Membership and Advertising – what is possible?

Hi folks,

I am researching options for creating a membership/advertising site using WordPress 3.3.1.

My intention is to allow people to register on the site to be able to advertise their service, call it IT services. To do this I want them to create a profile, upload relevant information on themselves etc, perhaps choose their specialism and location from drop down menus etc. Other people could then come to the site, search for a topic, say web designers in the UK, and they get a relevant list, which they can look at the profiles of.

Ideally, I want to be able to allow a free service and a premium service. The premium service meaning the profiles come back higher up in search results, and also they are able to publish more information on their profile, such as more photos, personal info etc.

I have struggled to find a setup quite like this using WP. So to the community, is this possible using standard functionality, themes and plugins?

Also, would you suggest this could be beyond WP out of the box capabilities at a database level?

Really appreciate any advice.

Kind Regards, Ed