I can't say this is advice, but more of personal anecdotes that may give you some insight you might be missing.

I started using OkC to prove to an unreasonably paranoid (male) friend who was somewhat desperate to get a girlfriend that he should try it. He was based in Boston, myself in San Francisco. I would check profiles out from both locations and link him ones that I thought he might like. I was mostly just enjoying poking around the first month. I seriously approached the first girl that I did only because she played StarCraft. Ironically, the most dates (5) with a single girl off OkC I went on was with that first girl!

What worked for me there was picking a characteristic to look for that isn't "the sum of all features that would make my ideal girlfriend/wife" to find a person. And not something generic like "games" or "math" or "music." In my experience, even a specific TV show or music taste is not something people really relate over (I tried following a TV show to get along better with a girl I had a huge crush on who raved about it). If there's something specific you spend a lot of time on that you care about, try to find that. Talk about that. Try to find someone you would just love to geek out with, not because you're lonely and/or in need of a partner.

A lot of my other approaches were very similar to your messages. Asking lots of questions, showing an interest, proving I read their profile. Even though girls always demand you show you read their profile, dont ask that much. Just one question TOPS in a single message. Don't be that ridiculously interested in knowing everything about her so quickly. Just imagine the progression you had with getting to know your closest friend you know. It didn't start with you sitting across a table bombarding each other with questions. Pick one thing that catches your interest that you think would roll well. Go from there.

It's all about playing on your interpersonal strengths (everyone has something here). Mine is in being ridiculously passionate about a few topics (eg: education, women in technology, cross-culture romances) fairly popular among women in my preferred demographic. I am also even more passionate about game design and experience design, but I try not to get into that unless the girl expresses interest. And I always lay the disclaimer of how much I'm going to geek out when we get there. I too am uncomfortable with people-touching (although I very much wanted to not be!), so it took a while to get over that. Your weakness seems to be general communication discomfort around women. Takes a little getting used to. Of course you will get frustrated, but if you let any frustration show, it will heavily backfire. So try to keep a check on it!

However, as you can probably gather from my comment above, I think OkC (and online dating in general) is a difficult medium to make more than a superficial connection via. Context is everything. "Met online" just doesn't spark the magic. You need to have a better genesis story to even put you and the partner in the right mood.

Good luck!

PS: You're most certainly not unattractive. There's definitely a significant segment of women which definitely intersects the set that you'd be interested in that would find you attractive, and that's all that matters.