Tips For Success on DownToEarth.com
Viability of DownToEarth.com
DownToEarth is Match.com’s attempt to launch a free site.
So far as of this writing it is marginally successful, but we imagine it will get better with time as more users will discover it and more search options become available.
Unique features
Their unique hook seems to be to offer its members the option to rate the other person after meeting them in real life in terms of being true to the profile. The “Accuracy” rating is prominently displayed in the profiles listings expressed as stars.
The site also explicitly choose not to offer the “one night stand” or “I am married” option. It further requires users to click through the “this picture is recent” checkbox before allowing it to be uploaded.
Downtoearth.com features a fairly advanced photo application, including the ability to crop a headshot from the uploaded image. The upload process is entirely painless and works very well. Up to 28 images can be uploaded.
Search capabilities
- As of this writing, the search options are limited to a zip code radius, whether to require matches to have photos, and the age range.
- You can’t search for only non-smokers, for example.
- You can view no more than 500 profiles at a time, which are displayed 10 at a time.
- You can sort the results by Accuracy rating, most recent login, number of photos, age, username (that sounds rather useless, unless I am looking for someone specific), and newest user (most likely to be age of the account entry).
- The default search option is to sort by Accuracy
Limitations
While their headline tool offers up to 128 characters of space, only the first 22 characters, including spaces, will be visible in your listing initially. This further complicates our task of writing a great headline. However, it also gives us an interesting creative opportunity as you’ll see further in this article.
Your images will be resized to fit into a 300×300pixel square. This suggests that for the purposes of uploading an optimal picture to DownToEarth.com your images should be no larger than 300 pixels. There is no option to see the larger images when viewing someone’s profile. For some reason, the images are actually rescaled to 295×295 with HTML when viewed on the site, which further slightly distorts them. While you can select a portion of an image to use a thumbnail, in reality they are never used except if you set the image as a main picture for your profile. That is not clearly explained. You can set any image as your main picture with one click. The additional images will be presented as 100×100px thumbnails, but it shouldn’t matter much if your image is nicely cropped to be viewable at 300×300px.
The site does not offer the option to preview your profile as others will see it. Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to visualize it if you are aware of all limitations.
In addition to the first 22 characters from your headline, the site will also show the first 190 characters from the “About me” portion of your profile, which is a little less than two lines of text in 12-point Times New Roman font face.
Lastly, both “about me” and “looking for” portions are limited to only 2000 characters including any spaces. Elaborate profiles are often longer than that, so you’ll have a “fun” time trying to fit them in DownToEarth.com system.
Overcoming limitations
One creative way to exploit the headline truncation “feature” could be to ignore the 128-character headline suggestion and to instead start writing a 22-character headline and then to use the remaining first 190 characters in the “About me” section to complete it as well as for any introductory paragraphs.
One way to ensure that your text fits within the 2000-character limit is to use the “Word Count” feature of your word processor.
Writing a profile inside a website that doesn’t even offer you a dynamic character countdown can be quite frustrating if you are a creative writer. Do yourself a favor and write in your word processor. That way you can ensure that your work won’t be lost if the text is too long.
Limit your age range to fewer years if you wish to view more profiles and you see 50 pages of results returned initially.
How to appear at the top of all results
- The most recent login can make you appear at the top of results by simply logging in frequentlly.
- Secondly, the number of photos can be manipulated. If you have 10 pictures, for example, you’ll probably be at the top for a considerable amount of time. There is enough room for up to 28 pictures…
Getting rated for 5 stars could also be an easy option as the default sort is by Accuracy, which is your star rating, but I suspect it will become less relevant with time as more people get rated. Hot girls are more likely to get a rating without meeting anyone and that will artificially skew the system. Although you are supposed to complain if someone rates you without meeting you face-to-face, in practice I don’t expect complaints about getting rated 5 stars.
As the site grows, I think these two search options will be utilized more frequently to manage the number of results returned. In my personal experience, I tend to prefer contacting those who logged in recently or those who have a lot of pictures.
Is it worth your time?
With so few users, it’s very easy to stand out from the crowd. There is no charge to use the site. Add yourself and make it a point to login once a week or so to be easy to find.
Please let me know if you like the article and also post your suggestions in comments about how to improve it and if the information is no longer accurate.
