I am glad to see this thread has gone from people wanting to get banned to some really good comments and heartfelt thoughts.
When this site went live, I got an email from Tom and a voicemail from Gerry - both of which made my day. To think these guys would take the time to drop me a note, that is what CS created for me. A bunch of friends I have actually flown places to meet (Hey Tom, when are you finally going to make it out to California to smoke some cigars?).
When the mod team left I saw a bunch of guys who all joined around the same time as me try to keep the ship afloat and I jumped on board to try to help. If it wasn't for Blake Lockhart (I still remember the Dave's old username), I wouldn't have 300 plus 5 finger bags still ready to be used.
I have traded cigars with most of these guys and I will honestly say, being a team member with them has been an honor. I can now see how the team of 11 became such a strong group, when you have to look over every post and make decisions as a team, it drive the bond beyond cigars.
As for puff.com, I work on the internet. I work in online advertising and I understand what Jon is trying to do. Almost everything on the internet is commercial (except for maybe wikipedia and this place). Every member here is lucky that the team of 11 has both the time and money to run this place without the need to ask for help or to flash ads to pay the bills. It is amazing how these guys are willing to spend both the time and money to keep this place running (I can imagine hosting a site this size is not cheap). With that said, I would assume there is a limit to what they can do. I doubt the team of 11 can produce cigar videos for example. Well with this group, they can probably do anything.
I made a post earlier in this thread about Cigar Aficionado and the cost to advertise with them. Unfortunately, if you look around, the other CA is really the only place a cigar manufacturer can advertise these days (Cigar and Smoke are horrible magazines and the ECCJ, while great is more of a European audience). So they can charge whatever they want and continue to produce a magazine that has less than 5 articles about cigars. Print advertising is dying as more people move online. In addition, it is very hard to track results in the print world, so advertisers really have no way to know if the money they spend is actually increasing sales for them. If someone wants to profit from that transition, who am I to say it is wrong. We all want to make more money and as a person who works online, I am interested to see if Jon can do it. If he can provide a better platform for cigar manufacturers to advertise and increase their business, while making money, it doesn't seem that bad to me (but again I work in a very similar business).
The idea of a central place to go and read about cigars, watch videos, read interviews, is inherently interesting to me. If that means I have to see ads for wine and liquor, so be it.
Just in case anyone is wondering, no one asked me to write this. These are my thoughts and my thoughts alone.