Selling advertising space on forums

[RantyDave]

Yeah, I know how this looks - new member, only one post ... but bear with me. Everybody has to start somewhere.

I've been interested, for quite a while now, in building a company that specialises in working with forum administrators to sell advertising on their sites. In essence the idea is to have a shared infrastructure ... a supported mod, provisioning/payment infrastructure, and most importantly a shared marketing effort and general economies of scale to get companies to actually advertise. It's a pretty common model in the blogosphere and they have companies such as BlogAds (http://www.blogads.com/), arguably Federated Media (http://www.federatedmedia.net/) and even the really blatant astroturfing companies like Review Me (http://www.reviewme.com/) making it such that midsize blogs and upwards to make a return to their authors. Why not do the same for forums?

To date I've been doing some homework. Answering questions like: are there enough forums (yes); do they get enough hits (yes); is it technically possible (yes); and do administrators sit on vbulletin.org asking each other how to make enough money to cover their hosting costs (apparently so). I've had a word with one or two media buyers who seem interested and the "people who finance startups" are keen once they can see some traction ... and who can blame them. It's on this last point that the decision has finally been taken that I should stop mucking about and just get on with it, so I have.

So, Hi, this is what I'm up to. Would really appreciate some feedback though since the company absolutely relies on the idea that administrators would like to make a buck or two, and I'm fortunately sufficiently ego-free to know that there's a whole shedload of stuff that I just don't know and haven't thought of. Please let me know what it is.

Cheers,
Dave

(davep @ atomicdroplet dot com)

[RZ500]

Great Idea, I have 2 good ones in Spanish :)

[QsKGlobal.com]

The idea is good, but I seriously doubt it will work out. I don't like to be the pessimistic one, but people trust companies like google, yahoo, etc to deal out payments. But no one knows you, nor your company. How will you get people to sign up for advertising, two media clients...would they be able to adapt their content to fit different boards like other ad programs? There would be A LOT of money coming out of your pocket with probably no profit for a long time, if never.

[RantyDave]

I don't like to be the pessimistic one, but people trust companies like google, yahoo, etc to deal out payments. But no one knows you, nor your company.
True. Mind you, not handing out payments would be a really quick way of derailing the whole business, eh? Forum administrators, by their very nature, are people who are a part of online communities. Just one black mark and I'd be down forever. It's hardly worth my while for a few bucks here and there, but the criticism (and concern) has been taken on board.
How will you get people to sign up for advertising, two media clients...would they be able to adapt their content to fit different boards like other ad programs?
Ah, the old chicken and egg ... this does indeed bother me. I can see two solutions: The first is to contact the media buyers first, find out which campaigns they are running then find a board that would suit them; the other is to start by providing a "self serve" infrastructure for smaller advertisers then working out from there.

Having thought about it long and hard I think the second is the way to go since this gives us a way of building a portfolio of sites with which to approach media shops. The downside is more up-front development. But hey, I'll live.
There would be A LOT of money coming out of your pocket with probably no profit for a long time, if never.
Ah, yeah, maybe. This isn't my first startup ... I'm going into it with my eyes open and don't think it's a "get rich quick" scheme. OTOH I do know a man in Nigeria who needs to move a few million dollars - bound to work, right?

Dave