Blah Blah Blah...But Still Clueless
By Nathan Schorr (3 points), August 17, 2007 — 6 CommentsHi everyone:
I’m 23, with a great idea, convinced 3 others to quite their jobs and help me program and build what I know I will be the next ESPN but online…Blahsports.com (shamless plug- sign up for beta testing please!).
The site is only days away from launch, just wrapping up some details. While most of the team is plugging away the keyboard, I am busy drawing up a business plan to present to startup incubators (Y Combinators type of programs). The thing is that I know we have a wonderful idea and are targeting a niche market, I still have to draw up financial plans which includes the pricing for our banners (our first way to monetize will be ads). That’s where my problem starts, I have absoluty NO idea on how much to charge, where I can get sponsors (banner clients), should I put banners up on the homepage right from day 1, should I use Adsense to get our first dollars? ...I know the internet is chalk full of info but there is just so much to go through and I was hoping that I could get some juice out of the readers of Found|Read. However I am sorry if these question are to elementary…but the worst question is the one that goes unasked ;-)
About Nathan Schorr
I am currently working on my second startup but this time I am in charge...!
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Talk about this idea
(2 points)
August 20, 06:08 am
I think you shouldn’t put banners up on the homepage or any page of your website right from day 1. First, make sure you are offering your users a web site that fits their needs. Get as much feedback as you can, tune your website according to your users suggestions and after that’s done, start thinking about monetizing your site. This process will take you at least a month, maybe two.
(2 points)
August 20, 06:08 am
I think you shouldn’t put banners up on the homepage or any page of your website right from day 1. First, make sure you are offering your users a web site that fits their needs. Get as much feedback as you can, tune your website according to your users suggestions and after that’s done, start thinking about monetizing your site. This process will take you at least a month, maybe two.
(17 points)
August 20, 07:08 am
what i am wondering is with no visitors no data on the kind of visitors and the stickiness of the site who would be ready to pay money for ads on the site.
I guess you can make a better case of selling your inventory when you have had some usage statistics.
So my recommendation hold your horses till a few months into launch.
As far as business plan goes …do projected visitors and projected page views. USe this data to build a business case rather than ads and ad rates.
(3 points)
August 20, 12:08 pm
I wanted to be very open and I have different views on advertising. Regardless of what your website does, a month after you launch include an advertise page. There are people who advertise on websites that look like crap, i am pretty sure yours will be better but do it after a month because usually once you launch you will have a few changes to make. So, do that after the first month of your launch. And also use Google Analytics, its free and trust me its very helpful, I used it on all of my websites and it helped me in advertising on websites that referred my site the most etc. So do determine proper rates/sizes and include that option a month after you launch. Think about it.
(3 points)
August 22, 06:08 am
Does 1 dollar per 1000 prints sound about right? Is that a good starting price for the website (I have to make projections for my business plan…)
(1 point)
August 24, 07:08 pm
Have you checked into how much money ESPN makes/loses?