| LED Digest 1956: Forums in 2005 |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. April 13, 2005 Issue #1956 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Are Site Forums Worthwhile? ==-- ~ Pat McCarthy "It depends on what the goal of your site is and how much time and effort it takes you..." ~ Barbara Radisavljevic "There are a few sick people who feel they have to ruin every forum they can find." ~ Michael Martinez "I've been operating forums since 1997." --== Beware of Internet-centricity ==-- ~ Kathryn Martyn "Ah, but what an untapped niche!" ~ James Miller "You have to integrate the web site to the customer's method of doing business." --== Spidering IFrame Content? ==-- ~ Renee Kennedy "I do not think that IFRAME can be spidered by search engines." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== New Fun Site - BetterIf.com ==-- ~ Brad Waller ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Pat McCarthy Subject: Forums in 2005 > In 2005 is it worth it having a forum on your site? - Richard Graham, LED 1955 Much like most technology on the web, it's hard to make a general conclusion like "forums are no longer worthwhile in 2005". It depends on what the goal of your site is and how much time and effort it takes you to manage your forums. What I can tell you is that in both my personal experience of running some forums and in working with web publishers on a daily basis, there are a lot of sites out there who's forums are an extremely valuable part of their site. I run a website focused on a sport and the forums are probably 60% of the traffic, and they also provide a great sense of community that not only keeps coming back to the site often, but makes these people more likely to take advantage of ecommerce and promotional offers that I present to them. The site also makes money off of display advertising, so that 60% of the traffic is valuable page impressions for advertising revenue. Without the forums, the site would not be as successful by any means. What I've learned though is to have a successful forum you have to work at it. You have to start meaningful conversations, be active, delete spam and garbage posts, keep up with security updates, and go above and beyond the forum features that most base packages provide. I've added numerous custom modifications to my forums that have helped it be more useful and valuable than any competitor who just uses the default forum packages available. I've also tabbed some of the best users as moderators to alleviate the workload on me for deleting bad posts and starting good discussions. The end result of all that work though is a forum with over 10,000 registered users and about 2 million page views a month coming from those forums. That's definitely worth the time and effort. I'd take your latest problem with your forum getting hacked as a time to evaluate the worth of your own forums. Are they providing anything valuable? Are those users helping you reach your goals for your site? If you committed more time to your forums would it help your forums improve? If it's a lost cause, maybe they just don't work for your particular niche, but maybe there's also an untapped gold mine there? Pat McCarthy Right Media http://www.rightmedia.com/ ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Barb Radisavljevic Subject: Forums I have made several attempts at forums on my site, and in each case they were abused, and I was having to spend time removing obscene comments and links to porn sites. My site, is, by the way, aimed at school teachers and home schooling parents, so if I was not vigilant in getting the junk off, which was not always convenient, the forum detracted from the site's value rather than adding to it. I finally decided that unless you have people register for the site so that it's easy to take away posting privileges, it would be easier to have a moderated mail discussion list to keep in touch with my customers. I just didn't have the time to give to watching the discussion forum, nor the time to learn the ins and outs of having people register to enter the forum. And even if people do register, you have to watch the board to see if members are following the guidelines you have set. There are a few sick people who feel they have to ruin every forum they can find. Barbara Radisavljevic www.barbsbooks.com ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: Forums As one of the early "Build a community" advocates, I've been operating forums since 1997. Just about everything bad that can happen to a forum has happened to mine. You pretty much have to love the community to want to keep it going. On today's Web, many people create forums the same way they create Web sites: through blogs. I think the traditional forum now looks a little more professional and complete, especially if you keep it updated and moderated. But the whole "sense of community" principle probably needs to be re-evaluated, not for the sake of re-evaluation, but to see if it can be updated or has been superceded by something else. Michael Martinez, Author Understanding Middle-earth, Parma Endorion, and Visualizing Middle-earth http://www.michael-martinez.com/ -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Kathryn Martyn Subject: Internet-centricity > Greg told me that he took care of yards in the > neighborhood... Their high-tech marketing secret? > ... nothing fancier than the pen and paper that Greg uses... - Martha Retallick, LED 1955 Ah, but what an untapped niche! I need a yard guy. Not a landscaping service, but someone to take care of my yard and not charge me an arm-and-a-leg for it, and since I search for new services online, I can't find Greg or anyone else for that matter. A search this morning in my home town of Vancouver, Washingon led me to zero results. Nada, ziltch, nothing relevant. I searched on "yard maintenance Vancouver Washington" which yielded 70,000 results, none in the top 10 had anythnig to do with yard maintenance. So I tried other combinations and still couldn't find Greg or anyone like him. One Google ad led to http://www.allaroundlawns.com/index.htm which is precisely the type of site that someone in the service industry could use so people like me could hire them. Win, Win. It's not just about technology but reaching those who want and need your services. Most importantly, the cost of putting up a nice website with a few pages describing your services and how to reach you costs far less than one tiny yellow pages ad, and frankly, I turn to the yellow pages only as a last resort. Kathryn Martyn, M.NLP Ending Emotional Eating, One Bite at a Time http://www.onemorebite-weightloss.com ------- new post - same topic -------- From: James Miller Subject: Internet-centricity > Out there in the Real World, there are still a lot of > businesses that aren't on the Internet, and, truth > be told, they don't have to be. - Martha Retallick, LED 1955 You have to integrate the web site to the customer's method of doing business. I've just done a web site for a mediation company (www.indepmed.com), which deals with solicitors (attorney in the US) and other professionals. Many are not particularly savvy about the Internet. Typically a solicitor will look at a page and then print it off, so that he can suggest this to his client. And also the client can then take away the hard copy. So the first thing we did was make all pages printable on a single A4 page. We also put extensive forms on the site using FormMail and also printable forms that can be filled in and faxed. Some clients fill the form up and then phone with what they've written, but even that means that the quotation process is much quicker! The other thing we've done and Martha will like this, is create a humerous postcard to announce the new web site. Because all of this fits the company's business model, the site has at least doubled their business. So perhaps everybody's right provided you meet the company's objectives. Even Martha's yard man could do with a single page, with his connection details page and perhaps a text message facility. And of course one of her postcards! James Miller Daisy Analysis: www.daisy.co.uk ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Renee Kennedy Subject: IFrame > I don't know whether or not IFRAME content is spidered. - Will Bontrager, LED 1955 In my experience, I do not think that IFRAME can be spidered by search engines. Here is an IFRAME: -------------------- <.IFRAME FRAMEBORDER=0 MARGINWIDTH=0 MARGINHEIGHT=0 src="http://www.somesite.com/script/main/getfeed.asp?hlbgcolor=ff&hl fontcolor=00&bodybgcolor=ff&bordercolor=f&feedid=12&itemcount=5" WIDTH=250 HEIGHT=250><./IFRAME> -------------------- In this example, there is no content for a search engine to read. The content would be located on the site where the IFRAME is pulling from. This is my understanding, but not totally positive on this. Renee Kennedy e-Healthcare Solutions, Inc. www.e-healthcaresolutions.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Brad Waller Subject: Billboard: New, Fun Site Just to have some fun and do something different, we decided to work on a site we had talked about for more than a year. It arose from our lunch conversations that went off tangent where we would end up talking about what was wrong with the NBA, or how Survivor could be improved. So we decided to build the site where anyone can tell us how to make something better if their idea was implemented. Over the first two months of the year we spent most of our free time creating BetterIf.com http://betterif.com/ The idea behind the site is to create a "sounding board" for ideas. People can submit ideas on how to improve just about anything, and then read, comment, and vote on ideas. There is no tie in to commerce or revenue model for the site (yet), and we're not doing this to collect email addresses to market to. If anything, we hope to be able to come up with market research like information based on aggregate profiles, but we're not even collecting demographics yet. We can see some great "viral" potentials for this to grow. But until and unless this happens, what you see is what it will be. Check it out, submit your best ideas, and have fun with it. Brad Waller, VP Affiliate & Business Development http://epage.com - Free Custom Classifieds waller, epage.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2005 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "There is only one terminal dignity -- love." - Helen Hayes |
