A client received an inquiry from an ad network – would they be open to offering banner ads on their website from advertisers with products that may or may not be unrelated to the client’s website?  It can be rewarding receiving recognition for having grown a website to a size that can attract advertising, but has the website truly reached the Advertising Threshold?

Let’s boil this down: money = good,  ugly ads = bad.   At some point, the site owner hits a threshold where the good outweighs the bad.   There’s a price to pay hitting this threshold – the entire site design, look-and-feel and vibe is compromised by a big banner ad, and that can result in lower time-on-site, lower conversion rate for actual products and services and other consequences.   If the content of the banner ads aren’t in any way aligned to the demographics of the site visitors, then the site owner further risks alienating visitors.

I’m ok with banner ads on my site – how much can I make? asks the client.

A typical ad network pays a “publisher” (the site owner) perhaps $1-3 per thousand impressions (let’s call it a $2 CPM, or “cost per thousand”).   If the site owner receives 10,000 pageviews a month, they might expect to make about $20 a month, which does not get paid out until generally $100 in revenue is accrued.

There are plenty of other ways to structure advertising, be it CPA (cost per acquisition), CPC (cost per click) or some other form of negotiated deal such as a “Site Takeover.” A website with 10,000 monthly pageviews might be able to make significantly more than $20 a month, but regardless of what that revenue target is, the site owner still needs to decide if the website has reached the Advertising Threshold.

(over the edge image h/t hxc_emo)

I have been a big fan of Chris Guillebeau for quite some time now – in fact, I have a link to his Unconventional Guides in the right sidebar of every page of my site.

He’s a blogger, business builder, entrepreneur and all-around mover-and-shaker, but what tends to stand out for me and other people I know is that Chris is on a quest to visit every damn country in the world, and he’s almost met his goal. It’s a ridiculous, audacious, impossible dream that he has wrestled into reality.

Chris obviously knows a thing or two about traveling. He’s got a stupid amount of air miles, knows the three digit airport code to every two-bit dirt runway in the world and when plans go astray, has bullshitted his way into and around countries from Africa to Eastern Europe to Asia.

So when Chris talks travel, I listen. Given that I have some extended travel coming up in March (oh, did I let that slip?), the following advice on maintaing vs. creating hits what I’ve been thinking about dead on. Great advice from a guy that’s been there. Thought I’d share as well. Check out Unconventional Guides if you want to sign up for his email list.

Working from Anywhere – An Observation

Speaking of working from the road, I’ve recently noticed a key point in my own work. This year I visited 26 new countries — many of them fairly difficult ones to get to and work from, such as Somalia, Mauritania, Palau, and others. (The next post will be a full travel roundup of the year.)

Wherever I go, I’m always pounding away, making sure my commitments are kept reasonably up to date, answering lots of emails, and performing various administrative tasks.

What I’ve realized in more than a decade of doing this in one fashion or another is that I can maintain things from anywhere, but I wouldn’t want to develop and launch things from anywhere.

The distinction is important: for long-term creative purposes, I need a certain amount of stability and reliable infrastructure. The biggest challenge is not that I want to take it easy; it’s just that my creative energy is greatly reduced while on the road. I still work at least 4-5 hours a day wherever I am, but much of this work relates strictly to existing commitments.

I have a lot less “creative space” on the road to build detailed projects, so I’ve learned to be more clear on scheduling extended periods of writing and building things when I’m not always jetting off.

LESSON: Travel the world, but set aside time to “make stuff.”

I recently discussed content strategy with an associate of mine who runs a very successful professional services business with nearly twenty employees.  Combining the content they already produce (articles for print publications) with a moderated democratization of content creation across their employee base could easily produce a thousand or more posts a year.  This creates an amazing foundation for a website and a fast-growing long tail of content.   The impact on their bottom line would be measurable and significant.

I came across a nice article from a company called Lima Bean, which has their own take on a content strategy.  Thought it was worth sharing for the perspective.  An excerpt:

Content really does form the core of any website and it’s vital that you develop a content strategy that is engaging and attracts the right audience. It will also help you to identify key themes; facilitate discussion between key stakeholders; drive meta data creation and assignment; enhance search engine rankings; give life to your brand and build customer trust.

awesome lima bean salad image h/t Guilty Kitchen

Just a quick tech note – upgraded to WordPress 3.3 “Sonny” without a hitch.  Lots of slick new features, including flyout menus, media handling, co-editing support and Tumblr import.   Granted I’ve placed my bet already, but can’t help thinking #wordpress continues to blow away the CMS competition.  Video of the release after the jump.

WP updates are always named after stellar jazz performers.  Sonny Stitt image courtesy Verve Music Group.

I responded to Tea Silvestre’s inquiry about hiring a marketing coach last week. Her post entitled How to Find and Hire the Right Marketing Coach, aggregating the replies from a number of marketing professionals, is now up on her site. There’s a bunch of great information in there from half-a-dozen people who know what they are talking about. Check it out.

gorilla marketing image, h/t GlennPeb

Tea Silvestre, talented proprietress of The Word Chef, asked some of her friends this question: Do you have any cautionary tales or tips on hiring the right Marketing Coach?  While I think she’s putting together the replies into something more substantial than a quick blog post, I thought I’d give her my thoughts here, and share her results with my audience later on.

The notion of a Marketing “Coach” comes with some expectations and assumptions that might not be a great fit for many businesses. I would think of a Coach as someone who shares a lot of possibilities and provides encouragement on an ongoing basis, leaving the actual hard work to the client.

Where this can fail the client is that every small business has very limited time and resources. It’s easy enough to get a client excited about all that (social) media has to offer, but three weeks later, everyone’s busy, deadlines loom, and guess what gets pushed to the side first?

A seasoned Marketing Consultant will weigh the needs of the company, the market they currently reach and want to reach, how they are already marketing, what budget they have, what internal resources they have and the skill-set of those people, what they can easily implement technologically and what might take more significant development, what the balance is between short-term wins and long-term strategic planning, and so much more.

I’d consider asking some of the following questions to weed out the truly seasoned marketing professionals from a less-experienced circus of coaches, gurus and experts (assuming that this would be lean towards internet marketing and social media):

• Who are your clients and what specifically did you do for them?
• What experience do you have in my market segment?
• How do you measure success? What do you draw from metrics that is actionable?
• How do you determine ROI? CPA?
• What has Twitter done for you? What’s it good at, what’s it not good at?
• How do you do keyword research and how is it best used?
• Is what I’m doing going to help in the short term or are we building a long-term foundation? Why?

When looking for some marketing help, remember that there’s no mandatory certification process. There’s no MD or JD or PhD after someone’s name. There may not be a whole lot to go on other than what they tell you. So do some homework, look into their background, ask some tough questions and find the right person who can fit with your organization, whether that’s a Coach or Consultant or Agency or Guy or Gal.

lovely tea image h/t nkzs

On the official Google Blog, there was a post a week or so ago entitled “Giving you fresher, more recent search results.”

This post shows how Google continues to improve near-real-time and timely search without cannibalizing or otherwise discounting the value of their vast index of the web and the deep amount of information that represents. Put it another way: Google knows that sometimes you want really timely information and sometimes you don’t, and this draws a contrast with real-time search from platforms such as Twitter.

Here’s how Google frames it:

Different searches have different freshness needs. This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers.

While every company can draw something different from these ideas, the bottom line remains – it reinforces the need for high quality, fresh unique content, which drives search traffic, a long tail of content and community engagement.

minty fresh photo h/t csontoslea

You’ve probably read about Netflix the last couple months, and none of its any good. Raising prices, ignoring customers, spinning off the DVD service into bastard child Quikster, canceling that three weeks later… the list goes on.

Netflix’s saving grace? Their back-from-the-grave competition, Blockbuster, isn’t any better. Flash only, no support for iPhone or iPad. No prices listed for On Demand. No compelling reason for me to switch.

So will Netflix get its swagger back? Will subscribers fall back in love with them all over again? Netflix needs to address everything that prioritizes profits over subscribers. The long-term vision needs to focus on exceptional user experience top-to-bottom. Without that commitment, Netflix will continue to have flat growth, no buzz and a sense that they were a company that never quite fulfilled its potential.

Don’t even get me started on the iPad interface…who green-lighted that thing?

(image h/t rpichler)

I received an email from AirBnB late last night regarding the serious reputation management challenge they are experiencing. My initial reaction? Transparent, apologetic and addresses the core problem.

A startup on an IPO path is not an easy path – it can mean long hours, grueling days, just grinding it out. Setting your hair on fire at the same time? That kicks it up a notch something good.

Hi Tyler,

Last month, the home of a San Francisco host named EJ was tragically vandalized by a guest. The damage was so bad that her life was turned upside down. When we learned of this our hearts sank. We felt paralyzed, and over the last four weeks, we have really screwed things up. Earlier this week, I wrote a blog post trying to explain the situation, but it didn’t reflect my true feelings. So here we go.

There have been a lot of questions swirling around, and I would like to apologize and set the record straight in my own words. In the last few days we have had a crash course in crisis management. I hope this can be a valuable lesson to other businesses about what not to do in a time of crisis, and why you should always uphold your values and trust your instincts.

With regards to EJ, we let her down, and for that we are very sorry. We should have responded faster, communicated more sensitively, and taken more decisive action to make sure she felt safe and secure. But we weren’t prepared for the crisis and we dropped the ball. Now we’re dealing with the consequences. In working with the San Francisco Police Department, we are happy to say a suspect is now in custody. Even so, we realize that we have disappointed the community. To EJ, and all the other hosts who have had bad experiences, we know you deserve better from us.

We want to make it right. On August 15th, we will be implementing a $50,000 Airbnb Guarantee, protecting the property of hosts from damage by Airbnb guests who book reservations through our website. We will extend this program to EJ and any other hosts who may have reported such property damage while renting on Airbnb in the past.

We’ve built this company by listening to our community. Guided by your feedback, we have iterated to become safer and more secure. Our job’s not done yet; we’re still evolving. In the wake of these recent events, we’ve heard an uproar from people, both inside and outside our community. Know that we were closely listening.

Today we are launching a new safety section of the website (www.airbnb.com/safety) with the following offerings:

Airbnb Guarantee
Starting August 15th, when hosts book reservations through Airbnb their personal property will be covered for loss or damage due to vandalism or theft caused by an Airbnb guest up to $50,000 with our Airbnb Guarantee. Terms will apply to the program and may vary (e.g. by country). This program will also apply retroactively to any hosts who may have reported such property damage prior to August 1, 2011.

24-Hour Customer Hotline
Beginning next week, we will have operators and customer support staff ready to provide around the clock phone and email support for anything big or small.

2x Customer Support Team
Since last month we have more than doubled our Customer Support team from forty-two to eighty-eight people, and will be bringing on a 10-year veteran from eBay as our Director of Customer Support next week.

Dedicated Trust & Safety Department
Airbnb now has an in-house task force devoted to the manual review of suspicious activity. This team will also build new security features based on community feedback.

Contact the CEO
If you can’t get a hold of anyone or if you just want to contact me, email brian.chesky@airbnb.com.

We’ve also added several other safety-related features to strengthen the trust and confidence of our community:

Safety Tips
Suggestions for both guests and hosts on how to utilize our tools to better inform your decisions.

Verified Profiles
Our updated user profiles chronicle their public history on Airbnb, giving you more insight than ever about a potential host or guest. Along with standard social information, you’ll also see if a user has verified their phone number, connected to their Facebook account, and whether the majority of their reviews are positive or negative. And as always, you can read their reviews and references.

Customized trust settings
We now give hosts the ability to set custom trust parameters for bookings; those who don’t meet the specified requirements will be unable to make a reservation. Selections for Trust Settings include: verified phone numbers, profile descriptions, location information, with more coming soon.

Product suggestions poll
Have more ideas on improving safety? Now, you can submit and vote on the best ideas through our new product suggestions poll.

Many more product updates will be released in the coming days. In addition to these new features, there are safeguards already in place to protect the community. These include over 60 million Social Connections, private messaging to screen before booking, a secure reservation and payment system and transaction-based reviews. We also provide verified photographs, fraud detection algorithms, and flagging capabilities.

These steps are just the beginning. Improving the safety and security of our system is ongoing. Although we do have these measures in place, no system is without some risk, so we remind you to be vigilant and discerning. As a member of the community, you have invaluable experience that we hope to draw upon to improve our system. If you have any constructive ideas or feedback, please share them with us at www.airbnb.com/safety.

What’s made us proud during this trying time is the response of our community. Emails of support to EJ poured in; many hosts offered her a place to stay in their homes. It’s been inspiring to see that Airbnb can really bring out the best in people. Like Airbnb, the world works on the idea that people are good, and we’re in this together.

When we first started Airbnb, I told my mom about our plans for the business and she said, “Are you crazy? I’d never do that.” But when I told my late grandfather he said, “Of course! Everyone used to stay in each others’ homes.” We’re bringing back this age-old idea with new technology. Now each day, you and the rest of the community are creating meaningful connections around the world.

Thank you for being part of Airbnb.

Sincerely,
Brian Chesky
CEO, Co-founder
Airbnb
brian.chesky@airbnb.com

One of my favorite startups is AirBnB, which enables people to rent out their apartments, homes or a spare bedroom. We’ve found a couple places to stay on our upcoming trip.

I’m not the only one who thinks they are great – they have a billion dollar valuation and the backing of some heavy-duty VC’s in Silicon Valley.

So what happens when a renter totally trashes a place, while sending flowery notes to the woman offering her apartment?

A small excerpt:

They smashed a hole through a locked closet door, and found the passport, cash, credit card and grandmother’s jewelry I had hidden inside. They took my camera, my iPod, an old laptop, and my external backup drive filled with photos, journals… my entire life. They found my birth certificate and social security card, which I believe they photocopied – using the printer/copier I kindly left out for my guests’ use. They rifled through all my drawers, wore my shoes and clothes, and left my clothing crumpled up in a pile of wet, mildewing towels on the closet floor. They found my coupons for Bed Bath & Beyond and used the discount, along with my Mastercard, to shop online.

It gets worse. Read the article – its a great lesson in damage control and reputation management.