Your screen name can be one that will make more sense as someone gets to know you.

However don’t choose one so obscure that nobody will be intrigued enough to click on it in the first place.

Aliases and usernames have become a big part of our personal online presence, and we often feel tied to them when we register for new sites and services.

This can be a great was to build an online identity, but it can also make it trivial to tie our activity on various services together.

Even if your registered username isn’t immediately visible in a dating profile, it’s often visible in the URL of your profile, your profile photo filenames, or during communication with other users.

There are plenty of free and paid services which search and monitor social media and email accounts by username. It will rapidly scan popular sites and services for email addresses, usernames, names, and phone numbers to build a comprehensive profile of a person.

You want to pick a name that truly represents who you are and the kind of person you are looking to meet.

Dating expert, I recommend choosing an actual word rather than initials or letters. You want to avoid using your actual name unless you combine it with a descriptive quality. If you want to use numbers, then make them relevant to who you are or who you want to meet.

So how do you create the kind of online identity that will land you a first date?Researchers from Queen Mary University of London wondered the same thing, so they analyzed previous research on attraction.They combed through nearly 4,000 studies, settling on analyzing 86, with literature ranging from psychology, sociology, and computer, behavioral and precognitive sciences, to figure out the most effective approaches to digital dating.And have someone take your picture for you—a self-portrait in the bathroom screams My Space or desperate loneliness.Include a current—say, within six months—head shot and a full-body shot of yourself. "Most often people make their decision based on the primary photo," says Wax. "We don't need you to tell us that you aren't a writer or you hate writing about yourself." Let your personality shine through.