|
An
Inside Look at A Success Story
I
recently had the privilege to sit down with Scott Brew of JoeCartoon.com
and discuss the web site and what has made it a success. What
follows is both an entertaining and enlightening look at one of
the most popular humor web sites on the Internet, and how they
use affiliate and pay-per-click programs successfully to generate
in excess of $100,000 per month in revenues.
The interview follows a simple question and answer format with
your's truly asking the questions, and Scott providing the insight
about Joecartoon.com. Let us begin:
Question
(Ryan): To start, can you tell me a little bit about your
site, how it came about, and how much traffic you currently receive?
Answer (Scott): The JoeCartoon Site has been around since
July of 1998, but it exploded in popularity earlier this year
when one of Joe's animations (The Frog in the Blender) was "virally
marketed" via email. We also got some help from the folks
at Macromedia when they named JoeCartoon.com their "Site
of the Day" back in May.
The site currently does about 15,000,000 page views per month
and ranks anywhere from 450-600 in the "most popular web
sites" lists (depending on whether you're talking to MediaMetrix
or PCDataOnline).
Question (Ryan): Obviously, given the nature of your site,
you have a lot of bandwidth charges. How did you first try to
offset these expenses?
Answer (Scott): I've been working with Joe since May and
to be honest, no one initially realized how popular the site was.
We knew it was generating a lot of traffic, but didn't realize
it was so huge until we actually saw the server logs ourselves
(35GB/day!).
Joe had simply migrated from one local ISP to another (throttling
every connection he sat on). Once the math was figured and we
saw what the expense would be with a hosting provider that could
actually support the site, we immediately knew that the solution
was to develop advertising revenues from the site.
Question (Ryan): When did you start displaying ads from
pay-per-click networks, and how have they been received by your
visitors?
Answer (Scott): Ads first appeared on JoeCartoon.com on
May 13, 1999. The visitors have generally taken kindly to it.
Especially after Joe addressed the banner advertising in his newsletter
and indicated that the banner revenues were his source for income,
which in turn is his source for beer, which in turn is his source
for new material... not many complaints after that.
Question (Ryan): It sounds like you have been quite successful
with banners on your site. Would you mind sharing with ClickQuick's
subscribers how well programs like TeknoSurf, ValueClick and Click
Agents have worked for you?
Answer (Scott): We've run significant inventory (over 1,000,000
impressions each) with Teknosurf, ValueClick, and Click Agents.
I've been happy with the level of support and payment history
of all of them, but the best click through rates we've seen are
with Teknosurf.
Some raw numbers: Average click-through rate is about 3.2% for
Advertising.com,
1.8% for ValueClick,
and 1.3% for Click
Agents. We're currently running an effective CPM rate of around
$8. Since we added banners at the bottom of the pages this month,
our total inventory will be about 25,000,000 ad impressions in
October. Revenue from the site exceeds $100,000/month.
Question (Ryan): How about affiliate programs?
Answer (Scott): We haven't done a lot of affiliate stuff.
My opinion is that Affiliate Programs have to be topical for a
site's visitors to really get good use out of them. I just haven't
found a lot of intelligently designed Affiliate Programs which
I would consider reasonably related to Joe's content.
We have a co-branded
site with PC Flowers and Gifts which is linked through the
JoeCartoon "Shoppin' Maul", but it has not been a significant
portion of our revenue stream.
I also see us moving into the Mailbits
types of programs at some point as well, but not before there
is sufficient incentive and customization available for us to
do it (did you hear that Andrew and John?).
Question (Ryan): Your results surely seem to be above the
industry average. Is there anything you can share as to why your
site is so successful? And, as for click-through ratios, what
have you done to improve them?
Answer (Scott): I think there are several aspects of the
JoeCartoon site that allow for above-average results. First, the
content itself is above-average. I think the primary driver of
the quality of a site visit is the quality of the site content.
In other words, if you provide a user with a compelling experience,
they are likely to reward you with loyalty and attentiveness to
the ads you place in front of them.
Second, despite all the broadband hype, the web is still primarily
running on 33.6k or at best 56k modems. To be blunt, banners generally
load quicker than large Macromedia Flash animations and the visitor
is left staring at the ad for several seconds. Each second that
goes by increases the likelihood that the visitor is going to
click on the ad. Luckily, we have very loyal fans, so they always
come back after visiting the sponsors. :)
Third, I think the "industry average" click through
rate is a skewed statistic. It is a victim of the inexperienced
webmasters who slap 5 banners on a page with almost no content.
I believe over exposure of banner advertising will not only lower
the click through rate (which is obvious), but also lower the
site's total clicks (i.e. a user who may have had their attention
drawn to and clicked through on the single banner at the top of
a page is simply turned off by the flood of them when there are
five on every page). A site needs to have an appropriate balance
of content and advertising in order to maximize clicks.
My belief through working with several other sites in addition
to JoeCartoon.com is that with the right ad network and good content,
a site should expect a minimum 1-1.5% CTR.
Question (Ryan): You make some excellent points there.
Even with this success, I am sure a few problems came up along
the way. Do you have any recommendations for ClickQuick visitors
on how to avoid potential pitfalls?
Answer (Scott): We've made no mistakes. :) Just kidding.
Joe would say our biggest mistake was putting pop-up banners on
the front page. They seem to remain fairly unpopular, though we
got a significant number of click-throughs out of it.
I'd say our initial attempts to work through the CPM sponsors
(Flycast, 24/7, Phase2, L90) was an unmitigated disaster. I don't
see how those companies justify 40-50% commissions on $3-$5 run
of network CPM deals. I think most sites can work pay-per-click
networks and yield higher net CPMs than with the likes of Burst!,
Flycast, 24/7, etc. can produce (unless you're an extremely well-known,
targeted name brand).
I think another mistake we've struggled with is the missed opportunities.
I hate leaving money on the table. I'm convinced there's a lot
more to be done with JoeCartoon.com and the biggest challenge
is to develop the "advertising value" without cheapening
our visitor's experience.
Question (Ryan): To sum things up, what would be your one
recommendation to other aspiring webmasters and site builders
out there regarding pay-per-click and affiliate programs?
Answer
(Scott): Trust the community resources that are freely
available. Learn from the other webmasters who have gone before
you. The ClickQuick site, the webmaster discussion boards, etc.
all helped me to make informed decisions, rather than jumping
into something blind.
Thank you very much for your time Scott. For those of you with
more interest, Scott has recently formed his own company called
Adtegrity.
Adtegrity's goal is provide effective revenue management solutions
for higher volume web sites. For more information, check out the
Adtegrity web site or, you can email Scott directly at: mailto:publisher@adtegrity.com
|
