Spammers like to fill the "About Me" section of their profiles with links, which hurts our SEO. I suggest some mechanism to prevent profiles from showing fields until first approve content is posted, or something like that.

You might consider utilizing this app:

 

Use the guide above to setup a promotion for new members. Use the "Profile Field Per User Group" app to grant access to the promoted group to edit the "About Me" field. 

Perfect. Since customers get moved into another user group I can make it so only paying customers have the profile field.

Thanks!