I have seen posts where people give "shout outs" to people that they want to make contact with. I have also seen posts where people have given their e-mail address in code by capitalizing the first letter of each word in a sentence.
Jackit,
My advice would be to pay for one months membership. The Instant Messenger is useless and if you are waiting for one particular person.....they may never be on there!
In one month you can e-mail as many people as you want and view who's been looking at you...cool....i'll tell you!
Cancel it after a month and hopefully by then you'd of made loads of contacts.