Nicke, I often have to give talks and presentations on the subject of customer relationship management, or CRM as it's called. One of the most effective ways to 'bond' with your customers is to provide a top class 'sticky' website/forum which people genuinely enjoy, get real value from and keep coming back to. I know you didn't start this forum for any commercial gain at all, you just wanted to do it to provide a useful service. Nevertheless, in CRM terms, you've been incredibly successful. Congratulations!
If you did want to make some extra bucks out of it, you could probably attract some really big advertisers now, with the traffic you get. Personally, I wouldn't mind - I'd be delighted to see you make some well deserved extra income. And one of the positives of it is that the advertising content could be restricted only to things that are really relevant and useful to BMs - for instance, airlines offering special deals to LOS.
Of course, there is the possibility that BMs might feel that it would be 'selling out' - in the same way that the recent sale of Youtube caused an outcry from some regular users (although many more sent best wishes and good luck). Interesting point. Any comments on that from anyone? It might be useful for Nicke to know how people would feel about it!
