You can always just promote some active members into moderators...they get the prestige of lording it over other users, and you get to save money.
+ This way you'll get people into the position who are actually knowledgeable about your product, passionate about it, and aren't just doing it because it was the easiest job for the money they found
"... You can always just promote some active members into moderators ..."
Good idea.
Phil Greenspun advocates this approach in Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing under "Community: The Big Problem & The Big Solution": http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/community
+ This way you'll get people into the position who are actually knowledgeable about your product, passionate about it, and aren't just doing it because it was the easiest job for the money they found