Andy Sorcini - Mr Babyman from Digg
social media, traffic, viral marketing, word of mouth
This interview is one I've been waiting to do for quite a while. This guy is one of the most financially unsuccessful internet guys I know. At the same time he drives absolutely monster traffic and has a huge amount of influence in the internet world. For millions of people he is an absolute rockstar. His name is Andy Scorcini and his handle is Mr Babyman - he's the number one poster to Digg, the social news site. He controls a huge amount of traffic volume and IMHO is effectively the leader of the informal network that has developed among Digg's top users that decide which stories get posted to the site. The number one question Andy and the others is always asked - do they get paid for what they do. We discussed this in detail in the interview.Full Interview »
Brad Geddes, who used to be with Local Launch, is the smartest guy I know when it comes to pay per click marketing. Brad has managed campaigns with so many keywords in them that they have 6 adwords accounts linked together - we're talking 2.3 MILLION keywords! He's also managed to generate consistently 18% clickthroughs from some of his campaigns. There are so many guys out there teaching and running pay per click programs. But Brad is among the best, and he's been doing a bunch of training for Google in adwords as well. He was known on webmaster world as ewhisper for many years.
The nerd level of David Weekly from PBwiki is rather high since he proudly informed me during the interview that he started programming at the age of five. I've been watching David from a distance for a couple of years. He hasn't made his fortune yet, but he will. He's from the same mold as the Google founders and is always involved in interesting projects in Silicon Valley. His current site is PBWiki, which is a managed wiki service. The MeetInnovators publishing process is run on a PBWiki. My family also used a PBWiki for planning our family holiday. PBWiki is even being used by some US presidential campaigns, although David won't tell us which ones.
Joe Abrams from The Software Toolworks was the key investor in the company that built MySpace - Intermix. He's extremely low profile, and it was something of a miracle to get this interview. Joe's made it through two boom periods - in the 90's he ran Software Toolworks, which was sold for around $450M. And then he did it again with MySpace. One of his companies distributed Defender of the Crown, a breakthrough game on the Commodore Amiga, which I spent many years on when I was growing up. I hope his interview inspires you as much as it inspired me. This was my interview of the year!
This interview is with Jordan Finger of Ardis Health, which is an online product-marketing company. Because his company sells a physical product, Jordan has to manage more back-office logistics than many of you. He's also had more international success (in the UK) than anyone I have heard of so far. Ardis Health does a lot of media buying to drive traffic. Also in the interview, Jordan highlights the importance of copy for developing high converting offers.
Scott Cohen, CEO of Dimestore Media is doing some pretty interesting things with video advertising. He's also one of the key guys behind 24/7 media and Live Person. One of the highlights of the interview is when he talks about the process of taking a company public. He was involved in taking two companies public. Scott talks about the IPO process, how the money goes from the investor to the company, and what happens to the company’s shares.
Shawn Casey of Mining Gold Corporation is an information marketer who has been around almost longer than information marketing. He does $15M - $18M per year out of his house in Georgia with no team - just his brother and sister. One of the most interesting parts of the interview was when Shawn talked about how to test, manage and get the maximum dollar per lead from call center partners.
This interview is with Brad Powers, CEO of Active Response Group in New York. ARG is an online lead generation company that owns and operates 400 different sites as well as runs its own banner network serving 4.5-6 billion impressions per month. It's an interesting mix of being both a lead generation company and a publisher I haven't come across before. One thing that sets ARG apart from many Internet companies is that it answers to a board of directors. Brad shares the importance of having mentors to help walk your company through financial, operational, and legal issues. His insight is helpful, especially if your company is growing very quickly - and these guys have had phenomenal growth.
Meet Brad Fallon from Free IQ. Brad is well known in the info-marketing community for his StomperNet launches. He sold around $12M of his continuity program in a day, so he knows a few tricks. FreeIQ is Brad's latest venture; a YouTube-type online video site that hosts different types of digital media products focusing on business expertise on a variety of topics. One of the interesting aspects of this interview is Brad's insight into the process of importing products from China to use for wholesale and retail sales. While the import process may appear complicated at first, Brad's explanation makes it “not as hard as you might think.”
This interview is with Ian Schafer, the CEO and founder of a New York City based full-service interactive marketing agency called Deep Focus. Ian talks about how he got the first major paid video advertising on YouTube. He explains how he gets deals set up with companies like MySpace, and how it is to run the Internet advertising for HBO, including TV shows like the Sopranos and (my favourite!) Entourage. Ian also gives us insight into his hiring process and how he selects senior managers.
This interview is with Mark Kahn of TRAFFIQ.com, which is a marketplace for branded traffic inventory a bit like eBay. Publishers put their inventory on it, and media buyers can buy it. Traffiq is an unusual company for our interviews since it’s raised quite a bit of VC capital. But they have a good model so it’s worth reading about. Mark talks about TRAFFIQ’s platform and inventory, and he shares how the level of information a seller provides can dramatically increase CPM prices.
This interview is with Keith Richman, CEO of Break Media, formally Break.com. Break Media started as bad-boys, a video entertainment site for guys. It has expanded to now include quite a few sites as well as an ad network selling inventory for many other sites, targeting men ages 18 to 34. Keith shares how Break Media started, how it has grown, and how it gets its users to come back. He also touches on why the company decided to start its own ad sales team along with how they sell their advertising.
Aaron Broder is the co-founder of Gorilla Nation. He's working with some sites which do considerable volume, and spends his time putting together branding deals. He has combined his expertise and family background in entertainment to create an online ad rep company for Web publishers. Aaron shares how Gorilla Nation started, how it found its niche with mid-tail sites, and how it plans to grow internationally. Many of us are direct response focused; it’s about time we learned a little about the branding side of things; there's a lot higher CPM's in it.
Matt Wise is the CEO of Q Interactive, and a really nice guy. But you're here for interviews, and so Q Interactive's interview is a good one – they actually started out as a coupons company (Cool Savings) and in the last few years completely reworked their direction to be a lead generation company. I think it’s yet another clear indicator that lead generation is one of the most powerful business models on the internet – many companies have reworked their business model in this same direction. We talk about the different methods of driving leads, what signifies "permission" and some sophisticated techniques to improve lead quality.
This interview is with Ryan Allis who is the CEO of iContact. Ryan runs an ESP, or Email Service Provider, geared mainly to small businesses. I use it and their deliverability is great - we tested many before settling on iContact. I wanted to talk with Ryan to understand the latest on email deliverability - which I definitely got in this interview. However what I didn't realize was that this market he is serving is actually quite large. Constant contact, his main competitor is a $500M publicly traded company. Given Ryan founded iContact and they're a year or so away from going public, Ryan will probably be running a $300M public company before long.
Rob Jewell is the founder of the FreeiPod craze. Rob’s story is very insightful; he’s a determined entrepreneur.
This week’s interview is with Gary Swart, the CEO of oDesk. oDesk is like Elance except it’s primarily for programmers, and it incorporates a lot of tools to make working with programmers easier. I also spoke in depth with Gary about how to hire an experienced CEO – Gary was brought in to take over the management of oDesk.
Drew Curtis, the owner of Fark.com, generates 1.5M – 2M page views per day out of his house, all via public relations. I asked Drew a lot about how he monetizes Fark, and he gave some pretty interesting answers.
