To your original question: I can only speak from my own experience. I look for info on several boards and have never paid attention to the paid advertisers on any of them. I tend to trawl through BP, find someone that looks interesting, then check them out on the boards. (Yes, I guess it's the 'thrill of the hunt'.) I understand that BP must bring a lot of time-wasting queries, but it seems to me to be (no pun intended) the best bang for the buck.
The corollary to this, of course, is that one needs good reviews on the boards for this to pay off. From what I read above this shouldn't be a problem for you.
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