Auction Ads is a company which has just launched some new technology which places items within eBay auctions within blogs according to the blogs content. I LOVE this business in terms of the potential win/win for customers and the company and the potential revenue stream for the investors.

Business Model:
Auction Ads business model is compelling:
1)  EBay has an affliate marketing channel which pays affiliates when they refer customers to their site
2) The eBay affiliate program is tiered.  As the affiliates monthly revenue increases, so too does the percentage of revenue. It begins at 40% of the fees ebay earns and caps out at 65%.  But to hit 65% you need to refer at least $1M to eBay.

Ebay Tiers:

Some Core Functionality:

• Cut and paste ad codes straight into your blog
• Customized ads based on blog subject matter
• All ads include a referral link so if anyone signs up you get credit 

Likes:
There is so much to like even though its such a headslappingly obvious business model:

• By consolidating the monthly revenue made across multiple blogs and sites it should not take took long to hit and pass the $1M monthly revenue number.  It should therefore be possible for Auction Ads to give their blogging channel a higher monthly payment than they could capture directly through eBay.
• As all ads have a referral link their channel partners (the blogs) can also gain revenue from other blogs who sign up via their ads. Another incentive to stay with the Auction Ads program
• There are viral marketing elements to the business model which should spread the Auction Ads program quickly and ensure the highest monthly tier rate is achieved within eBay.
• In a previous article I mentioned how I believe people are mentally blanking out adsense ads on the web.  This is an alternative that will not be instantly categorized as ‘adsense ignorable’ and should have better click through rates.

Auction Ads in Action:

Dislikes:
The only concern I have is eBay sells alot of stuff, but how much of it is absolutely relevant to the breadth and depth of subjects covered by blogs and are the blog readers in the market for whatever is being sold?

For example, let’s say there’s a blog about cars…easy to have an eBay ad.  No problems at all to imagine.  What about a blog on cat neutering – I know, perhaps one of my more obscure examples but that’s the point.  Yes you could sell eBay books on the subject, but are cat neutering readers going to be interested in bidding on an eBay book on the subject? So, a great model for obvious and mainstream’ish blogs and sites…maybe not so for quite a few blogs out there and even if they do place ads, will they generate any volume?

Saying that which blogs have most traffic?  Are there 100 blogs out there that have the lions share?  If so a)  this ad program makes sense especially for the top 100 b)  but why would they use Auction Ads rather than just having their own affiliate links?  Because its easier than doing it themselves it probably the answer but what’s the difference in revenue for them to go with Auction Ads rather than direct?  If I was Auction Ads, I’d be striking some low margin deals with the top 100 which would also give them further exposure to the wider market.

Another question that makes me hesitate a few seconds is what are the barriers to entry for a company doing the same thing?  The barriers will get higher as Auction Ads gains more and more market penetration but they had better hope an exact competitor does not come out of the woodwork very soon.

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would hope my bid to invest $500K would be accepted by Auction Ads.

http://www.auctionads.com/

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

Quintura just responded to yesterday’s post “Quintura: A $Zero Virtual Investent”.

” Yakov Mar 2nd, 2007 at 1:54 am Edit

Hello Andrew! Very interesting post as well as the other reviews! Don’t you know that Quintura stands for quintessence or pure essence of searching. Try to make Quintura your homepage for a week and then give us your views!”

Yakov, I did not understand that this is the definition of Quintura, when I searched through the dictionary it had no definitions for Quintura.

As I reconsidered my review, I wondered if I had been too harsh with the zero virtual investment especially as this is a beta site at this point.  Seeing today’s functionality, even with the ‘invite a friend’ element which could drive adoption, I would still not put my virtual cash in Quintura but I could be wrong. I will go back often and see how the functionality and the company develops.  It would be great if Quintura becomes the next hot company with significant revenues…but I just don’t see it today.

Have your say here: http://www.andrewive.com/mdsg-forum/

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

Quintura is a new search engine that has chosen a tag cloud metaphor as the means of search.

 

Business Model:
This is a beta site launched in the last few days so its not too surprising that there are not too many obvious ways of generating revenue for Quintura.  There are a number of tabs beneath your search terms…web, image, video and AMAZON. So if your interested in finding out how your search for a particular subject parleys into a related Amazon product, click away.  So far…that seems to be Quintura’s business model.

Some Core Functionality:

• Type in your search term, hit enter and *poof* you have a tag cloud in half the page to navigate
• Your cursor hovers over one of the words and *poof poof* sub clouds of words appear
• The words seem more or less bold…perhaps that means something? I know, perhaps each words estimated relivance to the original search term.
• The second half of the screen is left for actual search engine standard format responses or images or video or Amazon goodies.  Yum!

Likes:
Quintara are courageous to try a different way of delivering search engine results and navigating through those results. 

One thing I particularly like is if you consider ‘ordinary’ search engines, most users have a limited attention span and expect the best results to be served up in the first few paragraphs.  If what they are looking for is on page 2…tough… it will probably never be found except by a few tenacious searchers.  We live in a ’give it to me now’ society after all!  Quintura allows some of those ‘deeper down’ results to be captured within the visual snapshot circulating the search term. It could be better for the searcher and for the information being searched if they can visibly see results that ordinarily appear on the bottom of page 1 or ugh…perhaps even page 2. 

Dislikes:
So in the ‘likes’ section I mentioned a searcher being able to see results ‘circulating’ the search term and perhaps see results more easily that would have been missed in the results from ordinary search engines. True. 

But because of the tag cloud metaphor combined with appearing and disappearing sub words, its somehow challenging to really understand what you are seeing from a results perspective.  However, late at night, with a few drinks inside, it probably makes much more sense.

Its hard to explain but unless you know the subject matter well already, the tag cloud results seem so strangely unrelated. Good for novalty value, not so good if you need to find something and fast i.e. Give it to me now!

The other personal dislike is the name – like the swirling search result terms, Quintura just doesn’t mean anything…at least to me.  Does it mean anything or is it just another one of those web 2.0 company descriptors that sounds ‘hip’ but are nonesense?  Anyway, because it doesn’t seem to mean anything, I keep forgetting it and keep needing to look up at this blogs title to get the spelling right.  Not a good quality for the name of the search engine…perhaps when I forget the exact spelling I should use Google to find out the name of that new Russian search engine and while I’m there perhaps I should click a few adsense ads – perhaps a partnership between Google and Quintura along these lines would drive more revenue for them?

I have to say that this IS a beta and I love startups so hate giving this a ZERO virtual investment.  Anyone that has the courage to start something new and put their dreams on the line deserve success! I really wish this concept and Quintura well and much success but…

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would stay searching for ‘that Russian Search engine thing’ on Google and invest $ZERO in Quintura.

http://www.quintura.com/

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

Ning is a new’ish company with some recently released technology that will skyrocket this company into the stratosphere. 

It’s the first company that I’m aware of that has created an easy to use, drag and drop, easy configuration site for users to create their own Social Networking site.  Literally within minutes you can have your own Social networking site with video & picture functionality, forums and a host of other features that allow the non-tech savvy out there to potentially get in on the Social networking action.

Business Model:
Ning’s business model is simple:
1)  They add ‘Adsense’ to the right hand column of every Social networking site so as people promote their new networking site, it should, in principle create a multiple effect Ning’s ad revenue
2)  People who want to get the benefit of the Adsense on their own site can pay a monthly fee, currently standing at $19.95.  They can obviously stratify that later so the more popular sites have a rev share and the less popular pay the fee or take Ning’s ads and just get on with running their site

Some Core Functionality:

• Social Networking:  Invite, meet new people, privacy settings, address book importing
• Full Customization of Theme or take existing template and configure.  Add your own logos, photos and branding
• Photo sharing, video sharing, forums
• …and the list goes on. Not bad for FREE! 

Likes:
There are a number of reasons why Ning will sing from an investment perspective:

The user interface is VERY easy to use and intuitive, I set up a social networking site in under five minutes and was…with a shy smile…relatively happy with how my very own social networking site looked (Check out the results:  http://amateurs.ning.com/)

With a couple of hours – it would be possible to make the site really work as some of the existing sites within Ning show.

As people promote their site, they promote Ning, this gives them the magic fairy dust needed for companies like this to go from 2, 200, 200K in months.  Their adsense revenue should be pretty obscene soon. 

I am starting to wonder if people are starting to mentally phase out adsense and these ads become a almost invisible to the human eye. What do you think?

As members of Ning can seach the different Social Networks there’s the potential to pick up stray but interested members…not bad!

Dislikes:
OK, so I used Ning and built my site based on a crazy little idea I had a while ago.  Thanks guys…I have finally seen my idea live. 

I know Ning has done one side of the hard work for me…the tech side, but I still have alot of the hard work ahead.  How to get people onboard, especially the first few users.  With these kinds of sites, you need a few active members so that the shy and reticent don’t worry about joining too.  The more people onboard the more valuable the system, so you really do need those first few.

That works if the Social networking site is in an area that already relates to a space with which I’m involved…so for me, Startups.  But what if I’ve set up a site because of an idea I’ve had but where I have few contacts?  That is a big stumbling block for this to go viral with all social networking sites created.

I would imagine that 10% of the users sites will hit the volume big time, 20% will do pretty well and the rest will perhaps exist but in name only.  Just a guess! But if the 80/20 rule works here…the majority of adsense revenue will come from the large volumed 20% and those will be the ones that convert to the $19.95 monthly fee. They would be mad not too and where does the revenue come from then?

Also, if I do create a site that really starts to rock and roll…iId like to port it to my own server and do it for myself.  Arguably if I did that then I couldn’t take advantange of Ning’s new functionality releases but it would still be mine.  Ning does not seem to have that on their roadmap.  If they don’t someone will come along who will offer that.

It would be good if Ning could figure out a business model to allow that to happen and keep some of the revenue. Perhaps a premium service would be to host the site under a separate URL but share the revenue or charge a higher monthly fee.

Last point – how long until the Social networking site market is completely saturated?  When the point arrives (if it hasn’t already) then this functionality becomes a glorified Yahoo Group type service.  I guess that still gives them the potential to be acquired by Yahoo or Google sometime ahead so another reason for a big virtual investment.

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would stop inviting all my friends to http://amateurs.ning.com/ to invest $500K in Ning.

http://www.ning.com/

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

Just after the last post ‘Geni: A $500K Virtual Investment’, Geni were kind enough to respond with the following:

“Geni JoAnne Feb 26th, 2007 at 4:46 pm Edit

Hi Andrew. Excellent blog. We are considering adding premium services to our site in the future–the basic service will remain free.”

JoAnne – Thank you for letting us know. It would be great to understand what Premium services Geni will be offering – but I’m sure they will be as value add and innovative as the core site itself.

Have your say here: http://www.andrewive.com/mdsg-forum/

Great job Geni!

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

Geni is a very interesting online service that leverages an easy to use flash interface and viral tools to create family trees.  One interesting concept to prove or disprove is that the whole world is related in one way or another. Could Geni be the solution to world peace?   

Business Model:
I have been unable to determine how Geni makes money but there are a number of obvious ways Geni can see the green as they quickly hit critical mass i.e. adsense, monthly subscriptions, follow on ‘pay for’ services and there is such a strong potential growth curve that this make sense as a ‘virtual’ investment:

Some Core Functionality:

• An easy to use interface asks you to add your name and email address.  You can update your profile now or later.
• You add your parent’s names, aunts, uncles, cousins and their email addresses and Geni begins to create a private access family tree. i.e. only visible to people invited to input into the family tree.
• Geni is ‘viral’ so any people you add to your family tree with an email will be able, in turn, to see and add to your family tree.

Likes:
There are a number of reasons why I think Geni will be going ganbusters in six months or less:

The user interface is VERY easy to use and intuitive, I find it hard to imagine that any user will not be able to instantly understand how to use ‘Geni’

Its one thing to be asked to join a ‘networking’ site via a friend, work colleague or distant contact – its quite another to be asked to ‘join’ by Auntie Flow or Cousin Rupert. There is also something immediately to be gained by participating…you get to find out about YOU! A subject at the center of everyone’s universe.  Can anyone really turn up their nose at such a site?  I think not!

Like most sites that go from zero to 180 miles per hour in 6 seconds or less, members only gain value if they bring others to the system.  Hence the reason why Match grew well but slowly (i.e. you could use the system without needing to ‘Add’ to the system) versus LinkedIn where its necessary to bring people onboard to gain value. Geni is the later…in a significant way!

As each person within the family tree has a profile, its also a good way to keep up with those relatives that you don’t get to see too often…now if it could only remind me to send a birthday card, life would be even better.

Dislikes:
What’s the revenue model? Yes, Geni will grow in leaps and bounds but how will they make cash?  Will we start seeing annoying addsense ads beside Grandpa Joe’s photos advertising denture cream?  It isn’t obvious at this point. The setup and tools within Geni will ensure the site will grow…no question!  But like many 2.0 companies – when and how they get to revenue is a question.  Without understanding the roadmap to revenue, I’d make a big bet on Geni based on how many users I think they will have by 2008.  There are always ways to monetize significant membership level.  So a big bet but not a huge bet until the revenue crystalball becomes less opaque.

A little nitpick – what about those people who do not email?  I know…I know…but my grandparent’s aren’t online.  So I potentially ‘lose’ that information unless I get on the phone and talk them through it.  May be worth it though…

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would put the phone down on my Mother to invest $500K in Geni.

http://www.geni.com/tree

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com