One thing I notice: most matches go nowhere and that is normal rather than a failure — that is roughly where I landed after a lot of trial and error. If you check the best cam site reddit threads, which site always wins? From what I have seen, treating it as a numbers game is the fastest route to burning out — nobody tells you this at the start.
In my experience, a paywall on the first message is a paywall on the whole product — your mileage may well differ.
From my side, patience is genuinely the differentiator, dull as that sounds — happy to be argued with on that one.