Going on my own run at this, here is what I would tell a friend, nothing scientific:
My take: patience is genuinely the differentiator, dull as that sounds — your mileage may well differ.
Everything that made this bearable for me:
- Without fail I treated any site with no visible moderation policy as a hard pass right from the first week
- It became automatic — I met in a busy public place for any first meetup
- Checked the cancellation route before entering any payment details, however tempting it was to skip
- Treated it as a slow process rather than a numbers game, however tempting it was to skip
- Always referenced something specific from the profile in the first line, no exceptions
Broadly speaking, comparing your results to anyone else's is a losing game — it is not complicated, it is just easy to skip. datelink.online