1. Just starting an affiliate scheme where my Banner/Text appears on many related sites and I pay out when someone pays for premium services to my site.

Make sure you have your affiliate program set up to entice the better affiliates, if at all possible. You will be glad for it, since what you want is a smaller number of the better, more aggressive affiliates working on your behalf, rather tons of wannabes with no clue that just chew up your time. At the same time, agressive affiliates can be a PITA (I know, I am one) and difficult to keep in line, so make your requirments and limitations are fair and also clear, and enforce them. Affiliates must adhere to your guidelines in matters involving branding and PPC bidding especially.

Head over to the Affiliate Forum [webmasterworld.com] for more information.

2. Ad Words - got about a dozen phrases working for me which people may type to find my service. I'm not competing with the higher value words as my budget is small.

Keep testing this and other PPC programs.

One thing that pops out though. You talk in terms of members. I think in terms of ROI. If your business model is working well and your site is properly designed, then generally speaking, PPC should work for you. If it doesn't, it may imply that either PPC is not suited to your model, or more likely, that your landing pages don't convert well enough.

Make ROI a religion.

Google Adwords Forum [webmasterworld.com]
Yahoo Search Marketing (PPC) Forum [webmasterworld.com]
MSN/Microsoft AdCenter Forum [webmasterworld.com]
Pay Per Click Engines [webmasterworld.com]

3. National UK Press. I've been in it 2/3 times and am due in again.

Leverage the heck out of this. Find ways to reinforce the excitement caused by it. Reason: This is the sort of attention and buzz that leads others to link to your site freely. That means better rankings over time, generally.

4. *Considering* SEO for my site. I understand my site may need a re-write though. could this be true?

I've never met a site that had no SEO attention and could not benefit greatly from SEO/SEM efforts. Never. In fact, that also applies to most sites that have had at least some SEO/SEM attention. There's always more to do to extend your marketing effforts and build traffic.

Read these threads on page and site building, and marketing:
Successful Site in 12 Months [webmasterworld.com]
Themes [webmasterworld.com]
Building the Perfect Page [webmasterworld.com]
Beginners Guide to Web Promotion [webmasterworld.com]

Then hang out in this forum and the specific SE forums to get smarter about SEO for the various search engines:

Google Search NewsForum [webmasterworld.com]
Yahoo Search Forum [webmasterworld.com]
Microsoft Search Live Forum [webmasterworld.com]
Link Development Forum [webmasterworld.com]

5. Referral scheme for the thousands of existing members. Entry into a prize draw or something.

Oldie but a goodie. Try hooking it in to link building if at all possible. And making it as interesting and viral as possible too.

Does anyone have any other suggestions I could investigate please?

Yes, read this classic:

Link Development Versus Traffic Development [webmasterworld.com]

However tempting, I will not consider SPAM.

Good, if you're in it for the long haul. ;-)

Thanks so much!

I will read this with my cornflakes in the morning mate!

thanks,

S