Sometimes a small group of committed people is all what you need to build a community. I still never understood why you dropped off the paid forum idea that you had. That could've easily be turned into a money making platform.

1. People get to learn from experts and engage with the "cool people" in the community.
2. You could use it as a Q/A forum as well. Ask the Experts or Learn from the experts.

You could also launch something like Pro's which WPCandy did. There are definitely ways to get the ball rolling.

I agree with Matt. Right now WordPress is just starting to become more mainstream. All the major players like WooThemes, Gravity Forms etc are sitting tight at the top, so they can choose to ignore their affiliate program or advertising budgets. By doing so, you just leave plenty of room for new players, and we've already seen new players entering the market.

For ex. there are bunch of new form plugins that Carl already mentioned above.I see eCommerce area still up for grabs. Sure WooCommerce passed 1M downloads, but that space has a lot of opportunity. It is only going to get bigger. iThemes announced their eCommerce plugin. EDD is holding strong, and I'm sure more will come out.

What I find to be quite interesting is that some of the bigger companies are dropping their affiliate programs. I personally think that it is a mistake, but only time will tell. Affiliate programs allow you to have a group of "salesman" or "spokesperson" for free. You only pay them a commission if they bring a sale. That eliminates the marketing work for you. From the ROI stand point, it is also the best deal because you only pay an advertising fee when you get a guaranteed customer.

If affiliate programs were useless, then companies like Amazon, BestBuy etc would have gotten rid of them long time ago. But they don't because they want to get every possible sale that they can.

I guess in our industry, when you are at the top, you get too comfortable with the $$$ you already make, so you don't want every possible sale that you can get. I do believe that this will change as more competition enters the space.

I'll end with this: From within, it seems that the commercial WordPress space is very crowded. However from the outside, it looks like the wild west up for grabs.