I’ve already shared the hotornot trick to help you pick the best profile picture for your online dating photo, but let’s dive a little deeper into the topic to make sure that you are giving yourself the best chances to be successful with internet dating sites.

See in the online world of people and social networks, especially internet dating sites, most people will judge the book by its cover. The book is your profile, and if you don’t make it stand out then the person browsing through the profiles is more than likely just going to move on to the next one that looks more appealing to them.

There are a lot of profile picture myths out there that OkCupid.com did a study on, well worth the read if you are trying to get responses from people.

If you are a female the most successful type of photo seems to be the myspace mirror shot, showing a little bit a cleavage to the users. Now what straight man out there doesn’t like to look at a nice pair of breasts? Not many.

For the guys it’s a little more tricky. Having a smile on your face tells users that you are someone that has a sense of humor and is happy with their life. Though every dating site out there tells you to show your face (as we have here) it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will get you the most message responses.

Bottom line is that you are not going to be able to pick the perfect profile picture all by yourself. Someone people are just naturally good looking and can’t take a bad photo, so basically anything will work for them.

This is especially true for hot women. Women that are extremely beautiful to the model type, may not want to do the myspace mirror photo showing cleavage, as they may get way more messages than they can actually weed through and look at. Women that get 100’s of messages a day, will most likely just glance at the profile picture and if they don’t like it they will delete the message without even reading it.

I know this for a fact because sites like POF.com let you know if your message was even read before being deleted. I know it’s mean and it sucks but that’s the nature of things and if you are messaging someone that is out of your league, your profile picture better be up to par and be showing off your best attributes.

If you are a guy that has nice abs, it’s not going to hurt to post a shirtless profile picture for the dating site you are on. (I know that Match.com used to delete these types of photos though years back, not sure if they still do or not so take note)

Just remember that the internet dating profile picture is like the cover letter for a resume. It’ s what gets your foot in the door, if the person your messaging doesn’t like your profile picture, chances are you are not going to get a response no matter how crafty the message you wrote to him or her is.