Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on February 23, 2008 – 2:58 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Tino Buntic, the man who gave the blogosphere a face with the really viral 2000 bloggers initiative, recently started a new project: PlaceMyProduct. It’s a marketplace where people can sell all kinds of ads, sponsorships, and product placements. It focuses on helping bloggers and webmasters to monetize their sites.
Buntic told me how came up with the idea: “I had another website and I wanted to sell ads for it directly, without using an automated ad network. Really, the only way to do that was to solicit advertisers and to include an ad sales page. I could have done that, but there were other questions: What should I price the ads at? What if I price it too high and nobody buys? What if I price it too low and I lose revenue as a result?
Probably recognizable questions for bloggers, and the answer could be PlaceMyProduct. “I’m not looking to change online advertising. I’m offering another option. People will always use ad networks because it’s easy to place some code on your site and have the ads show up automatically. PlaceMyProduct will be perfect for those that have value for direct advertisers and for those that come up with new ways for people to advertise”, Buntic explains.
“I’m not looking to change online advertising. I’m offering another option.”
So people can get creative with their ads. Earlier this month I wrote an article about people who sell unconventional spaces as adds. Leah Culver for instance was able to afford a MacBook by letting companies advertise on it. PlaceMyProduct sort of institutionalized these weird ways of making money.
When I checked out the service, I noticed two things. First of all, there isn’t much bidding going on yet. And second, some blogs who auction their adspace aren’t of a great quality. So I asked Buntic whether he has set up some quality standards. “Anybody can place bids. But to create a profile on the site, it goes through an approval process. The site just launched so I’m approving more than I should be. But shortly, we’ll be looking at only approving profiles that are quality.”
PlaceMyProduct needs some more traffic to become an interesting way for bloggers and developers to make money. Yet it’s noteworthy that entrepreneur Buntic has the guts to start initiatives like this. Since when I was talking with him about Canadian start-up culture, he told me it isn’t that lively. “Everybody I know is afraid to start a business. They work the regular 9-5. Don’t know why. It makes it tough, though. There’s very little support.”
If you’d like to know more about PlaceMyProduct, Andrew Wee wrote a thorough piece about security questions and anti fraud measures.
I hope you like that post!
The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our '
About' page and subscribe to our
RSS feed.
Do you have a start-up that we should write about?
Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
Written on January 12, 2008 – 10:33 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Money makes the world go round. Really! Even when it comes to Facebook, we don’t discuss privacy. No, we talk about monetization. Because THAT is the main issue, according to Dave McClure from Master of 500 hats:
While Facebook annual growth at 130%+ is impressive, as is pulling in $300M in cash for just 2% of equity, the fact that Facebook really hasn’t figured out where its core future revenue stream is coming from is a problem. It’s a problem for the company, for its growing developer community, for the advertisers it’s working so hard to get, and ultimately — if it doesn’t figure it out — for its users.
McClure writes that every platform monopolist has a money engine. Google for instance, has Adsense, Microsoft is earning big bucks with Windows & Office and Intel loves the chips.
Clearly, McClure is the expert here. He’s the one who has 20 years of experience and I’m just around for two years. Yet, I have the feeling that finding the ultimate money source shouldn’t be the number one priority for Facebook. If you asked me, I would say that loving your users is the smart thing to do. Treat them right, listen to their wishes and fulfill their needs. If they say that those damn Snowball, Super Wall and whatever application you can make up, is starting to irritate them, you give them an anti-clutter tool.
As McClure says: “Google took nearly 3-4 years to figure out its monetization engine (Adwords)”. Isn’t that because they were improving their services for the users, and while doing so, came up with a brilliant idea to make some money out of them? Let Facebook do they same. Improve their service, and with that, wipe out the competition. And of course, always keep your eyes open for that money engine. The traditional American business motto ‘be good for your customers’, is still valid in this new era.
More money talk: Mika from Dosh Dosh describes 16 types of websites you can create for profit. “Successful web entrepreneurs think like investors”, says Mika. So they build auction-, dating- and affiliate review websites…
However, I was once told by Scott Heiferman, CEO and co-founder of Meetup.com, that you shouldn’t start an Internet company with an advertise driven mind. During a seminar at New York University in 2006, he explained that his business statement is: “Are you gonna help people or not?”
Let’s all think about that for a while. Are we gonna serve users? Are we going to help them fixing their street, meeting people with the same hobby or protecting their children? Or are we’re just interested in making money out of them?
Written on December 8, 2007 – 10:49 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
My guess is that 95% of all current businessplan mention Google at the first logical exit partner. It used to be Yahoo and Microsoft before that. But it seems that there is another company that is swimming in cash and looking for innovative companies to aqcuire: Apple.
“Apple can afford to spend a billion, or 2, to acquire your company”
With a cash reserve of up to $15 billion (Source: Fortune) they sure can afford to spend a couple of billion on your business. And you might say that they are a hardware company and are probably not interested in your little Web2.0 scheme. But Apple is so much bigger than just hardware these days. They are a hardware, software, telephony, music, ecommerce and multimedia company. One thing they aren’t yet is a search or social network company. But why not change that? iTunes was a Mac only product at first but then turned ‘PC’ after a year or so and is THE music player on Windows now.
What if Apple would acquire Facebook? They can afford it, in cash, and would suddenly become THE online social network player with the hippest offline social meeting places in the world: The Apple store.
Yep, it is time for Apple to start making some acquisitions in the Internet world. What will YOU sell to Apple in 2008?
Email
Facebook
Netlog
Linkedin
Twitter
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
