Having a good photograph on your profile is just as good as having a good catch phrase or tagline. You may ask why is that. Online dating is all about meeting people and first impressions count. The first visual clue of who you are is your photograph. There are well over millions of profiles out there. So ask yourself why someone would consider your profile over other potentials. Say you're ready to try online dating because all the other conventional approaches are not working. You've updated your profile, and your friends are saying you have a very catchy profile. It's come to that time! What photo of yourself will best paint a good picture of who you really are?

Below are a few suggested and recommended guidelines that apply to uploading photos to an online dating service that should seriously be considered.

You should at least add one picture of yourself to your profile. Without one there is the potential of loosing at least 50% of potential viewers. Research has shown that a high percentage of people that search opt out profiles without pictures. This indicates if you don't, you're seriously putting yourself at a disadvantage. Still others don't like the idea of a "blind date," and won't go through with a meeting if they have no clue what you look like.

Always remember to consider profiles as a personal ad and you are marketing your self through the profile. Look at other photographs of other profiles on other online dating site. Is yours similar? If so, you will not stand out from the crowd! The picture you post should be of good quality. Try to avoid distorted or stretched photographs.

Avoid photographs of yourself hard parting in the night club or pictures cut off from a group. There are tons of pictures like this, and they don't make people want to find out more! Your profile will be more attractive than if you hadn't posted a picture, probably, but you're still not going to stand out from the crowd and do yourself justice. Ask yourself what you would want to see if you were a member of the target audience, looking at your profile for the first time, and be critical. Try not to be biased, accept critics from friends.

At the very least, have a picture taken of yourself for the express purpose of using with your dating profile. You don't need to have had it done professionally, although it certainly wouldn't hurt! Consider someone who has a digital camera or loan them yours and can take pictures well, and offer them some incentive I leave that to you. Get them to take a fair number of pictures (20 or so), perhaps on different settings, different days because not all of them may work well, and because you then have a good selection to choose from.

Choose you're a good backdrop, don't just go with anything! A nice simple approach is to go to a field or a beach when it's near sunset, and have pictures taken of your self against this background. The background you choose should show yourself in a romantic or fun setting, and your clothes should be appropriate to that setting.

If you're daring and have the body for it, you may want to show off your body by wearing swimming trunks or a bikini suit. This has a high view rate.

It may be a good idea to try and improve the picture, as is often done of pictures of models in advertising. If you have any obvious, but small, disfigurements, these could be airbrushed out with a painting package. If you can't do it yourself, you probably know someone who can do it for you. Don't go overboard with this; make sure the picture still looks like you.

Please don't lie by posting a picture of celebrity or an attractive model, unless of course you really are one of those people! The picture must be one of your self, otherwise there can never be a face-to-face meeting, and the occasion is likely to end before it begins. There will be a trust issue.

Please do add a border to your picture, colored the same as the hyperlinks on the target site. The reason for this is partly to make your picture stand out, but also because most pictures shown on online dating agency sites are also links to your profile. Your picture will then look like a link, and it increases the chance of it being clicked on. If there is any "outside" to your picture, this should ideally use the exact same color as the background of the site. This can be found by using Alt-Print Screen to grab an image of your web browser when on the dating site, then pasting it into an art package, and identifying the color from there. Note that some online dating agency sites already supply borders around images; the trick will not work on these.

If you have several pictures of you doing interesting activities and the site permits it, post one picture of you doing each activity you have listed as your interest in addition to your head-and-shoulders shot. For example, pictures of you skiing while on holiday; pictures showing you in front of a movie theater; pictures of you participating in your favorite sport. They help to prove that you do the things you say you do in your profile, and they make your profile more interesting! It's worth considering making an "activity shot" your primary picture, which certainly will stand out in the listings.