I will be giving a talk in October at Startonomics, run by Dave McClure, which is a conference described below:
Startonomics is a one-day workshop designed by entrepreneurs
for entrepreneurs on how to create simple, actionable metrics for
internet startups, and use them to make better product and marketing
decisions for long-term growth and success.
I’ll be doing a session on making money:
Revenue: The Internet Wants to Be Free, but You Need to Get Paid
Learn how to generate revenue using a variety of business models &
strategies including advertising, digital goods, subscriptions, lead
generation, & e-commerce.
Dave asked me to make a contribution to the Startonomics blog, which I’ve cross-posted a preview for.
Enjoy!
Counting your big pile of Benjamins:
5 startup tips for maximizing ad revenue
So you want to make some money, eh?
Every
startup gets to the point where they decide to bring in some ad
revenue, and it’s worthwhile to consider exactly how much money will be
generated through advertising. So in the parlance of the ad industry,
your “ad inventory” is the set of impressions that you have to sell to
people. Let’s talk about modeling that goes beyond the simple reports
into thinking about what drivers influence your CPMs and impression
counts.
This blog post will go over some of the key milestones
that any ad-supported startup will have to face. In particular, we’ll
discuss 5 stages:
- Stage 1: Just getting started
- Stage 2: Layering in new sections
- Stage 3: Thinking about growth
- Stage 4: Adding in multiple ad networks
- Stage 5: Building up brand sales (rep, vertical, direct, or otherwise)
Let’s get started with some basic metrics around CPMs and pageviews…