It's all good. Since you can get away with it. More $$$$ in your pocket.
Providers are just as welcome to come and join in the conversations as are clients. I can say if it wasn't for that ability, I wouldn't have stuck around long enough to decide to become a supporting member.
I didn't entirly become a supporting member to advertise either, but damn sure if I am paying I will take advantage of the opportunity. I just got fed up of censoring myself and not being able to talk entirely freely.
We all start off making a few miss-steps that mods are often quick to call us out on in DM while deleting or altering our messages if something becomes interpreted as unpaid promotion.
It is still more beneficial to have more providers active on the board entertaining you for free, than to have none interacting on the board at all.
Especially as indy.
This is such a solitary exhistance until getting the chance to meet other indy's. Until I got that chance, all I knew of others was the bad expieriences those I met had had previously. And I struggled with the stereotype depiction of who SPs were and looked down on myself for agreeing, and wanting to get into it, until I got the chance to communicate with other providers threw here of all places. To find out just how amazing and driven many of them are.
Before finding a like community, as an Indy, this profession just makes you feel disconnected from people in your private life, because either you keep it quiet, and can't say anything to anyone, and the solitude you feel in your secorite life can be suffocating. Or you're out about it, but become an anomaly by those you know, and you still feel that same loneliness because no one else around you can relate, and still so much you can't share, because they just wouldn't understand.