A first message to an online single man or single woman that you are interested in is the most important message. You need to focus on this message in order to grab their attention, and show them that you think the two of you are compatible. In order to accomplish this effectively, you need to remember a few things.

Be genuine and sincere.

Don't use excessive compliments. Even if you mean all of them, it comes across as lacking sincerity. Instead, put one or two compliments in your first message.

It's not all about looks.

Regardless of how physically attractive you find the person you are contacting, focus on personality questions. Therefore, giving them excessive compliments on their looks isn't going to win you too many brownie points. They may take you for just another shallow online dater looking for nothing more than physical satisfaction.

Introduce yourself.

As silly as it sounds, some people get so caught up in their message, they forget to write a little bit about their own background. After your initial, "Hi, I saw your profile and you seem interesting," or whatever you choose to write, list a few details about yourself. Focus on the ones that coincide with this person's interests. This will highlight and establish your compatibility.

So you've contacted a single woman or single man that fits what you're looking for and you got a reply. Congratulate yourself quickly, and then move on and focus on keeping the conversation going.

The reply you've received will most likely have answers to most, if not all, the questions you asked. If this person is a good communicator, they've also probably asked you some questions based on your short description in your first message or from viewing your profile. So, your next step is to respond to those questions, add a little bit more about yourself and ask them some more questions based on the answers you received from your initial set of questions. If that sounds complicated, it's really not, and once you get a handle of things you'll probably be brimming with ideas. But, don't get carried away.

You don't want to exhaust all your questions in one email. Generally, a good size response is two to three paragraphs. That should allow you enough space to acknowledge their answers, ask a few more questions and tell them a little bit more about yourself. The last thing you want to do is bombard them with lots of information or a series of questions. You have their attention, now you want to keep it.

After contacting an online match, waiting for a response might seem like forever. You just can't wait to hear back from that single man who likes wine tasting as much as you, or that single woman whose favorite movies are the same ones as yours. While it's easy to get caught up in the anticipation, don't act on it. Patience is extremely important after sending the initial message. The worst thing you want to do is follow up a few days later asking the person why they haven't responded yet.

In order to keep your anxiety levels low while you wait for a match to contact you back, keep browsing profiles. Even when the single woman or man you contacted replies, you're not necessarily going to have an instant connection followed by a relationship. You have to keep your options open and continuously flowing.

Additionally, don't get caught up in worrying and wondering. If it's been a week since you sent a message, don't worry about why you haven't heard back yet. Maybe the person doesn't check their messages regularly, or maybe they are out of town.

Finally, if you never get a response, don't take it personally. Some people get hundreds of messages a day and just don't have time to sort through them. Others might not be that serious about meeting someone and are just on the site to browse at their leisure. Regardless of the reasons behind an unreturned reply, there are plenty of other singles waiting for a message from you.

Regardless of how many messages you may have sent someone you're interested in, the conversation can stop at any time. Sometimes there's nothing left to say. Other times the person may be busy, forget to respond and then feel like too much time has passed since you sent the message. If this occurs there are a few things you can do.

• Look over your last message to this person. Make sure you didn't ask anything that could be construed as offensive or too personal. If you did, you can try and contact this person and apologize, it may or may not work.
• If there isn't anything potentially offensive in your last message, send a new message. Start by mentioning that you haven't heard from them in awhile and you were just wondering how things were going. Ask a question or two and give a sentence or two about what you've been up to.
• Other ideas are to try and initiate a conversation about something you haven't talked about, but always wanted to. This is where holding off on asking too many questions in one email comes in handy.