It’s the 3rd Tuesday of the month, so it’s time for another edition of Honey Roasted Peanuts, flyte’s free email newsletter. And yes, I do plan on changing the name. It’s just been very busy lately, and I can’t decide between these three finalists: flyte patterns, flyte paths, or flyte times. Thoughts?

This month’s newsletter is called "Selling Informational Products Online: E-Books, Online Courses, Software and More." Believe it or not, it’s not even my longest newsletter title. That would go to, "Are You Getting Through to Your Subscribers? Four Tips for Delivering Your Newsletters Successfully."

Recently I’ve been working on creating our own line of informational products, a series of e-courses I’m calling 7 Days to Success.

The first one, which was just published, is called 7 Days to Search Engine Success.

Since I had done a lot of research into selling "soft goods" online, and since I think it’s a great addition to most anyone’s site, I thought I’d write about it. I’m actually splitting the topic up over two months. This month was why you might want to sell your informational products online, next month will go over some of the mechanics.

Not receiving our free email newsletter? Why not subscribe right now?

Rich Brooks
Purveyor of Soft Goods
 

Bulletin Boards. Discussion Boards. BBS.

Whatever you call them, they can be a great addition to your Web site…if you do them right.

Personally, I see BBS’s as the half-way point between Ask The Wizard/FAQ pages and Chat Rooms. (Personally, I hate chat rooms. It’s AOL’s dirty little secret that all their chat room traffic goes to the chats with sexual content. So I’ve heard.)

Bulletin boards are a great way to build community at your Web site and give people an incentive to come back. Flyte’s built some successful BBS’s…and some others that have seen less traffic than we would have hoped.

Below are some suggestions for making your BBS all it can be:

• Have enough traffic to support a BBS. Nothing is more depressing than an unused discussion board…except maybe an unused chat room. However, you can support a BBS w/low traffic if your visitors are passionate about your area of expertise. See next bullet.
• Create a BBS around a subject your visitors will be passionate about. Seems obvious, don’t it?
• Get the ball rolling. No one likes to be the first person who posts to a bulletin board…they’re worried it’s a waste of time. Call in the reinforcements. Get friends, family, colleagues, prisoners, whoever, to post questions and replies to your BBS. Don’t be above posting fake questions and then answering them yourself. Once the ball does get rolling, the BBS will take care of itself. The more "voices" people see at your BBS, the more likely they are to add their own. The BBS is like a plant; it requires a lot of TLC at the beginning, but after a while you can go away for the weekend and not worry about it dying. Or something like that.
• Be aware of competing BBS’s. If you want to create a BBS on parenting, you’re going to be going up against some pretty established discussions from the likes of Parents.com, iVillage, and about a billion others. If you have a niche, focus on it. Examples might include, Parenting for Multiples, Single Mom BBS, Parenting a Bipolar Child, etc.
• Make it as easy as possible to read and post at your BBS. Requiring people to login, create usernames, wait for passwords or approvals will diminish the number of posters. Certain subjects, such as a BBS for a temple or church, or a place for talking about stocks, may force you to at least require a login. I’d almost wait until there’s a problem before toughening up the rules for posting.
• Don’t put your BBS in your Member Only section. I’m sure this occasionally works…I’ve never seen it, though.
• Keep the forums to a minimum. Forums categorize your topics; at the beginning you may be tempted to create a forum for every possible topic. Resist. Instead, create one general forum for all posts. If a lot of the posts focus on one subject you can create a new forum just for that subject. In other words, let the BBS grow organically.  Too many forums separate the voices in your BBS; less voices, less chance a new visitor will add their own.
• Tag someone as the admin. There is a certain amount of work involved with a BBS. Make sure someone on your staff regularly checks in, and is alerted if someone emails the admin. The most work will be at the beginning.

Hopefully this gives you a good idea of what you’re in for from an administrative perspective regarding a bulletin board. Please contact flyte about programming, cost or other setup issues for a bulletin board.

Rich Brooks
Bulletin Board Provider