I was a little frustrated with my progress recently so I did an experiment. I created a profile for a HB8-HB9 on POF to put into perspective what she receives daily. I kinda knew I had little chance when I created the profile and someone already sent a chat invite before I could finish out all the details. By the time the profile was finished, 3 messages were already sent. 20 messages poured in the first hour. By the first day, 150 messages were sent. By day 2, there was a total of 240 messages in the inbox. At least 80% of them were some titled "hi" or a derivative of it.

I feel like the best chance to get an attractive girl is too wait it out. After the first 2 days, messages slowed down considerably to about 20-25 per day. By 1 week, the messages were down to around 15-18 per day. Within 2 weeks, she received about 10-15 messages per day. The total after 2 weeks was about 450 messages (~30 per day). Wait her out a few weeks because by then she will realize that most of the guys online are chumps and get distraught. Then send a message that stands out. Maybe then she will realize she hasn't had success online and will give you a chance.

The experiment was eye opening to me. before people would say girls get 15-20 messages per day but I couldn't put that into perspective. Now I understand what girls go through in online dating. Fortunately, 80% of guys are chumps. At best you are competing with 10% alpha dogs and 10% of guys who are solid candidates. Don't get angry if your message doesn't get read by a girl. If she doesn't log on for 2-3 days, then there is a chance she will logon and have 50 messages in her inbox which will overwhelm her. Whatever you do, don't write "Hi", Hey, Hello, what's up or anything of nature in your subject line. If I had to bet, the best indicator for success online is a crafty worded subject line that grabs her attention.

You pretty much answered the question for yourself. The people in "our" community have the upper hand, simply because we know how to differentiate ourselves from all the regulars. I have asked other women about the kind of messages they receive, and it really is shocking what some guys think will work.

The only thing that sucks about this whole thing is that there is such a huge quantity of messages sent to a girl at once that she might accidentally overlook your profile, even if you do happen to have a great opener.

On one of the sites I am on, you have a "Statistics" tab on each profile, which tells you how many messages she currently has, how many is unread, how many people have her in their favorites list, how many flirst she received and how many of these were successful (A flirt on this site is basically an impersonal wink or smile to get attention on yourself, you can optionally write a oneliner to it)

This way I can check which girls are overwhelmed with messages.

Yeah, busty blondes with VIP memberships (what they got as a gift from online admirers... so pathetic) usually have 20 mails unopened when I check.
Luckily, regular users do not have that much, but I still got mails thrown out unopened before. Much more often before I started learning the art of it, but still.

So yeah, we got the shorter end of the stick on this field too.