I’m going to relate my stories of OkCupid here. I signed up an hour ago – hey what the hell – and am starting to get some hits.
I’m a 51 year old white guy. Why is a 30 year old black woman in Washington DC messaging me?
I think I’ll just ignore people who are not in the middle of my Venn diagram. Is that considered rude on these kinds of websites?
This should be fun.
No. Having the red “Rarely Replies” icon gives you allure.
The image that arose is one of you sitting by an ice hole fishing. Good luck! 
I’m one who will be very interested to see how things go for you with an online dating site. I think I might try this myself soon enough. Good luck in your search for love or like or friends with bennies or whatever you’re looking for. 
Good luck!
As another 50-year-old white dude from Ontario, I can commiserate.
Watch out for scammers! If someone just suddenly shows up with a sexy but stereotypical picture, but doesn’t seem to be responding specifically to what you wrote, or offer many details about themself, they’re probably a scammer. I get contact requests like that all the time on Skype. I had to shut down my Livemocha account because I was getting more scammy contact requests that actual requests for help with English.
By this point, if an actual real attractive person showed interest in me, I probably wouldn’t believe it.
I have no personal experience with such sites but have heard that the best way to get constructive responses is to play the algorithm. Don’t feel obligated to answer every question if they’re on topics of minimal importance to you; instead, answer the important ones honestly and leave the ones you don’t care about blank. That way you won’t get flagged for people for whom the latter questions are important and will instead have more focus on the the stuff you think is important.
If you’re being messaged by someone much younger who doesn’t live anywhere near you - have you filled in your location and answered any questions yet? When you restrict yourself to people near you and you reply to a few dozen you start to should find people more to your liking. Don’t be shy about aiming for a very high percentage.
You’ll always get better results doing the pursuing (this goes for both men and women). You’ll eventually find you figure out that you have a ratio of messages to replies to first dates to second dates.
For example, as a late 20s lady mine was approximately 1 real reply for every 5 messages, 1 date out of every 5 people who replied, and 1 second date out of every 5 first dates. Keep your ratio in mind so that you know what to expect from your effort and feel less like you are sending stuff out to the void. Don’t feel it’s personal. A lot of the people you contact may have just found someone, or are suddenly in an odd place in life, or just don’t dig some random trait of yours. Just keep messaging people who seem interesting and see what happens.
A lot of the dates will be duds. They may be awkward or uncomfortable. That’s life. Eventually you’ll have some good ones. You gotta break a few eggs and all that. Try to have a positive attitude about the duds. At the least, you get to meet a wide array of interesting people.
So yeah. Sends LOTS of messages. Don’t be choosy at first- if they are hot and there are no deal breakers, send a note. Later you’ll get better at critically reading profiles. But for now, avoid trying to find the perfect profile and just get out and meet people.
First messages can be short. Don’t write a book. Just say hi and mention something from their profile to show you are not spamming.
Online dating is ultimately about dates. Don’t exchange a million messages. If there is a mutual interest, set up a date within 2 to 4 exchanges.
Maybe you’ll get lucky and have an attractive older woman offer to have NSA sex with you.
Everything even sven said is great, but this especially. Don’t build up a person in your mind for months and months, finally meet them, and then find out that for whatever reason you just don’t click in person.
I truly wish you all the best with this new endeavour, but most of all, have fun!
Yes. even sven says a lot of things that makes sense here. And as you get used to the site and maybe go on a few dates, I think you’ll find two things: that it’s a game of numbers, and that at the same time you can learn to be selective in who you reach out to.
Double-check your settings to limit the geographical scope. Even then, there will be people who have a very broad geographical scope for their settings or their searches and who do not bother read your profile with sufficient comprehension. Once a person who contacted me had deliberately listed her location as being in a different country from where she lived because she did not want people in here community to know that she was looking, but this is rare. Finally, watch out for scams and for foreign husband hunters.
It’s no more rude than hanging up on a telemarketer. If a person is not willing to read your profile thoroughly before responding, then they should not expect you to take the time to respond.
It is. I tried it when I was your age, met some terrific people, had some nice dates, developed some lasting acquaintances, and dated one person very seriously (still very good friends – careers, distance and an international border were too much). I have nothing bad to say about OK Cupid.
OK Cupid has a lot more younger folks and fewer older folks, and let’s face it, there are not a lot of mature singles in smaller communities, so if you have not done so already, consider including Ottawa in your settings.
Expect a number of hits while you are still fresh meat. The hits will decrease once folks who are already on OKC have checked you out, such that then only new members will contacting you.
This will be an interesting thread. 
So, ladies from Michigan and New York are looking at my profile. What’s that all about?
A literacy problem from US education systems, people wisely fleeing Detroit and Buffalo, or women who are open to travel and are checking you out.
I think when you create a new profile, or make changes, it shows up on the front page for other users. I’ve clicked on profiles from there and discovered that they were some distance away. (You can mouseover the picture and it will show you where they are, but I don’t always bother looking at that before clicking.)
So, what are the three percentages that I see on people who have viewed my profile?
It looks like this:
76%
64%
35%
OK. I guess it’s:
Match
Friend
Enemy
Personally, I never paid any attention to the matches. I met my husband on OKC, and I couldn’t tell you what our match was.
In case you care what they mean:
Friend % is based on how many questions you answered identically. Say you and a woman both say that you love strap-on dildos, you’ll get a Friend % bump.
Match % is based on how many questions you answered that put one another in the green. Say both you and the woman like strap-on dildos, but you each want to be the one getting railed by them and not doing the railing, your Match % will decrease (but your Friend % will get another bump!).
Enemy % is just a sort of cumulative inverse of the previous two categories. Say you love getting railed by strap-on dildos but the woman not only doesn’t want to rail you with one, but hates strap-on dildos altogether! Well, your Enemy % will go up.
Hey, were you reading my profile?