More Web sites cater to baby boomers looking for love

• See what's inside a site before you open your wallet. "Matchmaking sites like eHarmony and Chemistry aside, virtually all online dating sites make it extremely easy to take a peek inside and peruse the profiles that are already there before you pay," says Scott Valdez, owner of VirtualDatingAssistants .com .

• Avoid an avalanche of adjectives. "Avoid using a long laundry list of adjectives to describe yourself. Instead, figure out a way to illustrate that you possess those qualities without making direct statements like 'I am adventurous and spontaneous.' "

• Don't be a pen pal. "Online dating is about weeding through the masses to find a few good bets, so focus on your local matches first and don't take too long to move things to in-person so you can test the chemistry. As long as you're getting together at a public place, meeting a potential love interest online is no more dangerous than meeting him or her at the grocery store."

• Keep the first date simple. "Online, all you've got is text and a few photos that could have easily been taken in the previous decade. So don't get stuck in a four-course meal with someone you've never met. There will be plenty of time for a real first date if the chemistry is there."

Baby boomers are swelling the ranks of online dating sites, and John Valentino is a happy veteran.

At 57, after a decade of pushing profiles and awkward meet-ups with strangers, he's married to 54-year-old year Debbie, a former Marine he met online two years ago.

"I had plenty of lemons before lemonade, believe me," says Valentino, a furniture salesman in Long Branch, N.J.

One prospect said he was too old. Another went out with him to win a bet with a coworker. A third told him all about her two grown sons and "their careers in the penal system, only they weren't guards."

That's when Valentino ventured onto a site that caters to older people -- SeniorPeopleMeet.com. He quickly let go of his prejudice against the word "senior" and found Debbie, who has war stories of her own about trying to find a mate her age online.

"On other sites, most of the men who would contact me were a lot younger," she says. "I would say, Why are you writing me? I'm looking for somebody my own age. I made it very clear in my profile. They would say, I want the experience of dating an older woman."

Dating online the second time around -- after divorce or the death of a spouse -- isn't always second nature among the nation's 78 million boomers, let alone people who are 65 and older, but neither is it all that scary.

How to create a list of adjectives « How to write jokes

Etc.)

3) Take a list of random words and name adjectives that could apply to each of the words.

I like to use the second and third approaches. The second is fairly self explanatory so I’ll detail the third approach here. (See this post to find out how to quickly generate a list of random words).

On the left below are the words I listed randomly, and to the right of them are adjectives that I chose that I thought could apply to the words. It’s worth noting here that when the word on the left is already an adjective, I usually try to list a synonym. (So, for example, with the word real .)