I did a tour getting hosting from people I had met at Fidonet back in ... maybe 1994, I don't remember exactly. After that I started hosting.
Back then there were no sites like CouchSurfing, so I just made my personal web pages stating that people could contact me if they wanted hosting.

In 1998 the first guest arrived - and she's now my wife.

Around that time one of the first online hosting databases were created, it was the Hitchhikers Home Base. I signed up. I was living in Oslo at that time, and things took a bit off - at one day I had like 13 guests for the same night. I was renting and living with flatmates, so both the flatmates and the houselord was not much happy with the situation.

There were lots of technical problems with the HHB, and it was eventually shut down, the members adviced to join HospitalityClub instead, so I went there. HC is mostly dead by now, but it was the biggest all until CouchSurfing overtook it.

At some point there was lots of technical problems due to database problems. As I had quite some professional experience in tuning database servers, I reached out and offered to help. The person I contacted (listed as the tech responsible person) wrote back, he and some others had broken off with the HC owner and was starting their own site, BeWelcome. The problem they saw with HC is that it is indeed owned by one person, he decides everything and gets some income as well through google ads - at the same time the "club" is totally driven by volunteers. I don't know if the income on the site was significant or not, but the owner denied giving any information on that ... apparently that was the biggest reason for the split. BeWelcome is driven by an organization, everything is supposed to be transparent and democratic.

I'm still not a member at CouchSurfing, but I do get some guests through BW still.