Once you’ve got a dedicated email account and IM accounts, preferably all with the same username, you’re ready for the next step. Joining the social networks, right? Wrong! Before you think about joining the first one, you need to get the information together to put yourself in the best light, to put your best foot forward.

So how do you do that? You by making yourself a “profile document”. This is just a plain text file that has all the little tidbits that you’re going to want to include when you build a new profile at a site. You’ll probably want two separate documents for mainstream and sex oriented sites, so you don’t inadvertently end up getting yourself banned from the mainstream sites.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

As you join sites, you may want to add to the document or edit what you have. This file represents you online, so as you use it make it your own by adding whatever you find useful. Starting out, you should have these things at a minimum:

1. First name
2. Last name - not your real one
3. Real last name ready to cut and paste on those sites that absolutely require it and absolutely won’t let anyone see it
4. Preferred Username and alternates
5. Location
6. A headline sentence
7. A “who I am” piece, written out in complete sentences. Even if you really are stupid, run a grammar and spell check on it. You may want to do a short version, a long version and a really long version to use as appropriate.
8. A list of your IM accounts (hopefully with your preferred username)
9. The email account you want to use.
10. Comma separated lists of:
    1. Three to six nonsexual interests
    2. Three to six sexual interests, fetish interests
    3. Three to six musical types, bands, singers, etc. that you like
    4. Favorite non-porn movies,actors,directors
    5. Favorite porn movies (optional – use this if it says something about you)
    6. Favorite books and/or magazines, authors
    7. Three to seven tags – words or short phrases that describe you
    8. Turn-ons
    9. Turn-offs

Next get some pictures together. Ideally a variety of photos ranging from professional portraits to candid shots at actual activities and, yes, some that are at least a little revealing. Don’t want to go nude for all the many obvious reasons? Do a body shot with the head cut off or go with lingerie or swim wear for females, shorts and no shirt or something similar for guys.

You need an assortment of sizes, from icon/avatar size to thumbnails to full screen or larger in size.

Here are some shots you might not want to do:

What MySpace profile pictures really mean

Once you have that all together, you’ll be ready for the next step and I’ll be back to tell you more about that tomorrow. If you just can’t wait until then, go build an xPeeps profile then come back here and leave a link to it in a comment.

Much of the information in these posts was inspired by thePuckWrites post on Ten Steps to Being Everywhere in Social Media, though he has no responsibility for its adaptation to a sex site. Though I had been using the idea of a “profile document” for some time myself, he coined that phrase and I adapted things heavily based on his format. My original social document was just the information copied from a MySpace profile with additional information appended at the bottom as new things came up.

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