My most memorable and lasting "relationships", for lack of a better word came from CL. We still laugh about it. That was a few years ago though. I looked on there recently and quickly moved on. All of these sites are like digging around in the pain box, you never know what item is going to be the "one" for that moment.
I have accounts at both, but am not in love with either. For some reason, the kinky lifestyle seems to attract all manner of fuckin' weirdos, fakes & other undesirables. Go figure. LOL
Fetlife is like Facebook for kinksters. I know people who's entire lives revolve around Fetlife. Especially on the east coast where there is an actual kink scene 10 times larger than what we have iin Texas. It's also really great free porn...lol
FL can be good, but as with any online "personals" type of site, you've got to be very selective. One of my long distance subs requested that we use the site to enhance our long distance play, and it was OK for that. But it's not something I'd mess with on a regular basis.
(Interestingly enough, I met another sub on that site - a cute little college girl who had a daddy fetish. Cute girl, but she was too far away for anything serious to develop. Long distance D/s is a lot of work, and one LD sub is plenty for me.)
As a Lifestyle and Professional dominant I say "Yes".
If you're looking for clientele on there, then I'd say you're better off spending the money and putting up a local sponsored ad. It's gained me some quality responses.
However, just having a profile up is more of a way to network among people you already have met. It's a fabulous way to get acquainted with local groups and events.
But no, it's not a meat-market and John Baku (the creator) worked at making it that way. He wanted something for real-life networking rather than a dating site.