with women.
I caught up with Blaine to learn about some of the most common challenges men face with online dating and how she helps them improve their dating lives without playing any games. I love her approach.
Read our conversation below…
The most common mistakes I see guys make are bad photos & thoughtless bios.
Most men don’t realize their photos (in particular their first photo) are the often only things women consider when deciding to swipe left or right.
If you don’t lead with a great photo, she’s not reading the rest of your bio. She’s swiping left.
So I push all of my clients to invest in hiring a pro photographer to help them capture the perfect picture.
Bios can be more nuanced. There are fewer black-and-white rules. But the #1 problem I see is thoughtlessness. Writing a bio to check the box, vs actually considering the woman you’re speaking to & the message you want to send her.
My typical client is smart, thoughtful, caring, often shy, and ready for his dating life to catch up with the rest of his life!
I work with a lot of engineers in particular. Guys who’ve focused intensely on their profession to date, and appreciate my structured systems-style approach to tackling dating.
To help clients, I focus on both the “how” and the “why” of dating.
The “how” is tactical stuff, like how to make a great dating app profile that gets matches, how to respond to texts, and where to go on dates.
The “why” is the psychology that underlies male / female attraction. What she’s looking for, why she behaves a certain way, and what she’s really saying.
Both are important. Guys tend to be more drawn to the tactical stuff initially, but tend to value the psychology longer-term because it’s more extensible.
Hot take: what specific dating app you use doesn’t matter much. There are nuances between apps (Tinder is more casual than OKCupid for example), but as long as you’re using a mainstream platform (Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, OK Cupid, Plenty of Fish, Upward… there are tons more):
– Your profile will be shown to a ton of potential partners (most women are on >1 dating app anyway!)
– Your profile is generally the same (combination of ~6 photos and ~50 words of written bio)
Framed another way, the quality of your profile matters 100x more than what app that profile is on. If I had to pick a favorite app though, I’d probably say Hinge. The interface is clean & the prompt concept is effective!
1. Invest in professional photos. They’re not cheap, but they’re 100x higher ROI than “super likes”, “profile boosts”, or other paid dating app features.
2. Iterate on your approach. If you’re not getting a lot of matches, use a different photo as your first. If women aren’t responding to your first message, say something different.
3. Keep it loose. More than anything else, she’s looking for someone she can have fun with.
Need some help with your dating app profiles or maybe your approach to dating in general?
Blaine could be your gal. (And she’s totally virtual so you can work with her no matter where you live!)
Check out her website datingbyblaine.com/.
Ready to take Blaine’s advice and improve the quality of your dating app profile photos?
>>> Book a Dating Photo Session
I help people find love on dating apps like Hinge and Bumble. My superpower as a professional dating profile photographer is not about photography skills, it’s about my way with people. I make regular folks look confident, warm, totally genuine, and effortlessly magnetic in their online dating photos by making them *feel* confident, warm, and magnetic in real life.
