What's the deal with these places?  Are the girls there legit or are they service providers advertising on another site? Does anyone have a handle on this?

I've been a member of both Fling and Adult Friend Finder.  Both are mostly useless for real action.  I sent hundreds and hundreds of messages to a whole range of women and got very few legit responses.  Most of the replies ask you to go to some website service, sign up, and pay money to see photos and allegedly get the woman's phone number.  These are obvious rip offs which I avoided and deleted immediately.  

I will say that every once in a while there would be a legit reply, but even those didn't really lead anywhere.  Only once did I score anything from those sites...a BBBJ from a marginally attractive woman.  

My tally: 3 months of time, 600+ messages sent, about 100 total replies, 8 replies I'd say were real people, and 1 BBBJ.

Compared to the availability, ease, and beauty of well reviewed professional providers, those sights are not worth a damn!

Here's the point where I make a loud sneeze that sounds suspiciously like  "Rippoff". These sites may have been well-intentioned initially but they are not moderated very well and seem to be overrun mostly by hucksters and porn sites disguised as "hot women that want to meet you now".

Funny observation - I logged into Fling at home and there's this whole banner of attractive ladies, each with a caption that states she lives in a nearby town. I traveled to another state on business and logged in from there - pictures of the same women popped up, but they had all "moved" to towns around the city I was visiting.

Except it was about 3 years ago. I had about the same luck, as in none at all!

I was on AFF for 3 months, had 4 or 5 legitimate replies out of maybe 30 inquiries that I made.  Had a number of bogus replies as well.  One reply was web cam only, but that was included in what I was searching for.  My date didn't show for one meeting.  I went out on a date on one other occasion.  I actually met two women--the woman I met online and her friend who convinced her to join AFF.  The friend actually met a number of men on AFF and is getting married to someone she met on that site.  I wnet out on a second date with mu online friend who was visitng from England. Frankly, I acted ambivalent about the whole thing and she noticed.  But she clearly was looking for a good time, including sex.  Women receive hundreds of replies so getting selected is such an intensely competitive activity.  I suppose its exciting to be selected out of the hundreds of replies, but I found it exhausting and time consuming.  Hence, my interest in the hobby (newbie here, might start soon).

I've been on most of the sites out there. What I've found pretty much matches up with the other experiences people have had. On aff many of the replies had almost exactly the same body in the message. Many were directing to passionads.com where the girl doesn't even exist. A lot of the others are just trying to drive their cam business. I have no interest in cam's only the real thing. Very, very few legit responses and lots of time wasted. That's why I love this site. I think, so far at least, you get what you pay for.

Thanks for the input gentleman. It is very helpful. I think I'll pass on these sites after reading your replies.

Same here tried to change my invites from witty to vulgar to friendly, pic then no pic and its all the same.I got more messages from AFF then from girls. Thanks all for the input. I am cutting my losses and canceling after typing this

Never tried Fling.com but used AdultFriendFinder off and on since 2000.  Over the years I met a few women for no-strings sex and one I just dated a few times (she was husband-hunting) so you can have success but I would guess that for every woman I had sex with, I probably sent out 150 emails and spent 3 months looking.  Of course some didn't take that long and others took longer.  There are probably hundreds of dudes on there for every woman so the odds are not good.  But if you invest the time and energy, success can be had.  If you're actually single your odds are a lot better.  If you search as a married/attached man looking for something on the side, your odds go WAY down.