heya; if rhino/view/carrera/max/everybody else don't want to purchase banner ad spaces, you could charge a small fee for a link to their home page. a sorta referral service deal, even. they could have a link on the side bar, or maybe in a special place on their particular forum/gallery. if they demand referral payments via click-throughs (or just want to see how well their monthly fee is paying off), mightn't it also be possible to somehow 'tag' visitors surfing in via links in posts? for example: i know there are codes on banner ads to see where the click-through came from, but there are ways to track which site visitors come from without that. now suppose e-on pays for a sidebar link, and they count visitors from that. then suppose i put a link to e-on's page in one of my posts telling somebody about something; that link should also go towards your credit for sending referrals. i also see a lot of pitfalls for membership fees. people surf in looking for info; they gotta pay to see anything -- nope, they ain't stopping here. i mean, the regulars know what a valuable resource this place is, but how would 'new' prospects ever find out? i thought the free stuff might work via subscription -- pay a couple bucks to download all the free goodies you want. but that kinda defeats the purpose of it being free. :/ this is a tough one, guys. would splitting up the site do any good? move some parts to... i dunno, someplace cheaper? :/ also, to conserve bandwidth.... might we go to not uploading images in posts, but doing image linking? ('course then you run into people who can't even do that on their freebie sites... ::sigh::)