The Deck http://www.coudal.com/deck/

[Vyoma 0]

This is one of the elite or as they call the primier advertising network. They compromise of a handful of high quality websites - 'A List Apart', 'Coudal Partners', 'Design Observer', '37 Signals', 'Waxy.org', 'Daring Fireball', 'Kottke.org', and 'The Morning News'. I am a frequent visitor to few of these websites myself, and I am pretty impressed with their quality of content.But, here, I would like share with you what I learned about 'The Deck' and their business model. (It was no great work, as it was all in the Deck's homepage.The Deck offers advertisers to advertise on these 8 websites. They are selective in who they choose to advertise too - even their advertiser happen to fall under the group of quality-and-standards. And they take only ten advertisers every month. Hence, there is a 10% exposure in all the pages of the group of these elite, high traffic, websites. The ads are not diluted by placement of any other ads. And they charge a pretty hefty sum for that.I found it quite amazing, because for quite some time, I have been thinking. Presently I have just started a website, and I run Google Adsense ads on them. Now, I was hoping that once I get enough traffic and revenue and credibility on the web, I would stop using Adsense, and shift to taking Advertisers myself - direct deal without the middle man. And mulling over that, I knew that would be hard. Gainging traffic and revenue is difficult. And to do so with credibility is more difficult. (And I am hell bent to do it the straigh path and not take any crooked side path). And it would be quite some time before I can start receiving 'quality' advertisers.But this concept by Deck seems to be a good one. May be if I can find few other websites with standards at par with my website, a similar ad-network may be used instead of taking the market alone. Ofcourse, that would involve a lot of designing, as to how the revenue is tracked amoung the group and such things, but I think that would be easier than trying to attract advertisers alone. I mean, since a group as a whole would have higher traffic, as a package, we can get better deals. (Any AstaHoster thinking of working this out? )So, what is your opinion?

[SP Rao 0]

But this concept by Deck seems to be a good one. May be if I can find few other websites with standards at par with my website, a similar ad-network may be used instead of taking the market alone. Ofcourse, that would involve a lot of designing, as to how the revenue is tracked amoung the group and such things, but I think that would be easier than trying to attract advertisers alone. I mean, since a group as a whole would have higher traffic, as a package, we can get better deals. (Any AstaHoster thinking of working this out? )

Well my friend, it is really a charming concept indeed. I've seen collaboration in many places, not too uncommon. The purpose differs though.

You say you want to have a network of classic websites may be limited to a handful. (I guess you want to have network of around 10 websites, roughly. More than that can be chaotic) And then you share the revenues based on a predefined rule. First problem would be to identify the rule. While you are bidding for an ad as a single unit, you'll have to have concrete guidelines on revenue sharing. It again might depend on whether the advertizer wants to place the ad as Pay Per Click or Pay Per Thousand Impressions or a fixed time based advertizing. If it is either of type Pay Per Click or Pay Per Thousand Impressions you might figure out a way to share the revenue quite conveniently. Have individual counters for every site and your problems are solved. If the price is fixed then the sharing process might be a little more complex.

Anyway, I'm just elaborating on what you said. Just to extend it a further.

As far as the offer goes, I'm interested once my site comes up. Now my site is of no use to you mate

[Vyoma 0]

Exactly what I said in terms of a definite rule, as to how the revenue is shared. I do not have any plans of it yet, but we can go either ways. But as with 'The Deck' we can give a definet flat package for the advertizers. We would be able to do that only if we are able to maintain standards, and have high traffic as a group. With in this group, revenue may be shared based on the ratio or persentage of clicks/impression generated by that website amoung the group.Say, the group has only 2 websites. We charge the advertizers a flat fee. If site A generates 60% of the clicks/impressions and site B generates the remaining, then they would share the revenue in that ratio. So, even if the price is fixed for the Advertiser, we can share within the group in a fair setup. This is the basics I am talking about, but there would be other factors of transactional overheads and book keeping that we need to look into.And this is in a bit of future for me too because I too have quite a bit of work to do to get my website to level of standards.

[webintern 0]

It's an interesting concept, Vyoma. I believe such a collaboration of high-quality websites would market well as a group to potential advertisers.I am nevertheless curious about one point: the fair division of advertising-generated revenue. I understand when you said that site A with 60% of the traffic would earn 60% of the total income, and so forth. On the other hand, how would you fairly divide the income while taking into account the possibility for fraud? Site A can "artificially" increase its traffic through dubious means. If the overall income for the group is proportionate to the amount of traffic received (e.g., 1000 hits for Site A equals $1 and 500 hits for Site B equals fifty cents that the advertisers must pay), then this is not a problem. Site B is not penalized for Site A's inflated numbers. But if you charge a flat fee, then Site A's "artificially" increased traffic would mean that it would get a larger percentage of that flat fee (e.g., 1000 hits for Site A equals 2/3 of flat fee and 500 hits for Site B equals 1/3 of flat fee. Alternatively, 5000 fake hits for Site A equals 91% of flat fee and 500 legitimate hits for Site B equals a mere 9% of the flat fee).By the way, I am not suggesting that your future partners will try to deceive you or engage in questionable practices. I am simply curious what mechanisms you plan to put in place to protect each member of the group from potential fraud. In any case, I wish you the best with your website and future advertising plans.

[SP Rao 0]

By the way, I am not suggesting that your future partners will try to deceive you or engage in questionable practices. I am simply curious what mechanisms you plan to put in place to protect each member of the group from potential fraud. In any case, I wish you the best with your website and future advertising plans.

 

You speak my mind webintern. Honestly I had similar doubts. But if you are running this network among friends this fraud problem might not arise. But yes, definitely there should be a mechanism to check frauds. I think when Vyoma came up with the concept, he was just impressed by its potential of the collaboration. Though he was aware of all the issues which might crop up, he wanted to put forward the idea in front of like minded audience so that the idea or say dream gets shaped up into reality.

 

I'm sure similar thought about fraud must be running inside Vyoma's mind. I'm also certain that there is way to solve this problem. I too am working on the concepts Vyoma, though I'm not really sure about how much codeing effort I'll be able to afford at this stage. But you can be sure that I too am thinking about it. And sure I'll come up with some ideas

 

As far as others go, if anyone else sees the constructive potential of the concept, I'd reckon you put forward your views. I see potential here, raw potential. All it needs is regulations!

 

Anyway Vyoma, any help in this endevour, you know how you can reach me

[webintern 0]

While I posed a question about the potential abuse of the system (i.e., fraud), I am by no means trying to discourage you or criticize the concept. I think it is a great idea. I see that the more high-profile websites you gather in your group, the greater is your leverage when asking for advertising dollars. It also communicates the "prestige" (for lack of better words) of each website in your group. It is no mystery that the behemoths in industry have more bargaining power than the Mom-and-Pop shops down the street. This should work well in the Internet realm as well.Keep us updated about how everything is progressing. I am certainly interested in seeing you succeed in this endeavor.

[Vyoma 0]

That is right SP Rao, and webintern I understand that you were not discouraging the idea.

 

I am aware that there can be a lot of fraudulant activities that some may involve themselves into. If you have any idea of how many get banned by Google Adsense, one will know what I am talking about. But, as I said, I would want to form group with a selective and limited group of websites that are my peer in quality and as SP said, they would be the trusted lot.

 

But yes, the actually revenue sharing mechanism would require to be more complex that the one to one relation between traffic and revenue share. I gave that example only to illustrate a simple example that there are methods where one can charge a flat fee to the advertizers, and still have a dynamic/flexible revenue share among the group of websites.

 

Again, as SP said, this endevour would happen only between group of websites, that trust each other. I would let the websites join, that have quality and I know the person of the other website personally - or atleast, I have had a bit of long standing correspondance with that person.

 

As said though, the focus is on building quality websites - the focus is on the word 'quality'. Quality through out the scale. Right now, my website is too small to define its quality, but I have set some standards on the content on my site. And there is a long way to go before I can actually impelement this concept.

[webintern 0]

Well said, Vyoma. I understand that building quality websites take time. But, at least you are ahead of the game by planning ahead.