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Interview with Adgitize – Ken Brown –

Heres my interview with founder of Adgitize Ken Brown. This simple interview gives an awsome insight into both the creater and the site itself. I hope you all enjoy this interview and as with Dunbar domains I am hoping to make this a regular interview, but we will have to conform this.

• A little about yourself :

I am a programmer by trade, an entrepreneur in spirit and a marketing person in my day dreams. I have spent 25 years in the direct marketing industry long before the computers and the internet became a reality. Over the years I have managed 43 people in a 3 building operation of a $5 million business In my thirties, I  managed 8 project managers representing $12 million in yearly revenues.

I have great optimism about the future and I am religious in my belief about serving the customer in the best way possible so they receive full value from my services. I love to play basketball, read books (marketing, fiction, biographies, mysteries, and sometimes computer programming), spend time with my wife of 32 years, spend time with my family, garden and travel.

My first forays into the blogosphere were with the web site http://www.youcanlearnseries.com, You Can Learn Series. After creating it and writing over 500 articles from gardening, programming, travel and weightlifting I felt I knew a thing or two about blogging and SEO. It was an easy transition to the confidence I needed to launch Adgitize.

• When did you first have the idea of Adgitize ?

About a year ago, there were conversations on the Entrecard network in the forums about monetizing Entrecard. Graham was reluctant to monetize Entrecard, but there was still a request by the members to charge for premium services. I would listen in and contribute in the Entrecard forums, but it appeared the idea wasn’t going to materialize by the Entrecard leaders.

There did appear to be enough interest to spin off a niche service. In June of 2008, I began working out the details. I wanted to have something different than Entrecard, but I saw a lot of potential in their methodology. I spent at least 2 months working out numbers, different strategies and potential scenarios to make a new ad network. I also spent a lot of time on names. I wanted a name that represented action and I threw out a lot of bad names. I knew I had found the right name when my wife actually found the word Adgitize interesting.

• When did you decide to take the risk and why ?

I decided to take the risk after much analysis and after I had worked through the numbers exhaustively. I didn’t want the business to be a money drain. I had spent 5 years working for a company that received millions of dollars in venture capital, but never had a profitable year. I saw first hand how to make a company fail and I wasn’t going to put myself, my family and the Adgitize members in that same predicament.

• What stages did you go through to make the full launch ?

The stages I went through covered many months. Most dreamers think they can create a company and have it up and running in a week. A simple blog, yes. But a well run business serving thousands of people requires months not days.

The dream begins in the early planning stages. You create ideas and then run some reality checks. If you charge x amount and you bring in this much money how much has to be paid out, how much is still available for operating expenses? What is the competition for your product or service? (There are thousands of blog advertising services.) What is so special about your product or service that makes it stand out from the competition? What is your selling promise and what value are you adding to the marketplace?

Once you have a firm handle on these questions you still should do a reality check. You say you will get 1000 customers a month for your product. Why do you say that? What happens if you get 500, 6000 or 10? Who will process orders? How much do you pay your support team? Is there money in the equation for web servers? Will you farm out any of the work? How much do computer consultants cost?  How soon will you reach a break even point? What happens if it takes 2 years instead of 6 months?

These are all questions you will ask and complete by doing a Business Plan. Don’t try to start a major business without one. Even if you don’t have all the answers you have to at least be asking the questions.

Once, I was comfortable that things were going to be okay in the short term and I was comfortable if the business requires the long term then I proceeded to the next step, Building the infrastructure. This is finding a name for the company, registering the name with the government, setting up the tax structure, finding partners, finding a web hosting company, beginning to find programmers, and beginning to outline the pseudo code so the programmers could build the web site.

At some point after the coding begins you pick a launch date and then hound the programmers (sorry Mary) until you reach the point of launch. The day you launch you question everything you did up to that point and think you are making a huge mistake and all your money, time and effort was put into a losing venture. Then you get one order, two orders and you avert some critical disasters and its official you are in business and it looks good.

Did you have any problems or changes you need to make?

We just made a huge change in April of this year with our publisher payout philosophy. The structure we originally chose for the payout methodology was chosen based on marketing enquiries we made and some market research. It was wrong. But, we are small, flexible and not hampered with ego maniacs that have to have it their way instead of what works in the marketplace. We made changes. We listened some more and we made additional changes. I am getting some great feedback on the new payout methodology and it is definitely the right move.

One of the little known laws of business success is that your customers want you to succeed as much as you do. So, listen to them, they have your interest in mind.

• Are you satisfied with the launch and progress so far?

The launch and progress has been terrific. Have there been problems? Absolutely! The web hosting company we chose worked well for our initial launch. It was a low cost solution that allowed us to enter the marketplace rapidly. But, something happened in January that almost put us out of business. I never did find the actual answer to what happened but pretty much our database was down for over 5 days. I was out of the country and the people trying to resolve the problem did the best they could to get the web site back up and running as fast as possible. The only thing that saved the Adgitize Ad Network from certain failure was when Theresa offered all the current advertisers another full month of ads at our cost.

Now what was important about this decision was not only did we offer free advertising for the month, but we PAID for those ads out of our OWN pocket. This allowed the publishers to still be paid and made sure they weren’t cheated for their services to the network.

We recovered, we definitely lost some good advertisers and I hope they return. I THANK the members that supported us through that crisis and have stayed with us over the long term.

Going back to your business planning, you don’t want to imagine something bad happening to your business, but if it does, do you have excess funds to support you through a major crisis, loss of revenue, loss of members and loss of respect in the community where you do business? Can you survive if something horrible happens?

• Any exclusive plans for Adgitize in the future ?

I don’t know if these are exclusives, but we are transitioning to a new web hosting company in the next month. Sooner rather than later. We have programmers putting in code right now for targeted marketing to our publisher base. I am really excited about that as it will lead to the next level of growth that I hope to launch in 2010. When we begin to do targeted marketing we will be able to provide advertisers with specific numbers for publishers and certain demographics and possibly psychographic information.

How do you feel the credit crunch is affecting you and how are you combating this ?

There are two ways I am seeing the credit crunch right now. It is scary. It is probably keeping some people from spending their hard earned money on advertising for their blog. I don’t blame them. But, with the recent change I alluded to before about our payout methodology, it is providing some of our advertisers who also enjoy writing articles in their blogs, visiting our other advertisers and have some decent traffic; with money to pay for their advertising and a little extra. How easy is it to go to your spouse and say, “I am spending $14 in April and I will make $20 to $30. Is that okay?” The answer will always be yes. It truly is a win-win opportunity.

I personally am very frugal and have to have a high level of confidence in producing a positive outcome before I will spend money these days. I always tell others, you have to do what is right for your family. These are tough times. Don’t gamble with tomorrow’s lunch unless you know it will provide two lunches.

• Any advice for other people who want to launch websites/businesses?

I say go for it. It is hard work. It takes a ton of time. I like to quote Brian Tracy when talking about time and building your own business. “When you start your own business you only have to work half days. And you can choose which 12 hours that will be.” It takes giving up watching basketball, football, spending time with your family and you have to neglect your garden. But, besides that it is the greatest thrill in life to see something you invest in totally succeed and truly help others.

Don’t let mistakes, setbacks and lack of money keep you from pursuing your dreams and goals. When you are without funds, you have to save or find a partner with money and belief in your abilities. Read everything you can get your hands on concerning your dreams. Talk with a lot of people and don’t be afraid to bounce ideas off of other people. See what other’s say. At the very least it might open your eyes to something you hadn’t counted on. It could make or break you.

Build prototypes in the early days and continually do reality checks. Those are so important to keep you from getting in over your head in the early days.

Anything else you want to say ?

I think the recent changes by Entrecard to finally monetize their operation shows that my decisions about Adgitize were correct. What sets Adgitize apart from Entrecard is we encourage bloggers to do what bloggers should be doing, writing articles in their blog. They shouldn’t be dropping 300 business cards across the blogosphere. If you want to advertise pay a reasonable fee and get the extra traffic, but in the meanwhile work faithfully to make your blog worth visiting and hone your writing skills to keep people coming back again and again.

I have truly enjoyed this opportunity to tell your readers a little about myself and Adgitize. You know we are still a baby company. We still have a lot of mistakes to make and I can see tremendous opportunity in the near future. One of my goals is to have the members scoring between 300 and 500 points each day earning in excess of $100 a month. We will need more advertisers, more publishers and quite frankly more ideas to make this all happen, but I am working hard to make it happen.

Related posts:

1. Interview with Adgitize – July 09
2. Adgitize to Provide Targeted Marketing
3. Adgitize – 1 (and a bit) Years On
4. True Cost of Advertising on Adgitize
5. Drive Traffic to Your Blog with Adgitize – from Adgitize