My feeling is that the websites actually represent a small minority of applicants. If we went by just who was on AW/SB/USNOCS the board would only be getting like 20 or 30 applicants each month. In reality, according to statistics, it's usually more like 300 or 400 applicants per month, if I am reading the charts right...
Whether it pays or not to be "wired," I don't know, but I sure would like to see a poll on that. My gut feeling is that those of us who participate online probably do better in selection rates, but I have absolutely nothing to back that up beyond knowing that my package would be decidedly weaker without the online resources I was able to utilise.