An electronic bulletin board is a website where ads are placed.

Initially, this concept referred exclusively to BBS. However, as the Internet spread, many sites appeared, quite similar to ordinary household bulletin boards or advertising newspapers. They inherited the name of electronic bulletin boards (however, the abbreviation BBS in relation to such Russian-language resources is rarely used). Their content is a set of advertisements of a commercial and / or non-commercial nature and is placed both on a paid and free basis, depending on the specific site. Many advertising companies that have paper publications and work in the field of television and radio advertising also create and maintain their own electronic bulletin boards.

Principles of Operation 

An electronic bulletin board is functionally similar to an ordinary one: it is a site where everyone can post their ad, and all site visitors can read it. Electronic bulletin board, as a rule, is divided into several thematic sections, according to the content of the ads.

Most electronic whiteboards are free. To place his ad, the user only needs to enter in a special form his topic, his name / pseudonym or the name of the organization, as well as the coordinates: e-mail address, postal address, phone, URL of his site, etc. (the data set depends on the specific resource). As a rule, only the names of the authors and the topics of the ads are displayed, and to view the full text of the ad, the user must click on the link leading to it. In some boards, only registered users can submit ads, in some - all. Now on the Internet there are thousands and even tens of thousands of bulletin boards. Usually, each of them is dedicated to a particular type of ads. There are national bulletin boards designed for residents of a particular area.

Electronic bulletin boards are of two types: moderated (those that have a so-called moderator - a person who controls the work of this board) and non-moderated - working automatically.

Most bulletin boards on the Internet involve placing ads for the sale and purchase of goods and services. But there are also such services that offer to place ads about the transfer of various things as a gift, as well as about the search for new owners for pets, which are transferred into good hands free of charge. Free ads are the best way to express yourself, your products and services on the Internet. On the pages of bulletin boards there are thousands of free ads about real estate, cars, services, job search, dating, buying and selling equipment, computers, means of communication and so on. Bulletin boards allow you to place an ad with a photo and without additional registration. You can place not only a free ad, but also an ad on a commercial basis – for maximum efficiency.

Ways to improve the effectiveness of your ads
You can increase the effectiveness of the ad by adding a detailed description of the product or service, photos, as well as the exact cost of the product, its location and delivery terms. It is recommended that you specify the maximum number of contacts in the ad, which may include a phone number, e-mail address and ICQ. By using keywords in the title and text of your ad, you can ensure that your ad starts appearing in search engines on the first page of search results for the specified words. This will attract visitors from search engines to the ad page.

In many cases, placing an ad on only one board does not bring the desired effect. Therefore, it makes sense, as with the use of household boards, to place ads on several resources at once. In cases where the expected effect is achieved by placing on less than ten boards, this can be done manually. If the meaning of the ad is to reach the widest possible audience, then it is desirable to place it immediately on dozens of electronic boards, and here the means of automating this work are already needed.

In addition, the greatest attention of consumers is enjoyed by those ads that are located on the very first page of the electronic board. Sorting the same messages (announcements) is done in the simplest way - by the date of receipt, that is, older messages are continuously shifted to the second, third pages, and further. Therefore, it is necessary when regularly publishing ads to monitor the constant renewal of your message on the first page.

Both problems are solved by using catalogs of electronic boards and special programs for automatically sending announcements to a large number of boards at once - from dozens to hundreds, as well as sites on which there are online versions of such programs.

But recently, due to the large number of appearances of web boards (bulletin boards), it is worth paying special attention to some criteria when submitting an ad to them. First, the bulletin board must have a regional attachment; if there is none, then it is better not to work with this site, it is not moderated and contains a lot of "junk" messages. Secondly, each ad should be located on a separate page optimized for search engines. Then your ad will be seen not only by users of the board, but also by people from search engines who are interested in a particular product or service.

Internet services related to bulletin boards
There are special web services that work with bulletin boards. There are also specialized bulletin boards, the administration of which welcomes the addition of strictly thematic ads for one or more industries, types of goods or services.