Well I'll tell you what a 'player' once said to me, and it's helped a lot
You say you have a lot of Chick Friends, that's your problem right there, if you buy her a drink, pay her compliments, act as her f*cking doormat, she's going to treat you like a girlfriend, that's right, girlfriend, she's going to talk with you for hours about all kinds of 'chick issues', that's not getting you anywhere is it? I'm not saying you shouldn't buy a woman a drink, rather you she should probably be your gf before you start doing so.
If you do buy her the drink at the bar kinda thing, you're just like every other guy whose come, tried, and failed, and is now at the bottom of her fonebook. Point I'm making is, you have to be DIFFERENT, by this I don't mean you dress like I do/as if you're my age (I'm assuming you're dramatically older than me, like most other people here), I mean you have to come off as confident, funny, smart, cool... in other words, not her F*CKING DOORMAT!
Now you do that, by acting different, you have your own style now, from this day onwards, you shall never buy women drinks, women buy YOU drinks. That means you act confident, hell, slightly arrogant (not in general, just to women, to show you're funny, have good self esteem), now don't take that the wrong way and walk up to the local bimbo and throw her drink in her face and tell her to buy another one. That's called being an asshole. You have to come off decent, but not 'too nice', it's okay to act like you normally would and actually buy her drink once in a while, but seriously, EVERYONE does that, it is OLD, if you see another guy doing it and failing, learn a lesson from it, and don't do it.
Don't think Im saying every chick out there is a ***** either, there are nice chicks, but you need to give them a reason to like you, is your hair good? do you work out? do you make money (if your looking at a goldigger, still helps sometimes though), are you UNIQUE? are you NOT a carbon copy of every white male out there