I have no idea the financial terms or agreements that the site has with vendors or advertisements. With that said, even if profits were to be turned in, so what? The fact that for the past few years VJ and group have been posting up news and deals which have benefit us all. If there is an affiliate link tied to them to give a small percent back, so what? I hate to break this to you, but just about every site on the internet does this. The entire original site was based around finding awesome deals for the vaping community.
Never once have I felt a post was motivated by greed. In fact, the only time Joe ever provides input is when he has tried a specific product and enjoys it. For example a post might read "$X for 30ml bottles from Insert Vendor. I've tried the Vanilla and it was really good." I see nothing wrong with that, in fact I may hate vanilla but have another flavor there that is good at the sale price.
Now on to this site. This site, as of right now at least, reminds me very much of a forum I use to be quite active in. Where it is built and remains tight knit. No real agendas on the table. If someone has an issue with something, let it get hashed out. Sure sometimes it gets heated, but level heads usually prevail. Are there ads and affiliate linking? Of course. Servers are EXPENSIVE. If you aren't familar with hosting an actual site, you would be shocked what it costs to run a highly trafficed website with minimal downtime. The ads are there to help offset the cost.
It's not like there are ads for "Male enchancement" and the next great diet fad. All the ads right now are from vendors who like the idea of this forum and are showing support while hitting a target market. There are no popups and as far as I can tell, not even AdSense boxes. These are specific approved ads, something most sites do not do 100%. Then after all is said and done, if Joe (or any of his team members) make some money on it, is that really a bad thing? We aren't a charity, nor are we going to cure a disease, why should Joe volunteer his time without getting compensation?
Even if money were being made, I'm fairly certain if you take the hours worked on the sites and compared it to salary obtained you will find that Joe isn't driving home to go for a swim in his vault of gold coins.
I know not to feed the trolls and all, but posts like the OP are somewhat silly and based on no merit. I actually hope you come up with something to sell the community. The mods will be happy to open up a subforum for your company, free of charge.