Thats absolutely right. You have to offer something different, maybe even start locally if you would like. But as far as starting a web site, I believe you should start it and give it a shot. The biggest failure in life is not in failing itself, its in never giving it a try.
My suggestion would be to place ads on the site and start making money right away. The first few years I didn't want to put any ads on my site because I didn't want to lose any potential members. Years went by and I wasn't making a dime. I finally sprinkled in some ads and began making some coins. It felt good. Don't wait to start making money. Plus, the more you make the more you can reinvest in advertising and other promotional opportunities. Finally, don't wait for your dating site to be 100% glitch free before going live with it. 95% of visitors will never come back anyway, no matter how good your content is, so just take advantage of whatever traffic you get and start making money.
Traditional social networks like facebook allow people to create a virtual connection graph which represents their real-life connections. While dating sites do the opposite - first they connect people online and they then meet each other in reality. This may sound like similar services, but since the graph transition is opposite, the problems they face are completely different. On dating sites the main issue is safety, i.e. scam and fake profiles detection. A typical online dating site has about 60-80% fake or scam profiles. You can check our dating site www.livedating.me to see how we solved this.
I know it's a little outdated but how exactly did you solve this. I'm curious. I checked out your site but it just seems like any other dating site in operation.