Salocin

I really liked the simple design of your Zen Boards. If I needed a forum, I would like to use Zen Boards. I think the problem your experiencing with trying to solicit comments about your program from BlogExplosion users may simply be a lack of interest. That's not your fault. A lot of bloggers are not designers, but it looks like you are.

There's a compliment in there somewhere....you just have to find it.

I think you're right about the nature of blogexplosion traffic.

I'll keep working on an "if you built it, they will come" model and hope that if someone truly likes the design, they'll use it. Let's face it, I only want someone to use it to validate my design, it's not like I'm ever going to make money from it.

I'm here by way of BE and checked out your Zen Boards. They look great. Super simple and clean... very usable.

How will you support yourself and the traffic if you really get people to utilize it. I don't see Google Ads and requests for donations cutting it in terms of meeting your expenses.

But, bottomline, it looks like you've done a really nice job with it! I've bookmarked it (and your blog too.).

Well, if it takes off, then I'll consider that a success to start with, and I'll jump (burn?) the expenses bridge when I come to it.

It's unlikely to take off all-of-a-sudden, but as the traffic grows, I'll clearly have to think of something. I'm actually dead against google-ads on zen anyway because it's totally against the spirit of the thing, and would get in the way of the purity of the service.

So what options would we be left with? Assuming donations wouldn't work (it wouldn't, but you still have to try, right?) I would probably look for some sort of cheap subscription from high-volume users, or look at linking up with someone who runs a service like Haloscan where it could be part of a package of things offered. Either way - those days are far far away, and right now, functionality and design are all I'm really caring about.

Thanks for dropping by.

Hello Nicolas,

I checked out your Zen Boards, the design is super, can I say "At last!" I have been put off from having any kind of forum connected to my blogs because of the day-glo atmosphere they have.

I wish you great success. I shall link to you from all my blogs.