Wanted to write this up to give everyone a really good run down of what I found to be highly effective online dating strategy. 

What OLD is like for a girl:

Last year, I got cheated on by my long-term gf. She wanted me back but I converted her into a FWB instead, so I helped her set up her tinder profile so I could see things from the girl's side. She's a 9 and within the first 30 mins she had 500 likes and over 1000 in an hour.  About 75% of the time she right swiped it was an immediate match.  This told me she had a massive backlog of right swipes from guys and so tinder mixes in guys from her backlog with random guys at about a 3 to 1 ratio.  The random guys were extremely attractive so I guess they do that to keep her engaged. Anyways, this is why if a girl likes you first, she's almost always unattractive... bc she is a girl that was able to get fully thru her backlog of guys and starts seeing only random guys to swipe on. Any attractive girl is not really going to be able to do that bc her matches will pile up. This is also why you will sometimes swipe on a hot girl two months ago and then suddenly match with her today... thats how long it took her to get thru her backlog to you.

Her inbox was completely flooded almost immediately. She had to very quickly start to triage the guys she likes vs the ones she doesn't.  Generally a guy needed to stand out early on or just blend into the boring faceless masses of dudes.  It was overwhelming for her. Tons of 'hey' 'whats up' or immediate date requests 'wanna go hike together'. Lots of 'hookup?'  In general, the game was extremely weak. She pared it down to about 8-10 guys, and from there it was one-in, one-out.  But if a guy stood out early and stayed engaged, he had a good chance of getting a date out of it. 

Ok, onto MY lessons from my own experience. 

-You dont want to swipe thru all the girls in your areas before your bio and text game is sharp. So if you don't live in a major metro area, you should probably start with setting a bio up in another city until you learn the ropes. I did that and I am so thankful bc I got to make all my mistakes without blowing myself up in my home city. Also start only with 1 app at first, so you only blow that app up... many girls have both tinder and bumble. 

-Pictures. Go out with a friend and take a bazillion photos. Get them rated on photofeeler. Use the pics with the highest attractive rating. You are only as good as your worst pic. 

-Keep your bio short. My results leaped when I reduced my bio to only [Age, has no kids, USA flag, No hookups]. Think about the hottest girls... they rarely have a long bio. If she does, you kinda think less of her. Why? Its like 'who puts effort into their bio? People who feel like they have to, who dont have any other options. Online dating is still seen as a last resort so if you have a long bio its like you are taking it serious. You want to come across like your normal social life is SO awesome you barely put effort into this online thing. 

-Put 'No hookups' in your bio. HUGE hack. It's shows you are an 'insider', you know how the game works. Like 60% of chicks have it in theirs.  Almost no chick is looking for only hookups, and if they are, they aren't going to be thrown off of you bc you said 'No hookups', they will just take it as a challenge. For the rest, it says you wont be some guy harassing them about hooking up, and that maybe you have a lot of girls hitting YOU up for hookups.  Most importantly, it steals their frame.... if she tries the whole pearl-clutching 'you're just trying to get into my pants!' thing you can just be like 'ummm sure, thats why I have 'no hookups' in my bio'.  At the very least, including it makes you appear more classy. 

-Use your super-swipes WISELY. These are the way to get to the top of her backlog asap. Since guys only get a couple super-swipes, it 'costs' a guy something to use them. This tells a girl that you think she is in your league and you also dont think you are out of her league (unlikely to ghost her).

-You want to break out of the pack ASAP. Most guys are boring, not memorable, and either are trying to meet up now without really knowing her or want to chat forever bc they dont have the balls to ask her out on a date. You want to show her you can do both - hold an engaging conversation and move the interaction forward towards a date. 

-First text - No questions, only statements. I've tried long and short openers. The best ones I've had have been longer ones (2-4 rows) where I noticed something insightful or funny about her pictures and said something clever / stimulating about it. You want to say something she's never heard of before and that she can't help but respond to. Ideal response is 'omg! that's so funny, I've never noticed that!' Stare at her pictures for as long as you have to to think of something clever. It can take like 10-20 mins. 'That poor half-blurry kid in the background is using every brain cell to not check out your tushy. I applaud his valiant effort and award him a B+'  

-Second text - Don't respond directly to her first reply, instead, ignore it and hit her with yet another opener or something expanding upon what you said in your first text. 'Imagine his mom's wrinkled forehead when she sees his report card, 'Bobby, you got a B+ in..... cute booty resistance?' 

-Ignore her questions the first couple texts - dont leap to respond directly to her. You will get better results if you lead the interaction instead of allowing her to lead it. Responding to questions lets her lead it. After a while once she has earned your attention, you can start responding directly. 

-Improve your texts - write your first text and then look for ways to switch the wording to make it more enticing. 'imagine his mom's face' becomes 'imagine her wrinkled forehead'.  'trying so hard not to look' becomes 'is using every brain cell'. 'ass or butt' becomes 'tushy'.

-Build momentum - you need to break out early so reply quickly in the beginning, you need to cross the threshold of being memorable. After that, you can start to mix it up, sometimes reply fast in spurts, other times replying a little slower and a little less so she's knows you arent desperate. 

-Get her number early - you should ideally have her number sometime before your 20th message, give or take. I got over 50 numbers in 3 months and nearly all of them happened early. Waiting too long stalls it, you want to break out of her tinder queue and be a guy she is actually talking to. 

-Voice memos - these are the best kept secret ever. She is texting like 20 guys. But she is usually not actually 'talking' to any. Enter voice memos. This is where she gets to hear your voice and it builds the connection ENORMOUSLY. You can use emotional intonation in your voice so it makes things way more textured. She will almost always reply with a voice memo back. From here, you guys are basically talking. You should keep switching back and forth between voice and text. Bumble has voice memo in the app which makes it easier. For tinder, you need to get her phone number (iphone) to be able to do this. 

-At this point you are basically 'talking'. A lot of guys are really pushy for dates without building a solid interaction. One thing I have found that helps a ton is to blur the line between 'voice memo' and 'first date' with a FaceTime date.  Nearly every girl will say yes to it bc its safe and risk-free. For you, now you can see what she looks like (anti-catfish) without leaving the house. Build the connection strongly on the FT date, and now your actual first date will feel like a second date = higher odds of the pull. 

-The vibe is your goal, not a date. A date really means nothing. If you dont have a vibe, she'll just flake on the date. If you set up a date with her, keep texting and chatting with her just like normal, don't go silent.  By the day of the date she should be pretty excited to finally meet you, you want the first date to feel almost overdue. 

-When she doesnt reply to messages. Do NOT double tap messages. One response, one reply. If she doesnt reply, wait 2-4 days and then re-engage.  You should generally work all your 'dead' numbers every 3-4 days anyways, there's nothing to lose.  You'd be shocked how many of my best leads came from dead numbers. This is because a girl learns a lot about you if you are willing to wait 4 days and then re-engage her like nothing happened. She learns 'wow this guy is not clingy, he won't flip out and get mad at me when I leave him hanging like the other guys... he must have a life and other options... maybe when I am blowing him off, I'm really just blowing myself off'. 

 -Dates - build your date routine. Go to the same place or couple places every time.  Even if you arent really into a girl, take her out on a date just for the practice. This means you will be relaxed and pretty soon you will be really accustomed to being in your regular date venue comfortably chatting with a girl you've never met. You will know your favorite place to sit, you'll know the hours and the staff, you'll be able to easily remember good conversation topics bc you literally just talked about the same thing in the same place the week before with another girl.  I went on tons of dates with girls I wasnt really into just so I could gain info -- how many were open to a same night hookup (most), what was tinder like for a girl, what made me stand out, etc.... 

-Venue choice - dont do food. Its expensive, chewing messes with your natural conversation flow, and the waiter always keeps interrupting. If she is comfortable doing drinks in the evening, do that. If she is not comfortable with that bc its too forward, do coffee during the day. Those are the two choices. 

-Talk to and go on dates with multiple girls until the bitter end. For guys, dating is hard at first and then becomes exponentially easier as you get into the groove. By the time you have a girl really liking you, you are in a situation of massive leverage bc if she likes you, probably lots of girls like you. Don't jump to settle down with a girl. Definitely don't stop dating other girls until she has committed to geting off the apps herself.

-Power and Leverage - On a one-on-one basis, one women will always have the power over one given man in online dating. Our only counter-leverage is, once she likes you. we still have tons of attractive options (bc men value looks a lot more than women) and she has a lot of options that she doesnt really want (bc women value personality more than men). She is not competing against us, she is competing against our options, against other women. By getting her out on several dates, I've already beat out 99% of my competition. But that doesnt mean SHE has beat out HER competition just by going out on a couple dates with me. Men pay the costs of having to be the one to approach and the fact that sex is a woman's choice, but bc of that cost we gain the associated benefit that just because a woman has chosen us doesn't mean we have to choose her yet. It takes a lot of investment to get our dating machinery in motion, but once it is, it pays extremely handsome dividends. For a woman to exit online dating and get into a relationship costs her almost nothing... all her online dating options will be there the second she changes her mind and with almost no required investment on her part. Not so for us, right when a woman wants us is at the point where our investments are finally paying off and exponentially many other women want us too. Our stack is tight, our ELO on tinder is high. This is the moment that WE finally get to have the leverage in the dating market. Don't squander it unless you are SURE she's your girl.