[DrkFusion]

Hey MJM, great thread, some might find it useful. I found myself in this same situation awhile ago for a FREE website that was a pretty thriving community. I had no ads on it, but what I did do was offer something exclusive to the community, that was again free, but somehow brand ads into there.

The reason I did this was because I wanted to keep the forums clean of ads. Now the ads that I did incorporate were not overwhelming or disgustingly overpowering in any way, very subtle and due to the statistics and nature of the site people were willing to advertise.

I have sold the website since, and now it has been fully changed to a paid service (which I sad to see happen, and totally regret) but the steady stream of income the site was generating help attract bidders, I just hope I could have attracted a more honest bidder :S

Now for your situation, like Sean has provided, keeping it on the same domain will help, because it is offering your members a new service. Now depending on how you have it setup, maybe only people that utilize the system can have access to support -- but I am guessing you don't want to provide support through the site, or not at all (not sure) -- but if you wish to go ahead and launch a paid directory, I think at least, in a way you are obligated to make sure they are all satisfied.

Sometimes the best thing you can do, depending on the nature of your site, is to be creative to bring something exclusive to the site -- it is really tough to do this these days, but I am sure you will be able to come up with something.

If you want more information on what I did with the site (though there really isn't a live example of it anymore ) I'll be glad to explain it to you, maybe it will give you a brief overview of my problem and how I did it. It may not be your exact same situation, but there are many ways you can go without directly exposing your members to become customers, which will bring a large turnover of support questions and other problems.