Hardly any single man or woman can escape the world of online dating this day and age, and there are legitimate reasons for that. While for many people the opportunities to meet people in the "real world" are quite limited, the world of internet dating sites offers a virtually unlimited pool of single people who you can contact freely (or for a low fee) without the risk of rejection or other discomfort and many of whom you would simply not come across and in contact with under any other circumstances.

However, like in any business, attracting people through your personal ad or a dating profile faces competition from thousands of other profiles, and in order to beat that competition, your "product" - profile must stand out and be different from, and better than, most others. Many people don't put much effort into their dating profile. Like in most other aspects of life, in which mediocre actions lead to mediocre results, the same applies to online dating - if your profile is average or cliche, so will be the quantity and the quality of responses that you will receive from the opposite sex.

If you haven't yet written a profile, I suggest that you read this article with practical, effective tips on writing a compelling dating profile. If you already have a profile set up and you don't feel like rebuilding it "from sratch," here a short, simple checklist of tips, following which will make your dating profile much more interesting and attractive to the reader:

1. Eliminate a weak beginning/introduction in your dating profile. You might think that it's only polite to great the reader before you tell them all about yourself, but "Hey, how are you. Thanks for stopping by" immediately makes your profile sound week, uninteresting and unstimulating. There is also no need to start your profile with "It's hard to talk about myself and describe who I am." This is completely redundant to mention in your posting, as we all experience this and we all know how hard it is to talk about ourselves. Many readers don't have the time and patience for "fluff," especially when it comes to dating profiles, and will not get passed those few lines of "courtesy" and will move on to read the next profile. So, skip the introduction entirely and get to the essence of what you wanted to say.

2. Make sure your dating profile doesn't sound like a resume. It is not uncommon to see the following kind of text in a dating profile: "I just graduated from MBA program and working part time as a business analyst, concurrently pursuing a teaching credential" might make a great impression on a potential employer if included in the cover letter, but hardly anything can make a dating profile or a personal ad more boring and less romantic than this kind of "business" flavor to it. So make sure that your profile doesn't sound like a CNN nightly business review. You will have plenty of opportunities to tell your potential dates about your educational and professional aspirations once you meet them. At this point, when you are trying to attract people, your goal is to sound unique and interesting as a person. This can be done effectively by sharing a few of your interesting opinions on random issues and showing wit, sense of humor and sarcastic streak to you.

3. Avoid making cliche statements about yourself and about your life like most other people do in their dating profiles - it used to be a good idea to include in the personal profile things like "I like to work hard and play even harder," "I live life to the fullest," "I am as comfortable in jeans as I am in a suit/dress," and "My friends say that I am fun." However, as a reader goes through profiles that mention the same things over and over in exactly the same wording, it doesn't take long to be annoyed with those idioms and start judging the writer for lack of originality. So, keep those and other commonly overused statements out of your dating profile.

4. Clean up your spelling - I am from being a spelling nazi when it comes to dating profiles, and I don't suggest that you should be. However, it's hard not to dismiss a profile that says "I am an intelligent women," or "I am professional, independant woman." So, if you claim to be intelligent, smart, well-educated and independent, make sure that at the very least your writing abilities support that.

5. Create a strong ending to your dating profile - there is only one purpose to a dating profile - to have the reader to be eager and be hardly able to wait to write back in response to what you had to say. So, "Thanks for reading," or "Have a great day and good luck" will hardly achieve that purpose. You are much better off finishing your profile with posing a thought-provoking proposition or a question, inviting the reader to think about it and challenge your line of thinking. "Although I truly enjoy get-a-ways, day hikes, and biking, to me one of the most exciting things is being with a person whose mere character and personality make it an adventure to be in his/her company. How about you?"

These are the five simple, practical steps you can apply to any dating profile to make it more interesting and more compelling to the reader. 

Also, make sure that you don't make these mistakes when writing your dating profile.