Caption: Thanks to a photo taken by a professional, Sutton Trout said he's meeting higher quality people through online dating.
Sutton Trout has experimented with Internet dating for years. But he was never thrilled with his photos.
Many were old or poorly shot.
So last summer, Trout, 38, hired a pro. Now, the San Francisco resident said he couldn't be happier. He's meeting higher-quality people, and he has a great collection of photos to use at work or to send family or friends.
"I get a lot of compliments on the pictures," said Trout, an executive at IGN Entertainment, a Brisbane Internet company.
As online dating has gone mainstream, interest is exploding in an assortment of services to help people gain an edge. Singles are scooping up books and hiring professionals to shoot their photos, rewrite their profiles or even investigate their blind dates.
Take headshots, for example. Professional photographers are increasingly offering to take photos for online dating, along with the more traditional wedding fare and family portraits.
Lookbetteronline.com, the site Sutton used, has built a network of 500 professional photographers across the country, much in the same way that online flower shops contract with local florists. It charges $129 for a dozen digital photos.
Co-founder Dave Coy said the site is attracting 250 customers per month, up from 100 per month a year ago. He hopes to double the traffic by next quarter.
"There's a real market for this," said Coy. "If you put up better photos, it makes a difference."
Coy said most customers say they have received at least twice as many responses from their ads after posting the new photos. In some cases, interest jumped tenfold.
Some sites (such as Lookwow.com in San Francisco) offer elaborate editing tools to help people touch up existing photos. In both cases, though, experts say online daters have to be careful to avoid posting a photo that bears little resemblance to how they'll appear in person.
Online daters are also turning to experts to help them tweak their profiles.
Profilehelper.com, for instance, charges customers $50 to rewrite their profiles or $90 to interview them and create one from scratch.
Eric Resnick, who helped launch the site, said the two biggest mistakes daters make in profiles are spelling and grammatical errors or too many inappropriate details. One woman said she was looking for a man who wouldn't beat her. Another would-be-dater mentioned that his wife had died just a few months earlier.
"People are usually a lot better than they seem when they write about themselves because all their insecurities tend to come out," Resnick said.
Book publishers also have churned out dozens of guides to online dating, with titles like "Meet Me ... Don't Delete Me," "Wired for Love" and "Meet Me Online."
"I suspect it's a genre that has plenty of room to grow," said Maria Hoffman, a buyer for Barnes & Noble's Web site.
Gumshoes are also touting their services for online daters.
Dozens of companies, like KnowX.com, let users look up their mystery dates in electronic databases. Private detectives offer more thorough background checks. Carmen Naimish, a licensed investigator in Santa Barbara who runs Datesmart.com, generally charges $300 to $400 to check out a cybersuitor.
"If you're going to meet someone for the first time in person, it's a good idea to get a background check to confirm they are who they say they are, " Naimish said.
"I am sick of dating stupid men so if you are a moron don't bother trying to get with me."
"As a student of life, I have always found myself drawn to intelligent men who share my inquisitive nature."