ezBoard: Making Customers Pay

1. How should ezBoard update their business model to reach their revenue goals?
ezBoard should not lose focus on their advertising efforts as it seems to generate at least some degree of consistent positive cash flow. ezBoard should also consider selling registrants' information to third-party marketing companies, with the registrants consent obviously. Additionally, they could start and advertise a "referral-incentive" plan whereby if a current paying registrant can refer a peer to become a paying registrant for at least 90-days or some length of time to offset a future discount, then the individual who made the referral will get some discount at that point in time.

2. What services should they consider offering with the new Version 8.0 software?
ezBoard should definitely keep pursuing the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PhP) environment strategy as it is geared toward more open-sourced application development. They should also keep focusing on pursuing the Content Management System aspect of the ezBoard application. It seems they are beginning to go this route, but they need to use CMS features to allow them to integrate price discrimination more by allowing certain users certain features. Additionally, they need to incorporate video and rating system into their webpages as it allows for more of an interactive experience so users can actually see "first-hand" videos related to their conversations and users can rate videos and even rate contributors. Lastly, they may find it beneficial to develop some type of internal Instant Messenger tool similar to Facebook Chat that allows them to carry on private conversations with other contributors if they do not want to post something for everyone to see or if they would like a quicker response to their post.