Online dating can be brutal.

Or is Bumble just different?

The fact is, the average match rate in online dating is a measly 0.6% for men. 

This basically means two things:

First, Bumble is no different. Second, a small amount of guys get the majority of matches, the rest keep swiping till their fingers bleed… with no matches on Bumble in sight. 

The good news: 

Small things can make a big difference.

Ignore them, and they’ll be your worst frustration. 

Do them right, and you’ll find yourself in the small group of men who get tons of matches daily.

Ready to discover how?

Why you have no matches on Bumble

Common reasons why you get no matches on Bumble can be your profile, the algorithm, or specific settings within the app. All of these can be fixed if you currently get no matches on Bumble. So before you delete Bumble, check your profile pictures, bio description, and specific settings first to get more matches.

Also, one thing before we dive into practical tips:

Most guys make the mistake of taking a low match rate very personally. But you’re not your profile. 

A woman can only judge you based on the information you present. In other words, she isn’t saying no to you. She is saying no to the way you present yourself online. 

But the following 11 tips will show you how to change that: 

11 Tips to stop having no matches on Bumble

Here are 11 tips to fix the no matches on Bumble problem:

1. Make it a no-brainer for her to start talking to you

I know it.

You know it. 

What you really want aren’t matches. It’s dating attractive women. That’s why it’s important to set up your Bumble profile for success before you try to get more matches.  

Because, like every major breakthrough in life, it all starts with the right preparation. If you currently have no matches on Bumble (or only get a few), it’s important to make it as simple as possible for the women to initiate the first message once they match with you.

If not, all the tips that follow will help you get more matches, but not necessarily more dates. 

Because guess what: women aren’t natural-born texting queens. 

Just like many men who struggle to find the right words, so do women.

So let’s set up your Bumble bio with a neat little hack that makes it easy for women to start an interesting conversation with you. 

One of my favorite ways to do this is to address the elephant in the room and offer women an easy way to start the conversation.

Example: 

Aside from being a world-class rhyme, what’s easier than just texting ‘Hi’?

Women will often even thank you for it.

Or, you can add a sentence and a question like this in your bumble bio:

“I talk from personal experience when I say coming up with the first message is hard. If you feel me, how about answering this question instead:

Mario Kart or fancy dinner for the first date?”

You’ll be surprised how many women will start a conversation with you by answering your question. 

With that out of the way, let’s now take a look at how to actually get more matches.

2. Trash your bad photos

Are you using any of these photos on your profile right now?

I’m talking about selfies, pictures of you drinking beer or 2 bottles of vodka in one go, low-quality pics, a.k.a pixel pasta, or pictures where you brag, i.e., pose with your body, luxurious items, or anything similar. 

These won’t get you far unless you look like a GQ model. Now, I’m not saying you should only have professionally taken pictures of yourself. That won’t work either, because it suggests a try-hard attitude. 

Instead, have both: professional, high-quality pictures and regular pictures taken with your smartphone. More specifically, try having a high-quality headshot as your main picture and one high-quality full-body picture. 

The rest should consist of regular pictures taken by friends. This will help make your profile look authentic and real, as well as show more than one side of your personality, which women love to see.

3. Reinstall Bumble

Sometimes, the easiest solution is the best. 

Bumble doesn’t give you a penalty if you delete and reinstall the app. In fact, it will automatically reshovel you so you have a chance to get all the matches you previously missed out on. It’s like getting a second chance. 

So no matter what you do, it’s always a great idea to reinstall the app.

4. Spark her curiosity with the right profile picture

Straight up: your first picture is the most crucial one. 

You want to make a great first impression and stoke her curiosity to check out your other pictures as well. 

In practice, this means no cappy, no sunglasses, no printed shirts, no drunk friends in the background, and no Yugioh card collection in your main picture. Just the raw meat of your handsome face. With a smile and twinkling eyes.

You want to look like a kind and confident man without any distractions around you. A headshot with a blurry background is perfect for that.

5. Become boyfriend material

This tip is golden if you have no matches on Bumble.

Once you have a great headshot, you should try adding 3-5 more pictures that show your personality and desirable character traits. This means your hobbies, social circle, and sense of humor, just to name a few.

Think about it. 

You want to display all the good traits you have, that women find attractive. And the right pictures tell more than a thousand words. You could write about all these personal strengths and details in your bio, but it would never be as effective as expressed in pictures. 

Ask a friend who can help you take pictures of yourself or just do a fun group activity you enjoy. Then, take as many pictures of you as you can, preferably while doing some kind of activity. 

The key here is to make it look as natural as possible.

Make jokes and goof around to get shots with a genuine smile, and you’ll already have much better pictures than most guys will ever have.

6.  Hiring a professional photographer

As already mentioned, you don’t need a full library of professionally taken pictures. 

A high-quality headshot and full body picture are more than enough to get tons of matches on Bumble, Tinder, Hinge, and all the other dating apps.

These two pictures are absolutely key and should be as good as possible. Hence, hiring a photographer to help you get these can be one of your best investments for the coming years. 

But be aware. Just because someone labels themselves as a ‘professional photographer’ doesn’t mean they know how to take great pictures for online dating. More often than not, you need to give them a detailed explanation and examples of what you want.

In my newsletter, I occasionally share examples and profile breakdowns of private clients. Some of them even significantly boosted their results without hiring a photographer at all. 

Sometimes all it takes are a few little tweaks to your existing pictures. If you want to see some before and after examples, you can subscribe to my free dating advice here.

7. Use editing tools to improve your pictures

Want a simple way to enhance your pictures without needing a PhD in Photoshop? 

Then this app might be perfect for you. 

Faceapp is a simple mobile app that can magically add a smile to your face, improve the lighting so you don’t look like in a zombie apocalypse, blur your background, and much more. 

You should give it a try if you don’t want to invest in a photographer yet. You can install it for free, but some features might need an active subscription. 

But just between us, they also offer a 3-day trial of their ‘pro’ version. Thank me later. 

The app is available for both, the AppStore and PlayStore. 

Just search for ‘Face App’, and you should find it immediately.

8. Get female feedback on sites like Photofeeler 

Judging your own pictures can be hard. 

Worse, women and men often interpret pictures way differently. And your friends might give you biased feedback to not hurt your feelings. 

But there’s a solution. If you want unbiased feedback for your pictures, a site like photofeeler.com is perfect to get your profile pictures rated by a bunch of women online. 

Here’s how it works:

You upload a picture of yourself so women can rate it based on different criteria: how smart you look, how attractive, and so on. To get more women to rate your pictures, you need to earn credits. To get credits, you need to rate pictures of women.

Now, you can also pay money to earn credits. If you do, you can upload multiple of your pictures to get rated at once without having to rate women’s pictures yourself.

The choice is yours.

9. Adjust your filters to get more matches

Did you know?

Bumble sets a default age range and location distance for you when you install the app. 

This can be a limiting factor for you to get more matches. Now, this might sound counterintuitive, but to improve your chances of getting more exposure and matches, you should take the following two steps:

1. Decrease your search radius to around 15 miles (25 km)
2. Set the age range from 5 years below and 5 years upward from your age

The reason for that lies in the Bumble algorithm. Bumbles’ biggest assets are their female members. To keep them happy, they want to make sure they have a great experience. 

In other words: they want women to have a pleasurable experience with the men they meet online. 

By taking the two steps above, you signal to the algorithm that you’re looking for something more serious and aren’t just here to smash everything you see. 

Here’s how to change your Bumble settings:

Open the Bumble app. In the upper right corner, you’ll see a setting icon. Click that icon and scroll down a bit. You’ll find the age and distance settings:

Once set, start swiping occasionally throughout the day, and you should notice more matches soon. 

10. Swipe during prime times

I wrote a full article on the best times to boost on Tinder.

The same principles apply here if you want to make the most out of every single swipe on Bumble. 

In essence, you want to be active within the app when most other users are online too. 

This way, you’ll be exposed to a much greater amount of profiles and hence, have a greater chance of getting more matches. 

The best times to swipe are between 8 pm and 10 pm. 

But there are also some other advanced hacks you can take advantage of to get even more matches. 

11. Stop swiping like a madman

I remember the early days of dating apps, where you could just swipe right on every profile while watching a movie.

And the next day, I could just check who I matched with and go from there.

Unfortunately, this luxury and comfort are no more. 

If you blindly swipe right on every woman, the algorithm will punish you for it. If you’ve been guilty of that behavior, stop immediately. 

Wait a few days and start swiping like Bumble intends you to do. Check out her profile before you swipe right, and swipe left on the girls you don’t like. After a few days, you should notice a difference in matches. 

If not, make sure to follow all the other tips above.

Happy matching.

Your Efficient Dating Advisor, 

Herman the German