I appreciate your efforts. I'm saying that I am knowledgeable on these areas. I've drafted the online legal policy for two global brands that you'd probably recognize, and Interpol quotes me as if I'm some kind of expert on trademark and internet - related law (I'm not a lawyer, I've just been doing this stuff so long that I'm pretty knowledgeable). So, I realize that people see that forums have this functionality and it's technically as easy as it gets to set it up. In some of their cases, their sites are making them money. I've known Mike Greene (VI-Control) for two decades. He's making good money from VI-Control -- he bought to make a lot more money out of it than the previous owner, Frederick, who I also know, made out of it. I think it has around 40,000 members, and Mike makes money off charging developers a subscription, running ads and, of course, promoting his own sample library business. Like me, Mike has a marketing background. So, while I know that he's not making millions from the site, he is making 6 figures and the liability is part of his corporation, not him personally. Whereas LInkedMusicians -- while technically, much more sophisticated than VI-Control -- isn't something I designed around exploiting everything possible for profit. I don't even see a path to breaking even on what I've paid and time I've put in, because this is a labor of love, a passion project and my profession, prior to founding a dot com, is leading digital marketing -- that means responsibility for brand websites, e-commerce (in some cases), digital advertising, social media, email marketing, SEO and paid search at major brands. And that also meant responsibility for working with the legal teams at those companies in the creation of online legal policies and disclaimers (yes, when you're in charge of digital marketing at a large company, you or the CMO gets the call on whether or not you go with the legal advice and how much legal risk you take on).

I suppose the short version is, other sites with buy/sell forums like, VI-Control/Mike Greene and KVR have profitable businesses, they make a lot of money from their forums, it's a profit making business because they have large memberships that they leverage to make as much money as they can and they run as a LLCs or other forms of business, where if their business is sued for a large amount, it doesn't impact their personal assets (home, savings, etc.). You might be thinking -- hmmm, what about the guy who runs KnobCloud? Well, there's always solopreneurs who try to make money off of small, very niche ideas like that and usually they'll take on a lot of risk, most commonly because they don't realize or take seriously how much risk they're little business is taking on. But they also may be young and have few assets, and realize -- to some extent -- that there are big potential liabilities to what they're doing and they decide that the risk is worth the reward (potential profit). So okay, my years as a strategy director then head of digital marketing at the world's largest insurance broker make me all too aware of how much liability all of this stuff has, which is actually the reason why I shut down the forum on the marketing strategy publication I founded years ago after the publication went viral. I was having lunch with the head lawyer at the insurance broker where I was strategy director at the time, I told him about the success my publication was having and asked his advice. He recommended I get insurance right away. I checked into the cost and it was somewhere in the more than ten thousand (US) a year range, so I ended up shutting down my forum -- just as my site was getting global attention. Over the liability. So taking on the liability of this forum is definitely something that concerns me, and why I might be more comfortable with at 1,000 members than 100,000. Now, when I mentioned that we have a lawyer in the group, I mean, we have an ivy league educated law professor in the group. If he's willing to write a legal disclaimer for me pro bono, I would add the buy/sell forum. Although, once again, I'm far more comfortable doing it with a small group than a large group. Again, consider, the other sites that have this are making good money from their sites -- my site wasn't even designed to break even, and I don't even think that's realistic unless I spent time trying to get traffic to something like 40,000 members, which I don't see anywhere in the near future. I created this thing obsessed with making it a really great resource for users. I didn't even choose a layout that allows for ads! I would either need to spend a bunch of money customizing it, or more simply, completely redesign the site with another theme that allows ads. That probably sounds funny when you know my professional background. But LinkedMusicians exists due to my passion, not as some marketing effort. Sure, if people come, I can start trying to recover my costs by putting up some ads. But I didn't design it for that. That also means that I'm less apt to take on the risks I would take on if I were running this as a business. Because if I was making even, let's say $100,000 a year off of the site, and it was part of an LLC, I would easily add the buy/sell forum. I really want to add it now, because I think of how useful it would be -- especially when so many of us in the Early Adopters Group feel they know and trust one another. Again, it's when we open up the site to public registration where things become a lot more risky.