Increasing users for dating website

I've been experimenting with certain ways to improve the number of users for my social dating website, and since the daily user count is so low, even the approach for any experiment is almost impossible.

I want to make a final approach to this chapter before I move on. I have the following idea:

Revamp the design back to a single "Landing Page" design, where for example a screencast, catchy video, or screenshots are displayed to "catch" the user.

The user should ideally:

• Register
• Create a profile
• Upload pictures
• Queue up for the "launch"

Almost just like an Area51 site proposal, where a certain number of people has to be reached so that the site can go live.

The problems I face are:

• some users sign up, fill in their info, but don't upload photos / upload tree or animal photos.
• Some users sign up, fill in their info and just leave the site, and never return

For the site to work (people to actually meet others) I need some circulating users.
Would you see a chance of revival of the website using such an pre-emptive registration approach?

UPDATE :

• For a ideal launch, what would be the correct user count for a city like Istanbul ?
• In the pre-launch era, should i email users with something, for example the progress (e.g. every %10+?)
• Should i focus on the main, big capital Istanbul, or a couple of big capitals, like Ankara, Izmir
• I am thinking of recording myself in an interview style, like apple for example, answering questions about the site itself or the launch.

It is a tough one Herr, because in my opinion, Datings sites are very close to being a "natural monopoly" - the industry is controlled by a half dozen big players.

I like your site though, and your concept also. Just thinking out loud, have you by any chance thought of approaching one of the big coffee chains and offering a discount coupon as part of the deal? There might just be some program already in place that would be a fun "joint advertising" type of deal.

I like the idea of single landing page. But I think you should excite atleast few 1000s of users to sign-up, create profiles and upload pictures before even you go live. The way to do that would be

1. excite them to the core: make them feel its the next awesome thing - maybe offer incentives for being the first ones
2. make registration, profile creation and photos super duper easy
3. place a progress bar that will indicate how fast the site is nearing launch (like area51)
4. make it very social (fb, twitter, newletters etc)

Dating sites have huge problem of attracting users. Do something different and unique. Read papers/books on how the successful ones got users to sign up etc. I have even heard that few sites go to an extent of creating 1000s of fake profiles to attract real folks. All the best!