Video Blog #004 – Fantasy Smoke Break

It was only about a week ago when I wrote the post about how you can make money online by launching a blog about quitting smoking. Today I received an email from a reader who wanted my advice on how she can grow her blog which has a section within called, Fantasy Smoke Break. Here is the copy of the email sent to me:

I would like to know what you think I can do to improve my blog. I am an ex smoker and I use a portion of my blog to discuss "fantasy smoke breaks" since I am no longer able to partake in the real thing. I have only been up and going for a week, and I’ve had a LOT of views. Or at least a lot for what I expected. Please advise, if you have the time.
Darcy

Website: www.corporatewhoracle.com

When I visited the blog I was so very interested to see what this Fantasy Smoke Break was all about. Quickly I got disappointed because I couldn’t see any difference between the Fantasy Smoke Break section compared to the home page of the blog. It all looked the same. 

For me, if this was my project, I would make the Fantasy Smoke Break into its own web site. Secondly, this site wouldn’t be a blog,  instead it would be a message board. Ex-Smokers need something to do to get their mind off not smoking. A message board is a perfect place for that because participating in one takes a ton of time and two there is a lot of things you can do in a message board to get your mind off the need of wanting a cigarette. 

I would recommend checking out:

1. http://phpbb.com/index.php
2. http://www.simplemachines.org/

I prefer phpBB because I feel it is more stable. SMF is much more pretty and comes packed full of features, but so does phpBB, but it requires a little more programming experience. I have had many problems with SMF over the years but I have never had trouble with phpBB. 

Message boards are awesome because you can create a very powerful online community very quickly. Message boards are cool too because of the expansion options available. You can even install an entire arcade system which includes a ranking and ladder system. 

I would launch this site using a very cool domain name, such as Fantasy Smoke Break dot Com (which is available) and I would target the social networks towards recruiting members to join. There are millions of smokers and I never met a smoker who said that they weren’t interested in quitting. The message board could be monetized with quit smoking aids and products which all could be promoted within using banners and embedded text link ads.

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