I mainly use OKCupid and Hinge. These apps allow you to send messages without matching.

Since the typical example given is to read the profile properly and send messages according to profile that is what I try to do especially for these apps.

Five days a week I waste like an hour composing messages on these apps. Sometimes more. Yesterday I actually spent couple of hours going through profiles.

if I am lucky I get 1 response a month. Sometimes not even that. And these messages dont go anywhere. I see some other men also complaining about that on the dating advice subreddits.

You will probably say to only message women that I match with. That is even worse cause I never match with women other than scammers. When I send a message directly it sometimes leads to women responding.

Should I move back to sending pickup lines ? Or do I continue composing custom messages given its not yielding any results?