Part 2 : Future plans

The FunnyMail website now has a jokes database, links, etc., all of which complement the mailing lists but are crowd-pullers in their own right. What's the relationship between website and email publications in terms of your time, effort and future development?
The Web site and newsletters will continue to complement each other in order to make sure that you will always be able to get a laugh at any time of day. Our time and effort is usually spent thinking about what content or service we should add for our users next, the question of how to distribute the new offering is a secondary consideration.

Historically, I'd say that new ideas are routinely first tested on the Web site and then if it is feasible we start an email newsletter to enhance the service for the user.

You run discussion forums at the site. Why, and has that brought any problems?
We want FunnyMail.com to be a community and allow users to enjoy what we have to offer as well as share what they have to offer. The message board allows users to express themselves and sometimes we get people that try to toss a wrench into our community via the message board, but this is more of an inconvenience for us than a truly difficult problem.

Reporting troublemakers to their ISP can work wonders for their attitude :) However, keep in mind that although this is a last resort measure we take to protect our viewers, it is extremely effective. Once these lost souls find out that they are not completely anonymous on the Web and that they are accountable for their actions, they change their tune real fast.

You also had free email addresses but have stopped taking new members - what's the story there?
We originally allowed the FunnyMail.com name to be branded as Web based email about a year ago. Since then, our users have not been consistently getting the best quality service possible. Now since we have such a high quality, no additives, no preservatives nor artificial sweeteners approach to our business, we decided we had to fix this little problem before our users began to think we weren't always using the best ingredients in our proverbial cyberstew.

And here's the good news; we have just completed negotiations to make certain that the email service meets our standards and our users' expectations. So once again we have relinquished evil from our corner of the online universe and we are planning to allow new members to sign-up for free email accounts shortly (cue triumphant symphony music).

So where's FunnyMail headed in the long-term?
Hmm... I'd tell you if I knew, but in the long-term we know that what we are planning today will probably be a bit different from where we wind up tomorrow. We've modified our original business plan so many times I don't think that it even remotely resembles what we originally thought FunnyMail.com was going to be.

Just to give you a hint of where we see things heading for FunnyMail, at our next business plan review the topics that we will discuss include:

• licensing and cobranding possibilities
• additional newsletters
• audio/video content
• new subscription/unsubscription process
• wireless web
• HTML mail

One thing for sure is that we are getting much bigger, forming more partnerships and becoming an even more popular Web site.

Just one more question Aaron, with all that humor around, what does it take to get your staff to really laugh?
Rubber chickens, whoopee cushions, squirting flowers and CNN... ah, the classics never get old! We have a real light office atmosphere where joking around is not just our business, it's our way of life.

We're probably not that much different than most other dot com offices where people surf the 'net for fun and forward funny jokes, pics and Web sites around to one another. I guess the only thing that sets us apart is that we actually get paid to do it.

Usually we find some good weird sites online that just make us laugh just because we can't believe they actually exist. Just visit The Bizarre Bazaar if you would like to see some of the things that we manage to find online.

Continued...