It was suggested that I post this here instead of AskTRP. A few gaffes trying to get this to work, I'm fairly inexperienced with reddit.

Summary - By making changes to my fashion/style, online dating profile, and getting professional photos taken, I've seen an increase not only the amount of online traffic, but also in the quality of said traffic.

Body:

Me: I'm a 49yo white male, realistically about a 6 or 7 looks, 5'10" and 202lbs. A little background to help explain my game. I live in a semi rural area and abundance mentality is hard to come by when there just aren't a lot of people nearby, so I use online dating (currently match & pof) to help add to my pool of prospects.

Change One, Fashion Update: Regarding fashion, my day job and teaching firearms is REALLY hard on clothes, plus I've lost so much weight in the last 6 months that none of my other 'nice' clothes fit anymore, so I needed a fashion makeover in a bad way. I was lucky that I had a copy of Rubenstein's "Paisley Goes With Nothing, A Man's Guide To Style on the bookshelf. It's about $4 on Amazon and worth every penny. Reviewing it again after so many years really reminded me of some basic fashion and style truisms that never get old. FYI: Rubenstein is a former GQ editor and excellent writer, so you won't be sorry.

Anyhow, a couple of thrift store hits mixed in with some retail runs netted me a good wardrobe upgrade without breaking the bank. Sidenote: Try on everything and peacock in a mirror. Size labels are being fudged by factories for men's egos, just like for women. I found several mediums that fit fine and several that fit like XL's or Small's, and some larges that did the same. Higher end designers (Calvin Klein and VanHusen for instance), seem to run true to size. Also, there are always women in thrift stores. Ask for their advice/opinion of clothes that you find. It gets you used to running day game while shopping.

Change Two, Professional Photographs: So after having obtained decent clothing, I hit up a buddy, who is a former shooting student, and happens to be the photog for the local NHL team. He's a consummate professional and has a great eye & resume. I traded him some ammo and $100 and he took about 700 pics over the course of 2.5hrs, which he then whittled down to about 175 'good' prints. Again, you don't have to have access to this level of photog, but anything other than crappy cell phone pics is a step up.

Change Three, Online Profile: I had changed my POF/Match profiles to be as mysterious and Alpha as possible. I basically boiled it down to: "I lift. I teach good guys to kill bad guys. I build/design beautiful homes. I travel when I feel like it." This change had actually gotten me some decent traffic but was too empty, plus all my pictures were the old cell camera pics with 'meh' fashion sense.

So using critiques from redditor DarkisKnight, I changed it to read as a brief, but very sexually charged story that sounds like a guy getting ready to bend a woman over, but instead is just a firearms instructor working with a female student. Then those few lines of basic data about me with some additional fluff to fill in the blanks without revealing much. I wanted to get the women's imagination hamster rolling. I was also able to add the professional pictures from above to this mix. Also DarkisKnight was right, the online sites tell you to post pictures smiling, but the science is that women sexually prefer brooding or sullen looks over smiling men. So I specifically choose pictures with less smiling. Maybe a smirk or brooding look.

Results:

Views & Traffic: Before these changes, I was doing a lot of emailing and looking with average results at best. Because of the steep male:female ratio on online sites, getting a 1-2% reply rate is about the best you can hope for. Maybe you'll get one or two 'meet me' or 'interested' notifications a day. Add to that MAYBE 3-4 unique views a day if you're lucky. After rolling out said new profile, my views on match shot up to 30+ daily in the first 24hrs, and on POF to 15+ daily. Another interesting side note is that the higher quality of the women looking. The ones viewing now are mostly HB6 and up, whereas before I was getting views/email traffic from a lot of >4 landwhales.

By using fashion and quality pictures, I had upped my perceived online SMV, which had two collateral effects. It got me more attention from the women I WAS looking for and drove off the low end women who KNEW I was out of their range. Now I could weed out women looking at & interested in ME using their profile information. Kids, weird color hair, facial piercings, myspace angle pics, 1KCS, massive tats, lawyers, SJW, whatever.

Message Traffic: Before I would get about a 1-2% reply rate to emails (mostly bulk with a few personal details thrown in). My reply rate showed immediate improvement and has risen to +25% with a lot more IOI's and details in the replies I'm getting. This investment has paid off amazingly well.

Lessons:

-Lesson One: Duh. Keep focused on maintaining frame. Frame projects even through an online profile. LAW 34 BE ROYAL IN YOUR OWN FASHION: ACT LIKE A KING TO BE TREATED LIKE ONE. The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated: in the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you. For a king respects himself, and inspires the same sentiment in others. By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.

-Lesson Two: Invest in your fashion sense. Be it web site, book, or personal consultant, up your style game. If you shop wisely, you don't have to break the bank to do it. LAW 25 RE-CREATE YOURSELF. Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define it for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions - your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.

-Lesson Three: Less is more when it comes to your online profile. Say little, but use what you say to create a hamster's fantasy come true. LAW 4 ALWAYS SAY LESS THAN NECESSARY, LAW 6 CREATE AN AIR OF MYSTERY, LAW 8 MAKE OTHER PEOPLE COME TO YOU - USE BAIT IF NECESSARY, LAW 27 PLAY ON PEOPLE'S NEED TO BELIEVE TO CREATE A CULTLIKE FOLLOWING.

-Lesson 4: Hire a professional photographer or photography student to take professional level pictures of you. Even if that means a sitting at the photobooth at WalMart. Anything is better than crappy cell phone pics. And have them take LOTS of pics. You're going to have to weed through them to find the gems that you want. LAW 37 CREATE COMPELLING SPECTACLES. Striking imagery and grand symbolic gestures create the aura of power - everyone responds to them. Stage spectacles for those around you, then, full of arresting visuals and radiant symbols that heighten your presence. Dazzled by appearances, no one will notice what you are really doing.

tl;dr: Spent a week of slow down time seriously upping my online game.

Edit: Formatting & spelling.