No they're not a waste of time!

shut it you lot, ..they are crap. I'm only here for the beer

This one has worked for some, but is useless as far as I'm concerned. I suppose some work for some but not for others.

Some do more then others. One I go on I have turned it around now, and am now getting some dates and a few lays. Thats probably because they have a lot more meets so can get to know you beyond the shallow confines.

In saying that I've always had faith in my ability

Various free dating sites seem to attract such a wide cross section of people (I suppose that stands to reason, the internet – and humans – being what it/they is/are) and I guess that with such a wide range of ‘needs’ that come with that cross section of people it might be very difficult to stumble across a particular profile of someone who is looking for the same thing as someone else.

In my experience, on another dating site, I have met people whose ‘needs’ covered everything from wanting to meet people as friends for coffee to exploring the possibility of a full-time relationship - and everything in-between. As a sort of by-the-way, the vast majority of the people I met who fell into the ‘everything in-between’ category claimed they were looking for something long term, but were in fact looking for exclusive love with someone they felt they had something in common with, when it suited them. Nothing wrong with that, I embraced it happily enough, with my eyes open (and a condom on my willy, and Viagra or two in my pocket )

I think these sites work if one keeps an open mind about what they want, and go with the flow when they do make contact with someone on them (and actually meet them), with no particular agenda in mind. As such, they do work.

I now have a long term girlfriend who I met through a dating site and am happy; she fulfils my needs and I hope that I do hers, and we are probably about as close to being a perfectly matched couple as one could hope to be considering the way that we met . We have our ups and downs [snigger], like most couples.