1. How should ezboard update their business model to reach their revenue goals?
It does not appear that EZBoard can change their subscription model to increase price due to low cost or no cost provider competition. EZBoard should keep the current subscription model, but push the Gold Community (avg. contribution of $23.26). EZBoard can hire part-time Moderator type employees to start discussion boards on hot topics, especially social topics and make the Gold Community offering prominent in these areas. However, EZBoard must be careful not with how these discussions are positioned. They would not want to make it public knowledge that EZBoard employees would start these boards...that is why they would be "Moderators."
Advertising needs to be the key revenue driver for EZBoard. Their idea is to have a "ring" around the boards since advertising on the actual boards has not been successful in the past. Their idea is to use the registration info. from the paid subscribers to target advertising. First of all this is not targeting the entire audience and second, the registration info. most likely does not provide a lot of relevant info., just name, gender, maybe age etc. However, if EZBoard is able to implement the same process as Google and post ads based on content, this would be appealing to advertisers. For example, if there was a discussion board about pets and then grooming became a topic, an ad for the Furminator would appear in the side bar.
2. What services should they consider offering with the new Version 8.0 software?
I've never posted on a discussion board so have no personal knowledge. EZBoard did the right thing by sending out a survey to get user response on the current program. (They should have made a shorter survey though, probably would have gotten more responses (100 Q's is way too long). They should take the user info. and implement, though more expensive, user satisfaction will likely retain users as well as create word of mouth success which has been their only successful marketing technique to date. In addition, EZBoard should create user profiles as an option in order to create a more unique and useful profile on each member to be used for advertising.
No sure how this would work, but EZBoard should also look into business partnerships, possible linking them to such social networking sites as Facebook. EZBoard should stick to what they are good at, discussion boards and not try to be everything to all.
