PC4Media

The Highs & Lows of Startups

This week might go down in my personal history as one of the tougher ones in my startup life. It's crazy. Last week, it seemed like I was on fire. I had all kinds of prospects lined up and ready to go. This week, they all seemed to either forget about me, need to reschedule our meeting, or changed their minds. I know what sales mistakes I made. But, this week has been a bit of a downer, anyways.

Marc Andreessen is right on with this post about startup life:

You will flip rapidly from a day in which you are euphorically convinced you are going to own the world, to a day in which doom seems only weeks away and you feel completely ruined, and back again.

I flipped back about 10 minutes ago. I got a call from a client of mine. They are a brand new client. We sent their first newsletter out. They had 30 people either email them or call them and tell them how awesome their newsletter is. Someone they've known for a long time called him and said, "Hey, I need my roof done." 

That's what email marketing is for: converting suspects into prospects contacts into leads. I ask my prospects how often they call everyone they know to see if they are in the market for their service. Most people laugh because there's no way they could possibly call everyone often enough to catch people when they need something.

There's more to what we do for our clients. But, my point is made: When a customer calls to tell you "It works!", that's the best thing any entrepreneur can hear.

Now, If I could only get my other contractor clients to write their newsletters more regularly. Maybe everyone would be calling me with similar news. Further, selling my service would be a lot easier. Why? My client also told me that he had a prospect for me. Someone who received his newsletter asked him how they did it and he told him how awesome the experience was when he worked with us.

I'm seeing more and more that taking the right customers who I know will succeed with our program, will make my business succeed faster too. It all comes full circle.

Social Networks. Where My Audience At?

Shawn:

When I compare the social networking strategy of Newscorp with the apparent strategy of every other very large media company, I really start to wonder if the entire media executive collective has yet fully grasped that “social networking” is now synonymous with “media distribution.” I mean really – where do we think the audience is these days? Watching TV? Not.

On an unrelated related note... Online social networks are beginning to disrupt the media business. They have mind-share and hour-share over other media in young and internet-geek demographics. They don't have revenue-share yet that makes them much of a threat. But, they will.

And then... online social networks will disrupt industries. Do you really think that social networks are only good for gabbing and listening to music? No. They'll enable collaboration that typically occurs behind corporate walls or industry supply chains.

Either way, Shawn's point is very valid. Media is only the first industry to be disrupted, though.

So, You Think You Can Dance?

What Verticals Command the TOP CPMs?

I could guess as I am sure that many of you could.

But, it'd be nice to know what typical CPMs are for specific verticals.

Here's the CPM that Glam is grabbing for delivering gossip and fashion obsessed women to advertisers.

Anyone know of others? Or a list of top CPM getting verticals?

I'd bet that these are the higher ones from the basic knowlege I've glommed.
But, I don't know for sure.

• Pharma/Drugs
• Gadgets/Electronics
• Mortgage
• Financial Services
• Higher Education
• Auto
• Baby Care/Parenting
• Home Improvement
• Business Opportunities
• Travel
• Jobs

Use the comments to add to the list and take guesses at CPMs. Feel free to start a wiki. Or point me in the right direction.

Shared Professional Resources OR Community Commerce

I was chatting with Jeetu yesterday evening. We were wondering how we motivate a community to invest in a commercial project(s), where a large community funds activities that produce profits, that the community shares. Community Commerce might be the right phrase where members (or partners) make financial, time and social capital contributions towards projects. Then, partners share in the profit [and other benefits] from those projects. However, the projects are professionally managed, or atleast overseen and tracked. Further, the impact of inputs into the process are measured and compensation to individual members/partners are made proportionately.

The typical model of a corporation is to build and own competencies such as product ideation, product development, funding of projects, asset allocation (people and time), promotion, lead generation, etc. But, couldn't many of those functions and decisions be outsourced and automated via a loose network of partners - connected via a social network and online tools?

Then I saw CrushPad Commerce this morning. It doesn't explain in great detail how the money flows. It does demonstrate how tasks that are typically performed in-house can be better done through a collaborative process with multiple stakeholders. Here's a brief from Springwise:

“Crushpad Commerce is a program that allows anyone to turn their passion for wine into a full-fledged commercial wine brand—without the high cost, complexity or time commitment required to operate a traditional winery.” Customers can get help creating their wines, building and marketing their brands, and even making the actual sales. Crushpad Commerce handles the logistics of order fulfillment, storage and distribution of funds, so customers can enjoy the perks of designing and selling their own wines without the hassles.And with so much wine-making and marketing knowledge to be passed around, an online forum is an obvious next step. Recently launched in beta form, Crushnet offers online winemaking discussion groups and even facilitates wine swaps among members.

This is kinda what I was thinking. The benefit of this program is that people can start a business without the hassles of starting a business. The benefit to CrushPad is that they can spread investment risk across a larger group of people.  (I presume that 'label owners' have to pay CrushPad to start their own label.)  Compared to other wineries, they also have a built in Stormhoek-like word of mouth team to help market and sell the product.

What other businesses could this model be applied to? What would you call this model? I think we need a name for it. I think it could be the next generation of online businesses.

Events as Content

I've said this before... Events are a unique type of content: there is a financial incentive for the event producer to get an event published everywhere. Plus, it's like any other content: people want to find it and they seek it out. It's a unique kind of advertisement. Sorta like classifieds. But, a much broader appeal. You only buy a house, a car or seek a job once in a while. People look for events all the time. And events are stronger when people participate together as a community. Events lend themselves to voyeurism and browsing.  Events create memories and photos. Events attract businesses as sponsors.

Zvents strategy has been to help media companies make money from events by offering an easy to launch full featured public calendar, search as well as event listings gathered from indexing and crawling. Right now, they are increasing page views for their partners. In so doing, increasing cpc and cpm revenue. They've connected half of the event value chain. Here's their latest big news. Congrats to Ethan and team.

Zvents is the only company in a crowded field of social event calendars that I think are growing as fast as the opportunity is big. Going.com, Eventful, Involver are all focussed on building their own communities. Whereas, Zvents is focussed on working with publishers. Upcoming.org, now that it is swallowed by Yahoo, is increasingly a search play. I wouldn't count them out at all, as Yahoo has more search traffic than Zvents partners combined (I presume). But, if Zvents can wrap up more partners, they'll have a solid position. (And actually a easily rationalized acquisition target for Yahoo, given their newspaper partnership.) Google, although bringing more capabilities to their calendars, won't figure out the community aspect. Nor do I see them building fancy applications for publishers. They aren't in the data syndication business (besides ads and maps) either, atleast not at this level. 

None of these players are closing the event value chain loop, though. I'll have to define that chain at some point. For now, if anyone of these players wants to talk about how to make a lot of money from events, they can call me.

We Just Accomplished Something Important

Ethan reminds entrepreneurs to enjoy the victories. We all know that this whole invention and adoption process isn't easy.

How Digg Blew It

They didn't develop a business. They have no long term competitive advantage. We'll see clone after clone after clone.  The clones will launch in a different vertical. And it'll all be fragmented. It's a shame. Digg had an opportunity to take what they had and launch new verticals, landed partnerships with media companies to seed each vertical with traffic. Without some serious business development, they'll be nothing more than a niche site for geeks.

Classifieds

Greg Sterling:

As I mentioned in my SEL post, the category “classifieds” (which includes verticals jobs, cars and real estate) is the third largest Internet ad category, capturing 18 percent of online ad spending according to the IAB, behind only display and search. Traditional U.S. directory and classifieds ad revenues were worth more than $30 billion in 2006.

Jobs = career fairs.
Cars = car shows.
Real estate = home shows.

Just making some connections in my head.

Ass Out of U & Me

Assuming makes an ass out of U and Me. But, mostly you.

Fun Summer Events... Did I link to These Yet?

We now upload banner ads in the 'more' commonly used IAB sizes to our client's event websites.  These ads are all over myspace. I know Facebook's  "platform" has made myspace so 'friendster'.