Profiles are the most important tool you have to being 'found' in Yahoo, many of us who have been around yahoo for a while, use the Membership Directory to look for chatters, or singles in our area, and we usually search by location, on line profile, and profiles with pictures, if you have not filled your profile in, you will not turn up in these searches.

Now, some of us do not have scanners, or web cams, so it is understandable if you do not have a picture, but you should have the basics filled in by now.

Real Name: Who Are You?
Nickname: What do you want me to call you?
Location: Not just a state, name a city
Age: Are you in the age bracket Im looking for?
Marital Status: Are you available?
Gender: Most important piece of data.
Occupation: This tells me a bit about you

Location-We of the U.P. should remember that yoopers are looking for other Yoopers, in Location, you should include, City, State, and one of these items, "The U.P.", "The Upper Penninsula", "Yooper", but not "Northern Michigan", for some reason lower michigan thinks that Grayling, Mount Peasent, etc, are Northern Michigan.

Age-Tired of getting PM's from Old Guys, or Kids, well if I dont know how old you are, its not my fault.

Marital Status-This is where you let other people know if you are on the market or not, me personally, I only look for "Single", or "Single, and Looking", I completely ignore everything else in Yahoo. When I see "Married but Still Looking", I see a piece of cheating trash, and instead of getting a responce, you get put on Ignore.

Gender-Im in chat rooms all the time, and I see it in every single room, some person getting upset because nobody will chat with them, well, we dont know whether your a guy, or a female.

Occupation-Were in a recession, not everybody has a job right now, or in many cases, divorced and seperated women are actually raising children, and can not have a job at this time, but still something should be put here, maybe your last job, or if your a single mother, "raising children", in fact that little post will weed out every guy who does not like children, making your decisions easier. But never list your occupation as "College Student", this makes everybody think you are a bot.

When filling out your profile, you have three goals, A) I want to be found, B) I want the person who finds me to find me interesting, and C) I want the person who finds me to be compatable.

Now, under "MORE ABOUT ME", this is where you drop in the important stuff, like whether you are Bi, Bi Curious, Gay, etc, also hobbies, interests, maybe what your looking for in a partner? Keep it short and simple.

Favorite quote? There are no rules here.

Favorite Links, you get 4 chances here to direct people towards your information, your interests.

But, lets get back to the photo, we all like to pretend that Looks dont matter, but the truth of the matter, Looks generally push everything else to the back, I like to see who Im chatting with. And as far as my personal preferences go, I completely ignore the perv pics, these are boob shots, beaver shots, spread eagle shots, but I appreciate a suggestive pic, It shows me something of interest, something to go after, but not something I can get at any porn site.

Now, if you dont have the ability to upload a pic, get a hold of me, you can mail me your pic, and I will upload it for you.

Another thing to remember, you dont just have to use Yahoo for your profile, if you know basic HTML, you can build your own page, and post a link to it under favorite links. These are a few examples of my profiles, Yahoo Profile, My Personal Profile Page, And Check Out The YACH Profiles Here. All of these pages are easy to build, and unless you are using somebody elses storage space, they are free.

Well, I have done my part....