My plan: A discussion site. Each week a new question/thread will be posed by the moderator. Then the members can respond. As a secondary objective, we'd like to sell a product or two. Perhaps some ads as well. What form do you see a business like this taking. A blog? A formal discussion forum? A website combined with either of the two. I'm completely new to ebusiness. Any direction to a good, step by step guide would be helpful.
I would say use forum coz its more flexible in term of amount of post and member. And you can use various forum function such as ban ip.
You can have a combination of both. You can have communities on it where a member can join and create too then posts mini blogs and forum threads and replies.
Go for a blog. What's the point of a fully functional forum if members can only post in one topic? It's also easier to earn money through blogs than through a forum.