Selling advertising space on forums

[RantyDave]

Originally Posted by QsKGlobal.com

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.

Originally Posted by QsKGlobal.com

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.

Originally Posted by QsKGlobal.com

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