Do you know about - Interview With Scott Tilton - social Network Monetization
Jobs In San Diego! Again, for I know. Ready to share new things that are useful. You and your friends.Scott Tilton, the Ceo of Loop'd Network is very much into action sports. And he has found a way to join social media with sponsorships within the action sports world. Its a pretty moving model, the best way of monetizing social networking sites I've ever heard of. He gets Ecpm's in the manifold $$ ranges, compared to the miserable Ecpm's of other social networking sites. Loop'd Network get users of the site to compete to become sponsored by brands. Its a great offer for the brands since they get some of the very best candidates available. (note that Loop'd Network is completely dissimilar to Loopt, the iphone gps application)
What I said. It is not outcome that the real about Jobs In San Diego. You check this out article for facts about an individual need to know is Jobs In San Diego.How is Interview With Scott Tilton - social Network Monetization
Since he's taken the venture funding route, Scott asked me to mention that Loop'd is currently profitable but are seeing to grow the business even more quickly and is seeing for investors.
And if you're seeing for ideas for monetizing social networking type traffic, Scott's interview is a good one to check out for a fresh approach.
Adrian: We're here with Scott Tilton, Ceo of the Loop'd Network. Scott, thanks for joining us.Can you tell us a minute bit about who you are and where you've come from?
Scott: I was born and raised in New York. I am a previous competitive action sport athlete. At the age of six, I started racing Bmx bicycles. When I was 10, I transitioned into motocross, which I did for about ten years.
I got my Masters Degree in Internet business Systems and had one job out of school. It was pretty miserable, so I tried to find opportunities to work in the action sports space and join it with the Internet. Nothing surely popped out at the time, so I founded a business called SponsorHouse.
In 2003 I moved to San Diego, in a motor home, with SponsorHouse and my business partner. We didn't know whatever when we showed up, so we started pushing to grow the company. That year we won a business plan competition, which led to our first angel-round funding.
SponsorHouse was colse to for about five years and was the prequel to Loop'd Network. We essentially used the same technology, the same investors, the same team, and rebranded under the Loop'd Network to strengthen the business model.
Loop'd Network is an online action sports network where athletes and enthusiasts can register for a profile, interact with others, and exertion to get sponsored from about 400 brands who are on the network. We payment advertising and e-commerce fees to sports equipment clubs and mainstream advertisers who are focused on reaching our demographic of primarily young males, mostly in the 12 to 24 year-old age bracket, which is the sweet spot for action sports.
Adrian: Why turn the name to Loop'd?
Scott: When we first started as SponsorHouse, we were a sponsorship service. Over the years, we found that we were starting to lose some opportunities to work with some key brands and athletes.
Oakley is an example of a business that was hesitant to work with us as SponsorHouse. We had a great association with them and knew we were going to work together at some point. It was understood that while we were SponsorHouse, they didn't want to put the message out that they were sponsoring athletes. As soon as we launched Loop'd, we did a one-year deal with them, and we launched the Oakley Rider crusade program. They surely renewed the deal after that first year. It was implied sponsorship, but the word "sponsorship" never showed up anywhere.
When it comes to sports marketing, brands are very specific and single about how they get complex with things. On the action sports front, it's a minute bit trickier because you're taking a risk. If the athlete turns out to be a punk or is a bad image for the company, it taints things for the business and the brand. It's the same way with sponsorship; clubs just keep a surely tight wrap on who they will join together their brand with in order to safe the identity of the company.
Adrian: face of the sponsorship side, what do users surely do with Loop'd?
Scott: Our members can register on the site, receive a profile and have entrance to dissimilar features such as sponsorship, photos and video applications. We have 400 brands on the network, and we immerse those brands into the experience. With sports, brands are just part of the lifestyle. Habitancy in action sports surely recognize themselves based on the brands: the clothes they wear and the equipment they use, so they don't view them as advertisers but as active participants in the sport.
The members on the site are seeing for sponsors. They're uploading immense amounts of content, mixing it up, mashing it up and redistributing it to other social networking profiles. They're getting deals on products and entering contests from the brands to try and get sponsored and win products and incentives. Then they're using it as a more customary social network to join together and interact with other members who are into similar sports.
We have a lot of hopefuls on the network who are trying to outline out how to promote themselves, how to get a foot in the door with the dissimilar clubs for sponsorship and using it as a self-promotion tool to break into the action sports scene.
Adrian: Is that a model that could then be replicated over other verticals where you have a society of Habitancy that want to move up, such as actors, writers or Habitancy like that?
Scott: Absolutely. We've chosen to focus on sports because it's surely what we know and have been most passionate about. We have been approached by a whole of Habitancy about everything from music to horseracing, rodeo and actors. The biggest categories that come to us on a regular basis and ask if they can use it are musicians, bands, and gamers.
Adrian: Did you create your conception or did it come from somewhere else?
Scott: We were absolutely pioneers with the sponsorship model. Prior to SponsorHouse, there surely was no solution for up-and-coming and amateur athletes to get sponsored. Back in 1999- 2000, the customary process was an amateur athlete would write a resume, post his competition results, and throw some photos into an envelope. If he was lucky enough, he would put a video in there for sponsor reps or team managers to look at. And he would mail them to a company.
Some of the more beloved clubs like Oakley and Quiksilver would get tens of thousands of applications for sponsorship, and most of them would never get looked at because no one was designated to sift straight through all this facts nor did they have the time to do it.
When we launched SponsorHouse, it was a society site with profiles where team managers could specify the criteria of what types of athletes they're seeing for. For example, "I'm seeing for a 14-year old motocross racer from New York." If you fit that criteria, then you could taste that company.
It's a way for them to streamline the whole application process. We were the pioneer in developing that type of conception that surely brought the world of sponsorship to a much larger audience of athletes from all over the country at manifold levels beyond just professional.
Adrian: Does a business typically say, "We need to find a 14-year-old guy in New York City" and then your principles finds a 14-year-old skateboarder in New York City?
Scott: Correct. It works one of two ways. They can create a sponsorship listing that would enable Habitancy to taste them or they could do a crusade to pull all the Habitancy that fit their criteria. They can browse profiles, look at photos and videos, see how many friends they have, what Habitancy are saying about them, and what kind of ratings they have. They can get a better gauge of who they're seeing at and what type of man they are based on who they're friends with. At the end of the day, it's essentially marrying the effects of social networking with a commercialised process like sponsorship.
Adrian: How does the social networking fit into this then?
Scott: In expanding to trying to get sponsored, the members of the site are also out aggregating networks of friends and fans. For them, the more Habitancy they have in their network, the more needful they are to a sponsor. That way when a brand sponsors a single member, they now get visibility to all of their friends. It's a very creative grassroots marketing agenda where the athletes' online identity is sometimes as valuable, if not more, than their offline identity.
Adrian: If man signs up, how are they promoting? What types of dissimilar tools do you let your guys use?
Scott: during the signup process, you have an choice to import your address book and see who's already on the network. You can ask Habitancy that are off the network. You can also do the customary invite-a-friend.
Where we get more viral is on the sharing and inviting. Let's say I'm a member with 500 friends in the network and 500 Habitancy I can impart with off the network. I can post an modernize to my profile that says how I located at a specific event. When I send the update, it will immediately tip off all of my friends on the network as well as send an e-mail to all the Habitancy off the network. Then they have a link to visit my profile to see the update. They're basically promoting themselves, which is helping to pull more Habitancy back into the network.
We also have a partnership with a business called MixerCast. Their technology is a mash-up type tool where the user can pull in Flickr photos, YouTube videos, Ugc content, and music. Then you can create a mash-up, which is just mashing all this stuff together or essentially a timeline video editor.
For us, the application was excellent because now we offer a solution for a 14-year-old skateboarder to upload all his article of him doing tricks, put it together straight through the timeline editor, add music to it, and post it to his Loop'd profile. Then he can also share it and post it to his MySpace profile, his Facebook profile, or his Bebo. whatever that wants to interact with that single video or create their own has to come back to our network.
Overall, we don't invest in marketing. We do some Pr with our partners, but we don't invest much in paid crusade at all. We don't buy traffic or do print or event marketing. For the most part, everything is organic and word-of-mouth, and we get anywhere from 1,000 users and up a day to register.
Adrian: Why don't you do something like Ning and be the network for connecting brands to communities?
Scott: Our network does have elements of Ning. For example, if you go to monsterarmy.com, it is the grassroots athlete online society on the Loop'd Network for the energy drink Monster Energy. We went to them two years ago to gift the opening to build a branded society colse to the Monster energy brand and position it as a grassroots society for athletes to join together with the brand. That society works roughly identical to Ning where we offer a set of tools to brands to be able to build communities on our network.
Adrian: Why don't you take that to sustain any inherent vertical and allow all brands to come in?
Scott: We've determined it. From a reserved supply perspective, we're secretly and angel-funded so we've been focused on manufacture sure we went to action sports as a vertical first. We have surely been approached by any people. We're now surely pursuing licensing opportunities to have dissimilar business teams that are concerned in pursuing other verticals, and we'll do more of a joint-venture/licensing arrangement with those types of companies.
Adrian: Let's say you have 500 friends, and Monster energy is sponsoring you. How is that sponsorship done so it's not turning off those friends?
Scott: Immediately upon entering into an trade with a company, such as Monster Energy, the logo shows on their profile. Monster now has visibility and real estate on their profile as a sponsor.
It's then tied to everything the member does, so there's all the time an insignia that specifies who the brands are that are sponsoring them. Immediately the member can also share with the rest of his friends and networks that he has just been sponsored by Monster. Also every member has an action feed, and they can see what is happening with the rest of their friends on the network. That sponsorship will show on their action feed for everyone else in the network to see.
Adrian: How much does a typical sponsorship trade go for?
Scott: It surely depends on who you are. Typically, the levels start from discounts off sell pricing on the equipment that you need, which finally saves a lot of money. That's where most of the amateur athletes fall. Once you start getting into the very talented, up-and-coming amateur athletes who are on the verge of turning pro, they start getting free products. Then once you turn pro, a lot of those athletes are on straight pay. It's not a rich man's sport. Either it's surfing, motocross or skateboarding, as a pro you can start out manufacture anywhere from ,000 up to million depending on who you are.
Adrian: Is the million deal done straight through your site or do they do that directly?
Scott: They do those deals directly. The pro athletes who have agents and managers use our network strictly as a way to build fan bases and to promote their sponsors. They're not doing deals on our network. We never wanted to be in the middle of the sponsorship deal or in competition with the agents or the managers of these pro athletes. We're just the network where Habitancy can join together with each other.
Adrian: Given that you've got a monetisation model here, how well is it working?
Scott: We've surely monetised highly well. Our site is free for members now. For a brand to get onto our network and be able to interact with our members, they have to buy a profile, buy a community, buy display advertising, or set up a store front or do e-commerce where we get an affiliate fee.
The profile is very similar to a MySpace or a Facebook profile except brands can use our sponsorships services, interact with members and have visibility to a very targeted demographic.
The society is like a sponsored group, such as the Monster Army conception I mentioned. When you buy a community, you have a whole set of tools to take over the look and feel of our pages and add dissimilar modules Either it be a contest, a poll, featured members or featured athletes.
Then we have a customary display advertising model, which has been our least area of focus. The brands also have the quality to link up with their own shop or create their own storefront on our network, and they can sell products with deals to our members.
Adrian: You surely have a join of business models all rolled into one. Can you tell me page impressions?
Scott: We view about 12 million to 15 million pages a month and we have 400,000 members right now, most of which are active. In terms of income per page, we're in the -plus Cpm range for income per page which is unheard of when other social networks are in the pennies.
Adrian: The nuances may be dissimilar as well because in other areas like in Facebook, advertisers can be often viewed as unwanted intruders whereas in your area, everyone wants the sponsors.
Scott: Correct. We've layered the brands into the taste where they're not positioned as advertisers. They're positioned as other participants on the network. We have a brand engagement metric where 85 percent of our 400,000 members have engaged with brands on our network. When they have sent sponsorship applications, they've entered a contest, and they've become a friend of that brand, they interact with them and have a association with that brand so the brand can now talk to them on a regular basis.
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