BellaOnline Forums Beauty and Self Cosmetics Forum Rules - let's do this together!

Hi everyone! TGIF!! I'm so happy that it's finally Friday! We get to drop the kids off at my parents place tonight and we head off to a bed and breakfast for the weekend. A much needed break!

So I was thinking, I want to know what you all want to read about and talk about. And the best way to do this is to establish a set of rules.

I put up a poll and although there's still lots of time to vote, it looks like one of the rules will be: no vendor soliciation. In other words, if you are a vendor in the cosmetics or related industry, you cannot solicit your business. You can post advice but you can't say; but my products or try my services.

Any thoughts on that?

How about vendors putting their info in signature lines? Do you all mind that? Is it okay?

Over to you now! <img src="/images/graemlins/kiss.gif" alt="" />

Well, if( and it is a BIG IF) vendors were to actually read the rules and post accordingly that would be nice. I would be the first to give a big thumbs up to such a rule...

I know Roni. Well, if they break the rule, the post will just get deleted, that's all. And if they continue to be bad then they'll get banned. How's that?

CC, I think it's a good idea, setting some sort of rule about posts being nothing more than links to a webmaster's 'buy this!' site. How many times do we run internet searches seeking information, only to find the results contain nothing but product vendors' listings? Remember when those little ad images for e-bay and Amazon used to show up, in those listings? The ones in the form of a search box? My grandkids loved it when I'd run a search on their names, and they could read 'Buy (their names) at Amazon', or 'Find (their names) at e-bay'. My personal favorite term to enter was 'self respect', someting I discovered I could 'find', or 'buy', at the aforementioned selling sites.

If a person is selling a product, or service, I don't have any objection to there being a link posted to their site, as long as the body of their post has someting to say, other than 'Check out this product!', or 'Try this today!', or other such phrases. You sell a product? Do you use it yourself? Do you have some info, or insight about this product to share, that isn't part of an over-all marketing campaign? Great! That might prove interesting reading.

www.intouchwithjeannine.com

From a vendor perspective, we certainly want to tell everyone in your forum about our company and our products. But, more importantly, we want to help others in your forum find solutions in our products that they may not have found with other cosmetic lines.

For example, we offer cosmetics inspired for Women of Color. This is a very deserving market for new product offerings, as there is a perceptible lack of variety in product options with regards to pricing, color palettes and specific skin care needs (such as oil-free products, aloe-based products, and shea butter products) in the cosmetics industry.

We truly feel that introducing our presence in the cosmetics marketplace via BellaOnline and other cosmetics forums offers your participants an opportunity to use and discuss our products candidly in an open forum. In addition, we would never take advantage of this opportunity by attempting to spam your site with new messages/threads. Our business is all about solutions and giving back through charity.

Jeannine, as always, a great pleasure to read you writings! That's exactly what I'm saying.

Hi Scone!! I haven't forgotten about you!!! I'm still thinking <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I hear you too, especially since I'm in the industry as well. Not selling products, but selling services.

How about then we do a showcase once a week? We'll allow vendors such as yourself (and by the way people, scone's cosmetic line is just incredible! and i'll be featuring them in an article soon!) to come in and talk about what's new, what's hot with your line. What do you think?

That would be a wonderful opportunity. We would love to participate.

Ha! I knew you wouldn't say "no" to that! Thanks scone!