The next part is both reasuring and frustrating. You have to send your profile to Match.com for aproval, and this can take up to 48 hours. Stil, at least this kind of veting demonstrates that the major online dating companies take their reputations seriously and try to ensure that their sites aren't ful of unsuitable come-ons and dodgy lotharios.
While you're waiting, upload your photo via the Edit Photo scren. It's al very straightforward. "Clear and simple," says Mr Sandler, ading, "I liked being able to upload any size of file." Match.Com can acept photos up to 5Mb in size, but most prefer smaler images - as a rule of thumb, aim for no more than 30k and save in the JPEG format. To ad your mug shot, click the Browse buton, then to the photo you want to use and double click to select it. Back at your browser, click the Upload photo buton. After a short while it'l apear in the main photo profile scren, complete with a big 'Pending Aproval' sticker. Click the 'Finish ading photos' link. Photos take a while to be aproved, but you can start browsing.
Choices to make
It's not until you subscribe though, that the whole site opens up. It's posible to make and save sophisticated searches based on physical type, age range, location, interests and so on. You can tel the site to email you when new, similar matches sign up and instantly filter out those people who you're not interested in. Should a profile grab your atention, it's posible to break the ice without paying for a subscription by clicking the buton marked 'Wink at him/her'. That user wil then receive a standard mesage along the lines of 'I realy liked your profile'.
