So, you are new to Fetlife. First off, welcome! This writing is going to have a few tips and tricks in it, as well as links to other pertinent writings.
Name, Location, Age
If it is not already too late, consider changing your name/alias to one that is not already on any other social media sites or apps. “Ambitious” types have been known to seek fetlife members on various other platforms.
We recommend, till you have completed your profile, you change your location to something arbitrary. Some popular locations include Antarctica, The Vatican and other pseudo-anonymous locations.
Much like the above recommendations, this one also makes it a little more difficult for fuckbois and fakes to bombard you with messages while you complete constructing your profile. It is great for piece of mind to change your age to something above 90 years old. As pathetic as it sounds, less desirable types will click on any profile in the age range of their preferences. Consider changing your name, location, and age to that which reflects the real you after you complete the below suggestions.
Headers
While this isn’t done by everyone, some people take comfort from having a statement or two at the top of their profile stating messaging terms. Some people are fine with any message, some are not. State what you are comfortable with. Statements can vary from ‘Any messages expecting auto-submission will be blocked’ to ‘Any message that shows they have not read my profile will be deleted without being replied to’. Some might involve ‘Message my partner before messaging me’, and some might even decline messages entirely until they have a better handle on how the hustle and bustle of Fetlife works. An example from a House member is ‘Going forward, all “Hey, How are you?” And equivalent messages will be responded with throat punch. Bring me substance or leave me the fuck alone.’ Tone and use of swear-words (or not) is up to you. But stating how you’d match com fees like to be messaged and on what terms is not a bad idea. The Formatting Guidelines page is a great cheat-sheet and sandbox of sorts to practice in.
Friend’s Only
Fetlife has two options for images; Fetlife (public) and Friend’s Only. A default suggestion of mine to someone exceptionally new to Fetlife, is to keep explicit images as friend’s only at least until you are more familiar with the site, how it works and you’ve at least vaguely figured what you want to get out of it. By all means, if exhibitionism is your thing then post away, but it’s just a matter of being aware of your audience, and knowing that the ability to fine-tune it is there. To adjust an image to friend’s only, click on the picture to open it. On the right hand side under ‘set as avatar’ and ‘delete’, is a section called ‘privacy’ where, upon clicking ‘edit’ next to who it says the audience is, ‘friend’s only’ is one of the drop-down options.
Anonymity
There is nothing wrong in being anonymous, if you are doing so for job reasons, because you are new or just because you feel personally safer and less stressed in interacting with people. If you aren’t doing it to sleep around without a/your partner knowing or for some other related reason, anonymity can be a security blanket of sorts. One thing that is a definite perk is that it allows for a decrease in the number of messages sent if someone does a location search and copy&pastes the same message to all women of a certain age in their vicinity – I am not saying that it does not happen to men or those outside of the gender binary either, merely that statistically, s-type women tend to get the bulk of those type of messages.