PPC advertising with Google Adwords is a good idea until your site starts getting found in the search engines. Then, unless your making a lot of money, you will probably want to tone it down a bit. PPC advertising can start to add up after a while, especially if this is your only way being found. I would suggest you pick some keywords and/or phrases that don't have a ton of competition. For example, instead of trying to get found for "dating", try something more specific that contains the word dating (example: "free online dating" or "free adult dating"). You should use a keyword suggestion tool like in Google Adwords account to decide on your keywords. When you've picked your keywords, make sure you've placed them in your title tags and alt tags, along with sprinkling them intelligently throughout your site. Also try to find synonyms for these keywords (words that are similar but different). Over the long run, success will likely depend on how often you are found in the big search engines like Google. This will take a lot of time, patience and maybe even money (for hiring an SEO company ;-) Good luck. And if you want to post a link to your site, I would be happy to give you some more free suggestions.
What about a link exchange with other related sites especially to those with high page rank.Building quality backlinks is also a good option to promote it.
Well you can do some good 'ol E-whoring on craigslist as well. Check out dating gold for high payouts as well.
There are no best methods. What works well for others might not work well for you because your situation is different. I suggest that you write articles. That is one good way. Organize events. Try to be different and promote where others are not really promoting. Having a niche market is often a solution to target your clients more easily.
Yes, finding relevant, high quality sites to give you a link is very important. This is how you start to gain PageRank and move up in Google (or whatever other search engine you are counting on). But you first need to know what keywords you will by going for. I've seen dating websites gain hundreds of links that only used their name in the anchor text. Sure they might rank high for their own name, but how often does that get searched for. Deciding on what keywords you are going after is very, very important. Then, when other sites link to you, make sure they use different variations of these keywords. Writing articles is one way of getting these links, and possibly even sending the occassional visitor to your site. But writing articles alone will not be enough, unless one of these articles goes viral. About 6 months ago I wrote a dating article that was actually read over 700 times in the first day. I was blown away. It was an awesome article and I really had hoped it would go viral. It didn't, and it maybe sent me about 30 new visitors in the first week. How sad.
I agree with that, but you need to write more often. If you had good results for one article that is amazing. I think the key is writing often. I do not think that one article will go viral, but writing weekly can surely help build a community. For example, you set up a newsletter about dating and you write weekly. Then, you get a bunch of people interesting in dating, so these people are more likely to buy from you. The viral effect might come from the fact that your subscribers will begin to forward your newsletter to their friends if they find their material valuable.