Well, the forum made it through it’s first year of operation! January 8th marks the one year anniversary of the LBB forum, and my has it grown bigger than I could have imagined.

Granted, we are not the Warrior Forum, but I think for a niche site it does pretty good. Heck, for the past 6 months the site has been slightly above or slightly above an Alexa Rank of 50K, which is pretty damn good in my eyes!

I have made my share of mistakes over the past year, and occasionally I have done some things right. But I have learned from each experience, which leads up to this post.

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

As forum members and constant contributors, please let me know what it is you would like to see. Post your comments below so we can figure out how to improve the forum going forward.

If you are happy the way it is, don’t be afraid to speak up as well, as every comment will be effective as we go forward.

Remember, the forum itself is a place for ALL members to contribute, learn, share experiences, and overall help each other out in the pursuit of a career in the offline niche.

So don’t be shy, please post thoughts on improvement below.

I guess when you are wrong you are wrong. I will have to admit at this point that I made a huge mistake in creating the LBBSF(LocalBizBuilders Special Forces) social site without explaining it’s potential.

Let me explain…I was a bit lax in explaining the potential of this site, as I was under the understanding that not only were social sites and ther benefits obvious, but that LBBSF members actually might be able to use it. See, I went ahead and instituted it without even asking(lack of market research)! I should know better, and only blame myself. Albeit late, I will explain it now…

My vision for the socail site was to have a more interactive environment for members to be able to work together. At least more interactive than the forum itself. The forum is great, but you are limited in how you interact. You post…people reply, easy. Well with the social site, you could actually create ‘groups’ based around your area of expertise or interests.

For example, autoresponders. Let’s say your business model is based around selling the autoresponder service to businesses. The forum itself is great, but with the social site you could actually start an AR group and start your own discussions based on this individual sub-niche. You could post video’s, reports, training or whatever your imagination could dream up. Granted, some of this could be done on the forum, but to me the forum seems flat and 2 dimensional while the social site gives a more pleasing platform.

Another seemingly great benefit is that the social site allows members to be more about YOU. You can customize your profile, and for those who are experts in their area of expertise, you can really use the site to brand yourself. Heck, you can create your own group, even create or add content to your own blog right on the site. You can upload video’s right to the site, start a mini forum discussion, and pretty much run your own business right from there.

Now, the one thing I did not explain was the fact that not only can you use it for offline related material, but Internet Marketing(IM) related topics as well!!

So for those SF members that have not taken a look or would like to take another, the invite link is the SF General Discussion board, the top post(stickied at top). Just click on that and sign in. It is hosted on a ning.com platform, so if you are already a ning member just login with your email addy and passwod you already created. If not, type in a valid email address and create a password. It is a seperate site, so it can be different than what you use on the forum.

For those of you thinking about or currently running a local portal, if you are not using video’s then you might be missing the boat, or at least another revenue stream.

Lately the LBB forum has been filled with post about creating video’s. ElkinsLive and TimPhelan both have made superb posts about tools and ‘how to’s’ in regards to creating video’s for your clients.

Don also has created a Video Group on the new social network site.

All of this is great info and if used properly can really add a great revenue stream to your portal or existing business…But you have to actually do it.

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Not Just the Yellow Pages Anymore – How People Find Local Businesses

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Note: Interesting read in regards to YP~ keith

Well it is that time of year again when we all take a second and reflect on the year closing, and look forward to the year upcoming.

Of course with this comes thoughts of your new resolutions for 2009 and the ones you didn’t keep for 2008.(if you are like me)

Although I must say 2008 was a very good year for me professionally. Although I didn’t stick specifically to any ‘resolution’, I subconciousely did achieve the final objective.

I tend to base my professional goals around a monetary objective, so as to have a specific metric to base progress on. I was pretty close to my mark, even though I really didn’t take any specific path. I set out 2008 wanting to increase my income via online avenues to $x,xxx a month which I have consistantly done since May. I also set out to increase my own business (web services locally) by 35%. I actually surpased that and increased it by about 46%(based off of preliminary numbers so far).

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