Padmapper certainly helped me find an apartment. Twice, and the second one was so difficult that I might not've successfully moved to be near the rest of the Singularity Institute (no relation to SU), if not for Padmapper. If you did it mostly out of charity and haven't been trying to profit much, then I am even more grateful for that. Please let this flow of positive reinforcement encourage you to continue doing it, and ignore negative reinforcement from haters, because haters gonna hate. (You should see the hate I get for the things I give away ad-free online!) Also, consider making larger profits, because I wouldn't hate you for it, trust me.

Agreed. The argument seems to be about the semantics of the word "charity". That's entirely beside the point IMO. You're providing a service. And a quality one at that.

Last month, after spending hours filtering through CL listings to no avail, I used padmapper and found the perfect CL listed apartment in 10 minutes.

Frankly, I don't care about whether you're doing this to help people, or you want to get really filthy rich. What matters is your actions. AFAIK, you're not massively ripping me or anyone else off, you're not torturing puppies, and have no plans for world domination.