Hi Philip,
It is a good idea to make your first message easy on the eyes without being so rigid. Have a good blend of casual and serious tones. This makes you come off as both a guy who can be taken seriously but who doesn’t take himself too seriously. It gives you personality and women are very attracted to this kind of approach.
You are right in that the women on the dating app that you are using, Hinge, could be easily getting as many as 30 messages a day if not more. The good news is that most of those messages are bad. It’s mostly guys giving her superficial compliments or starting the conversation with, “Hello,” “Hey,” “Hi beautiful,” Hey gorgeous,” and so on.
These conversational approaches are a turn off to most women on a dating app, so you won’t have to work too hard to get their attention by sending a more substantive message.
Don’t worry about the ideal length.
The same woman can be just as captivated by a well-worded short message as she would be by a well-worded message that has multiple paragraphs. It is just about how you write it. Try not to feel restricted by what the ideal length should be.
Just think about the impression that you want to convey to her. Think of one or two common themes that you want her to be able to pick up on about you in that first message. It works best if the themes connect with something she included in her dating profile.
A theme about travel for instance could be conveyed by you giving her an abbreviated account of a trip that you went on and what that experience was like. In the process of telling the story, you can make some lighthearted jokes. You then end your message by asking her an open-ended question about the trip that she went on.
This is how you are able to create a mood and a feel for who you are while finding ways to connect with her by using a common experience as the focus of your theme. The ideal length of this type of message just depends on how much of the story you want to reveal.
As long as you are compelling in what you write, the ideal length of your message really doesn’t matter. Women who are seeking serious relationships will take the time to read a longer message if it is compelling enough. Your focus should be more so about the substance of your message than on what the ideal length should be.