My take: the slow approach tends to produce better outcomes than the volume one — that has been consistent for me across a few different platforms. Does the friend finder online network still have active forums?
From my side, the people posting about success are a tiny and unrepresentative sample — that is roughly where I landed after a lot of trial and error.
Speaking generally, most matches go nowhere and that is normal rather than a failure — happy to be argued with on that one.