Restrict Public Searching to Only Certain Members?

[Jeff Bean]

Can't find anyone has dealt with this before. I'd appreciate some thoughts if anyone has a workaround.

We're a professional association. We first only allowed our members to join, but to get the critical mass of more participation, we opened it up to others. Eventually it was thought we'd find a way to create premium features exclusively only for our paid members.

The thing we most wanted was to restrict the public search of Members so potential clients would only find certain specified members - the ones who are paid members of our association. But I haven't found a way to do that.

Here's what I've investigated and I can't find a way to do it:

• Only allow the public to search for "Featured" members;
• Allow administrators to determine which members profiles are private and which are public;
• If the new "Paid Access" allowed us to restrict searching for the lower membership level, but it doesn't appear it does that;
• Have a field/metatag in each members' profile that only the administrators can edit; then somehow restrict the publicly-available search only to those members with certain values in that field/metatag.

Any thoughts on a way to do what I'm looking to do here?