What a lot of new sites do is buy profiles from existing sites and let the members know that as a free courtesy a profile was created on another site.

Another thing they do is buy a database from failed sites.

A third thing people do is do pre-paid deals with the dating affiliates whales who can send XX to XXX joins a day.

Of course there are those that create bogus profiles but that is not encouraged, does not create enough activity and will likely run afoul of laws.

The problem is if its a gay site. With all of the freemium sites out there it is harder to get traction. I hit up a lot of dating sites for profiles and they just don't have it available.

If its a straight site Howard at Perkiss Media may be able to broker what you need. I've seen him mention quite a few times that he had joins to broker. Hundreds of joins a day.