Hmmm, OK well - in any case, I'd say that a good rule of thumb in *any* endeavor is to strive to provide the best possible service, content, or product to your users. If the only goal in running a membership site is to 'make $$$' then there's no real loyalty to the audience, and people are quick to realize this and shy away.
If you research and understand what your users need and want then it should be an easy and natural step to offer them things that will truly benefit them (relative to whatever the reason is they're on your site in the first place...) and thus help defer the costs of running the website, profits when this is done correctly are always a possibility but shouldn't really be the absolute goal. Carefully selecting advertisers that represent the needs of your site's demographic is certainly one way to start, but again - users are wary when ads that have nothing to do with the site's topic or theme start popping up all over the place.
The goal of any website (in my opinion) should be first and foremost to present and provide information that is *useful* to it's audience. If the person running the website does a good job of this they're going to be flooded with advertising/money making opportunities.
Already, even though we're so new, we've been offered various advertising partnerships with products both in the VA industry and things that have nothing to do with virtual assistants.
In all cases thus far I've turned down the chance to 'make $$$' and just focus on providing a solid resource. The reasons I turned down the unrelated ads is obvious - they have nothing to do with being a virtual assistant and are just going to look junky and defer from the trustworthiness of this site.
The products that actually were related to the VA industry are products I am not personally familiar with - I did ask for a sample of each item so that I could be certain the item I was 'pushing' on the site was something I myself would use. When my requests were met with 'No' I declined to place their ads on the site.
It's simple, if you truly look out for your users, you'll benefit in the long run because there is a system of trust built up and without that it doesn't matter what you try to sell - because no one's buying it. Literally and figuratively.
Hope that helps!
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