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Expectations: Follow up to "I'm building a better TechCrunch" (thestartupfoundry.com)
77 points by g0atbutt on Feb 4, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 32 comments



"We are a member of the InfluAds network. The quality of advertisers here is incredible. You will only see one (relevant) ad on the sidebar because of this great partner."

I give it a month. These hipster advertising networks never pay near enough that you can make, once you hit "success" with traffic you'll be funding out of your own pocket if you don't switch.


This is true. At Techcrunch we started with four 125x125 squares in the sidebar:

http://www.crunchnotes.com/2006/05/11/new-techcrunch-site-ad...

The rules were no animated GIF's, no promotions and just a company logo. If you look back at archive.org you will see that it was nice and clean:

http://www.crunchnotes.com/2006/05/12/new-techcrunch-site-la...

(the banners came in 3-4 months later)

They sold out within an hour. The next month, we increased the price to 10k and they sold out again, with some companies buying 3 months worth. Then we increased the price, and again they sold out.

We went from making 1.5-3k a month on AdSense to 40k+ a month and the site was cleaner.

Federated Media came along and promised more revenue. I can't remember the details at the time, but we agreed. Before too long we were getting requests for very large ad spends but they had specific requirements - square ad spots, flash, rollover, the works.

Once the site traffic reached the levels where the ad buyers were interested in dealing with us direct, the entire game changed. We now had 2-3 middle-men between us and the advertiser, and we had to implement the old school ad system (although we did get some concessions such as no autoplay or rollovers).

Steadily over the next few years the site went from nice and clean to top banner, square banner, skyscraper, 12 square units, etc. You all know what it looks like now (well I dont, thanks to adblock).

Those squares are everywhere now (you can blame me for that - they even became a standard IAB unit). They were quickly picked up by all the other blogs but the meaning has changed from what they were supposed to be (ie. just company logo's and a clean way to do ads instead of the traditional), but everybody, including TC, ended up hitting traffic numbers where the old banners were thrown up as well - causing all the sites to look terrible with ads (if your competitors have the banners, you have to have them as well, so you can keep up with revenue, hiring people, etc.)


The Deck seems pretty viable (http://decknetwork.net/) but then InfluAds seems to be fairly, um, inspired by The Deck's angle.


The deck though have carefully curated an image which allows them to demand a premium for unobtrusive advertising. I think this model without exclusivity would be a lot harder to sustain.


that "to be announced" ratecard on influands is kind of a giveaway :)


Against the many comments/suggestions that were made in previous posts apparently g0atbutt is still g0atbutt.

Regardless, the site looks great and I am excited to see what comes from it.


Haha, yes I am. I've had it for years, doesn't seem right to change it now…


"That's the way it's always been" is a really, really awful justification for perpetuating things. I dropped my nick of several years not too long ago in favor of my real name.


except that loyalty to a quirkiness is seen as individualistic and therefore admirable.

not saying you're wrong--well, actually, i am saying you're wrong.

i'm not saying there aren't valid reasons to change his screen name now or previously. i'm saying there are also valid reasons to keep it.

and I still think it's funny.


No reason why you should change it. All Hail G0atbutt!!!!


I don't know about you, but g0atbutt sounds a lot more credible than Michael Arrington to me.

</JOKE>


I think it's great. The site itself is the answer to the question of its own seriousness and worth. Many (most?) readers will enjoy the site (or not) and never know the name g0atbutt; those who do know will find it impossible to forget.


Here is the link to the original announcement made on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2153038


g0atbutt, one tip. Putting together a mockup using this Wordpress theme last night (http://wpshower.com/free-wordpress-themes/sight-1-0-free-wor...) I noticed a typo in the social sharing links thing. If you mouseover the digg button it actually pops 'Bookmark on del.icio.us'


Love the mockup, a screenshot on the left, startup intro to the right. Wish you the best. I'll be reading it every day.


Good luck. I hope it turns into another time sink for me...


Very clean design, and I like the goal of 4-5 high quality posts a day. Looking forward to tracking its progress!


I would recommend against committing to a certain amount of articles per day in you Expectations post. Run the site for a few weeks/months, see how much good content you come up with that you want to post, and how much work you can put into the site.

No point being this specific at such an early phase.


What I'd love to see in this project is not just articles about "hot startups" but also articles that are focused on "lessons learned" from failed or pivoted startups. That would really increase the value of this website for me.


I wish you could make something like Startup Arabia http://www.startuparabia.com) but for the whole world. They have got a very nice design and well written articles.

They write about new startups and important events in the startup world. That's all. No other bullshit. I would also love some other guest posts that discuss important matters in the startup industry.


Would love to get an idea of how the traffic is going - as soon as you are comfortable with that, of course :)


For a site that -- at least on the Web site -- does not wish to be compared to TechCrunch (as evidenced by the footer text), why even include the footer reference to TechCrunch?

I get that was the stated goal here, but that footer is confusing without the context of the Hacker News announcement.


That text shouldn't have been pushed live. Just a joke for some of my friends that were helping me beta test it.

It's already removed on the main site.


The only ad that it shows is "promote with us", so that is really relevant. They should choose some ads networks that has real ads already, may be running alongside with this one.


You should check that again ;)


I see you there, little smile in the bottom left.

What theme are you using? Do you plan on having an About page?


Looks to be a custom theme based on "Sight", found here: http://wpshower.com/free-wordpress-themes/sight-1-0-free-wor...


no way to contact you?


This should be a nice alternative to pop journalism about the incestuous topics (Foursquare's gonna make it, AT&T sucks, Apple is awesome but we still like to call their shit, Foursquare is still awesome, MG Siegler cut himself on the edge of his Macbook Air...)

It's amazing how much crap those guys produce and how little they do stir up interesting startups. Arrington's "no embargo" policy - supposedly principled - is at odds with their extortionate methods of promising coverage in exchange for perks for their readers and exclusives.


> It's amazing how much crap those guys produce and how little they do stir up interesting startups.

I don't think it's really that surprising. Let's be honest - is startup news or the "pop journalism" that you (rightfully) deride going to draw a larger audience? TechCrunch is in the business of drawing in as many readers as possible, and it does a fantastic job in that respect. TSF certainly fills a niche that we are very interested in, but it's a relatively small one when you look at the blogosphere ecosystem as a whole.


The no embargo policy is really only enforced for startups that don't know what they're doing. That happens to be a lot of otherwise-unknown YC startups that choose to launch on TechCrunch.

I don't see how it's at about principles at all or at odds with giving stuff to readers--it's always been about embargoes getting broken, and nothing else, as far as I know.


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