CommunityBuildrs

The most recent meeting was: October 25th, 2007

Location:
Rich Media Institute 

Meeting Notes:

We had another strong meeting and I want to thank everyone who attended for sharing your thoughts and experiences with the rest of us.  We covered a lot of ground in the free-form discussion around the room regarding monetization both in a general sense and also specifically within the context of an online community.  I'm going to post several of the key points that stand out in mind from memory here.  Please email me additional points that are missing if you notice them from your notes.

• Monetization is not so different in the online world in general than it is offline.  The true underlying value lies in having the audience.  Whether a newspaper, blog, streaming media channel, podcast, or online community.  If you can build the audience, you have something which can be monetized.
• Market Surveys have become an interesting option for sites that have good participation from their members. Return ranges from $1 for general population market data to as much as $20 for focused, high-value demographics per completed survey
• The demographics of your audience is critical to understand. Obvious ways are that a male or female demographic will impact which advertisers will be interested, etc. Less obvious might be whether you have many people who participate or a large number of lurkers. Lurkers are probably less likely to complete a market survey for example given the same incentives as an active poster.
• Different types of communities also have different challenges in monetization. A community built around a hobby such as Scuba Diving has obvious monetization opportunities in product sales, etc. A community like Facebook which is more about people communicating with people they already know about their social interactions is less clear.
• Sometimes monetization efforts can be a turn-off to users and damage a community. Contextual text links and affiliate links can sometimes be used more subtely. For us those are obvious but many users do not recognize them.
• New services have launched that attempt to measure the best return possible for a given ad-space on your site by testing various services automatically. Some of those are: www.yieldbuild.com and www.rubiconproject.com. A techcrunch article mentioning them is here.
• Various affiliate networks exist that aggregate affiliate programs into one interface and management system. Mentioned were Commission Junction and DoubleClick.
• Accessibility compliance can lead to a bump in revenue of 2 to 8 percent depending on how you are monetized. WAI guidelines and Section 508 of the Disablities Act recommendations can help point the way.

I'm certain that I am missing information that should be included here so please let me know what I've missed!

Thanks! See you at the next meeting!

Kirk Eisele