teh ghey

I started a gay personals site 8 months ago and have 11,000 members in it, I did it all myself. All free, members they dont pay (I dont charge yet).
The site itself is very good, I really made a nice site with features my competitors dont have, and my members love

But my competitors are very established and have 150k-200k members in their sites and I only have 11k, so my members complain that theres no one on and ask me to delete their profiles, even though they're free profiles.

so I have a few questions:

1. What can I do to get 50k new gay dating site members into my site? Is there a database I can buy of gay members?

2. What do you think of contests? I was thinking of doing contests where whoever refers the most people will win $100, and do this every month.
Or something like that. So more people tell their friends about it.

3. Should I start charging now, or wait until later to charge when I have more members?
My competitors are very popular and my members know about my competitors, so Im afraid if I charge now that they'll say "fuck you" to my site and go to my busier competitors