- One-liners, such as "hi there i am a 27yo bi m living in Melb would love to meet 4 a fuck so pvt me if interested", are a complete waste of time. If you haven't put any effort into writing an ad, I don't see why I should reply to it. Likewise, most people can't be bothered reading the personals version of 'War and Peace'. If you are seeking a long-term relationship, however, there may be a case for writing an extended ad.

- Including a picture helps immensely; if you're brave enough to include your face (consider very carefully!), that's even better. However, demanding that your readers reply with a face pic cuts out anyone who might be good, but who isn't prepared to blindly send a face pic to an anonymous email address (me, for example).

- Never put your home address, work email address, or telephone number into an ad.

- Arrogance is never good. "Come on girls, I've got the best cock in the world" (a) makes you sound like an arsehole, and (b) is wildly subjective anyway. Online, everyone has the best cock in the world- even me, and I'm a girl!

- You can sometimes make your readers want to reply to your ad by offering them something slightly unusual or offbeat.

- Check your spelling, punctuation, expression, and grammar. I hate to sound like an English teacher, but clear expression in really important in making you sound desirable. Some jargon, abbreviations, and acronyms (for example, 'str8') you can get away with, but not too much.

- spelling 'come' (as in, 'come on', 'do you come here often?') with the spelling 'cum' was vaguely cool in about 1996. Even though everyone does it, now it just looks, well, very 1996. Likewise, the combination of 'explode' spelt 'load' isn't clever, it's just tacky. Ditto 'I would like to meat a tgirl'. That sort of thing is neither original nor funny.

- I personally don't really respond too well to ads looking for whores or sluts. Eventually I'll make the call on if and when it's time to go from 'nice girl' to 'slut from hell', but I don't want to begin with that expectation.

- You need to be honest. If you say you're 25 when you're really 55, this will be really obvious to anyone you meet, and then they'll be wondering what else you've lied about.

- Be realistic about who and what you are after. For example, in my experience there are very few really hot 21 year old transsexual girls who are interested in regular casual sex with overweight middle-aged unemployed guys with a personal hygiene problem. There may be some, and if/when I am overweight, middle-aged, and unemployed I hope to find such a lady, but in the meantime I haven't seen very many.

- Also be specific about what you're after; if you advertise seeking people for 'whatever', then you will get 'whatever'. If you don't know what you want, then think about it before you advertise. However, being overly specific as well as inflexible about what you want means that some people who nearly, but don't quite, meet your criteria will be put off. Also, the number of people who meet all (or even most) of your criteria will be very small.

- Specifying that they must have their own place cuts out quite a lot of people who could be quite interesting, but who don't have their own place. I'd rather get the right person and then find a work-around to the 'your place/my place' issue, rather than go with someone less appropriate just because they have their own place.

- You need to give out a little bit of personal information to give your readers an idea of what you're like. They need that to make a decision on whether they think you'll be an appropriate partner for them; very few people blindly reply to ads with no personal details about the advertiser. However, do not give out anything that identifies you; for example, if you're the only 37 year old in a small country town, don't give out both your age and your town at the same time.

- If the website doesn't let you seach ads geographically, you may need to include a little bit of location information, such as 'Eastern suburbs guy' or 'tgirl from Gippsland'. This helps screen out people who are impractically long distances away.