Have you ever searched for information about Internet marketing or building a profitable website, only to be frustrated? I've come across a great board for domain sales, it seemed to have a few good nuggets here and there. However, I was surprised by what I found …

I've been returning periodically because I had to pay to respond to a message on this popular domain forum. When I use a message board, I take speed into consideration. Not the speed of the board so much as far as properly managing my time.
It's easy to get seduced into a good community and spend hours accomplishing nothing. To prevent this, start first with a topic or question in mind. I use the search tool to find conversations around that question and look for answers.
Periodically I'll find a thread that catches my attention and respond. I respond by topic, relevance, and usually not looking to at the message date outside it's relevance for the topic on hand. That's where the surprise came in …
A quick way to tell if the message board community has newbies or real professionals is what happens next. I posted on this domain name board, then within 8 hours had spam complaints and was penalized with restricted access.
Turns out some of the conversations I responded to were years old, however, the topics were still relevant to what I was trying to research. Unfortunately I've found many of the popular boards are 1% people of value and 99% people who have nothing else to do.
Now I was sincerely looking to provide value, was NOT trying to offer my services, and kept my messages to the point. I did include contextual links to related messages, linked to useful resources, and used bold to highlight key points.
Not a single site I referenced was my own, nor did I have any relationship with them. It's just part of providing contextual reference like I do here on this communications channel.
While there were nuggets of useful information on the message board, it's primarily inexperienced newbies. It was amazing the complaint level over something that was slightly different than the garbage advice they see elsewhere.
The lesson is, be careful where you seek information, really test what you find and look at community behavior. You'll find cultural elements highly exaggerated by those least knowledgeable about a topic.
Very often small private message boards can help you sift past the “wanna-be” members who really have nothing better to do than to complain. To build a profitable business-to-business website, you don't have time to waste with false starts and petty chatter.
Turns out you can buy more of these credibility points by donating to the forum, since I have more money than time, I'll just raise my score with contributions. Right now it's more important to find what I or a client is looking for than to worry about the opinions of those who don't know any better.
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Justin Hitt filters out the B.S. to provide only proven and tested Internet marketing strategies for business-to-business selling professionals. To learn more, visit http://justinhitt.com/