You're completely wrong. They WOULD clog the forums. If you had any idea how much advertising gets deleted out of the site every day you'd be offended. Companies aren't able to self-regulate, and the forums would be one big advertising shitshow. We want our forums to be cleaner than that.
If personal people want to sell personal stuff, that is what the Ski Equipment forum is for.
Small companies need to realise that NS IS giving you a huge break with our ad rates. You can advertise with us for 6 months for 35% of the cost of a single page ad in a magazine.
The problem arises when someone wants to pretend they have a company, and when it comes to marketing dollars the only money they want to spend is zero. If you're a legit company that is actually planning to do something REAL then you've got to spend money!
Afterall, you want free advertising from us, but want to make money off of it. There is no part of our world where that makes sense.
I also have a request. Before ANYONE with a small company bitches EVER again about not being able to advertise for free I have two things to say.
#1 - If you can't spend money on marketing your company is never going to go anywhere.
#2 - Those of you who have actually taken the time to contact me about ads know what we're offering and realise that we are taking care of this problem. We've got great sales on ads going on right now, and new options for the smaller companies coming out every single day.
Please stop trying to make NS out like the company that is holding down all the small companies. We are the ONLY ones giving them a chance! Try blaming the Magazines that won't even talk to you about ads unless you've got thousands of dollars to drop.