Users on the internet want content and services provided for free.  A self-proclaimed nerd named Craig Newmark understood this when he created his email list back in 1995.  Craig used his email list to share news about important events in the San Francisco area.  Over time, Craig found that his email list wouldn’t scale for the users that wanted to receive his list and so he built a list serve and later a web-site, which his friends convinced him to call Craig’s List.

I was able to catch Craig’s keynote address at the DMA conference in Las Vegas earlier this month.  Craig’s address was full of humor, but also important lessons that he has learned throughout his days supporting users and a business.

Craig chose to develop a for profit business in 1999.  His commitment to users led to his hiring an outside CEO so he could continue to focus on his role as a customer support representative.  Craig, to this day, literally supports dozens of customer support inquiries from his loyal following, as well as from authorities looking to investigate serious allegations of harassment and misconduct by users of the popular web service.  He went so far as to sharing his email address with all the conference goers at the DMA conference (craig@craigslist.org) to which he tries to answer most, if not all, of the inquiries.

Here is my list of important points I heard Craig make regarding his success:

• Doesn’t consider Craig’s List to serve a noble cause. The business is as simple as pleasing consumers and making sure clients that work with their business understand and share the same values. He doesn’t feel he has a vision at all; he just listens to the customers.
• It is simple Web 0.1. They have chosen, out of necessity, to sacrifice the bells and whistles of the latest and greatest popular internet features to focus on scaling the bare bones features required to support their 50M monthly visitors.
• Despite earning less revenue than other leading players, they are able to provide the features a user needs at a lower cost (free in most categories).
• Treat people like you want to be treated. Often companies (like IBM, where he once worked) say they value customer support, but they really just value large customers.
• He thinks people have, for thousands of years, gone to the marketplace to talk business (mall, flea market, etc.). He says that face-to-face is better than digital, but it doesn’t scale.
• Views customer service as a form of marketing and that too much marketing is from the top down and not the bottom up.
• When speaking to business partners, they start off with their values. They do have commercial relationships with business partners who post paid ads in select Craig’s List categories and this has proven to be a big money maker for the service today.
• Users flag classified ads for removal.
• Need to consider whether your service should be open to anonymous users or requires some type of authentication.

I am a fan of Craig’s List; however, I must admit I still spend more time on eBay both as a merchant and as a user.  I am an eBay junkie.  The simplicity of Craig’s List is appealing, and “FREE” has its draw.  However, I find myself willing to pay the price on eBay for the features I have grown to love.  I am not a coupon clipper, but I do believe in supporting free services for consumers and use Craig’s List for this very reason.  I hope Craig’s List continues to offer its free service but hope it can find more value-added, revenue-producing business partners so that they can make further improvements in the features of their website.  It doesn’t need all the bells and whistles for me to switch from eBay.  I might even settle for a website redesign.

To learn more about W3i’s value-added advertising solutions in support of free content and services please visit our website at www.w3i.com.

Ryan Weber, Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Co-Founder, W3i Holdings, LLC
Ryan is an Internet marketing pioneer with over eight, profitable years evolving W3i (owner of Freeze.com) in the Integrated Interactive Media industry. 

The big guys all seem to agree that using advertisements to support user’s time spent outside of the browser is a good idea. For example, back in April 2006, Microsoft acquired in-game advertising pioneer, Massive Inc., for what was rumored to be $200 to $400 million. Google launched a competitive response with their AdWords in-game advertising initiative, which you can see here- http://www.google.com/ads/games/marketers.html. But it’s not just about ads in games. Yahoo! announced a deal with Adobe back in December of 2007 to put online ads in PDFs.

Why is this a big market opportunity? I think Brad Kertson, Senior Marketing Product Manager  from Microsoft, says it all, “…users still spend greater than 60% of their computer time outside the browser, sending emails, working on documents, organizing pictures, and a long list of connected scenarios where virtually no ads are shown today.” Brad will be a guest speaker at ad:tech New York on Thursday, November 6^th, speaking on the topic of advertising in applications (http://www.ad-tech.com/ny/adtech_new_york_speakers.aspx?Spkid=1781).

The biggest question for advertising in the application itself is quality. Online ads perform very well in search because very specific user intent can be understood and leveraged for very specific advertising purposes. Current in-application advertising efforts seem a lot more like display advertisements, which are getting increasingly pummeled by the downward economic pressures because they do not directly drive performance for marketers.

We believe a better way to generate advertising revenue with applications is while users are downloading them. Through W3i’s “Download Network”, W3i helps marketers get their valued software discovered by users who are demanding free or low cost applications. W3i’s Download Network works with all types of valued software applications, including various desktop widgets, trialware, and browser plug-ins.  Publishers of desktop applications are able to utilize this advertising revenue stream to off-set their user acquisition and development costs, and turn a profit.

If you’d like to discover ways to increase revenue from your downloads, stop by our booth, #802, at ad:tech New York, or contact us by visiting www.w3i.com.

Rob Weber, Vice President of Business Development and Co-Founder, W3i, LLC
Rob is an Internet marketing pioneer with over eight, profitable years evolving W3i (owner of Freeze.com) in the Integrated Interactive Media industry.

Everyone has a passion-something they want to know more about.  With W3i’s new VibeFire, messages from your favorite brands about your favorite subjects are delivered directly to your desktop.  VibeFire is now in its beta stage, and will soon offer a broad directory of topics. 

For You, the UserVibeFire is an application that resides on your taskbar and keeps you connected to the information that matters to you (such as news, gossip, humor) by delivering you a message when the story breaks.  VibeFire allows you to customize what type of information you want delivered and how often.  How does it work?  It’s simple, really; simple as “Really Simple Syndication” or RSS for short.  VibeFire hooks up to any RSS feed and when a new message is posted, VibeFire pulls it down for you and displays it on your desktop. 

VibeFire is all about you; fueling your passions, keeping you connected, and expanding your knowledge.

Publishers + VibeFire = Match Made in HeavenPublishers love VibeFire.  Why?  Because it extends their reach to users beyond the browser.  VibeFire enables you to stay in touch with users on the desktop, all done in a simple, straight-forward and speedy fashion.  VibeFire is meant to increase customer loyalty and ignite content discovery.  Because VibeFire is all about the user, publishers can trust that users will be presented with the best experience possible, delivering your content in an engaging and satisfying way.

To learn more about VibeFire, click here.

About W3i

W3i, owner of Freeze.com, delivers proven, integrated desktop marketing solutions.  With solutions tested and optimized on over 200 million installs–currently 4.5 million installs monthly, W3i can increase revenue and traffic for downloadable software, applications and digital content or provide a receptive consumer base for customized, targeted distribution programs.  W3i’s solutions utilize Install IQ, a proprietary download manager and installation system developed by W3i.  Install IQ is the first installation system to be certified in the TRUSTe Trusted Download Program.  To learn more about W3i, visit www.W3i.com.

Software bundling is a way to increase money from your downloads-software, games, widgets-or any other popular application that has a sizable number of installations.  By bundling relevant software you offer the user a bonus while increasing your revenue.  Software bundling, done right, is a benefit to the user. 

Bundling is a marketing tactic whereby several products are combined in one installation or sale increasing distribution and maximizing profit.

Back in the early PC days, most new users first heard about new software because it was pre-installed with their PC. Overtime, users started complaining because the software became less relevant to them. Today users can learn about new software through digital software bundles offered with their favorite downloads. Unlike the early PC days, digital software bundling has the opportunity to create much greater relevancy for the user by taking advantage of more sophisticated targeting techniques.

Software bundling was used as a marketing tool since the late 1800′s when Herman Hollerith, the father of automatic computation, used it to sell his punch-card tabulating machine.  It has continued to be used by Internet leaders, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, Apple and nearly every major software brand in their quest for users promoting their toolbars, instant messenger applications, and other product du jour. 

When done right, software bundling has some great advantages:

• Increases revenue from your download
• Rapidly increases the distribution of your product
• Reduces the cost of directly marketing to the consumer
• Becomes a value-add for your user

 There are also some obstacles:

• Difficult to find companies that will pay you for bundling their software
• Time-consuming to negotiate contracts
• Testing and monitoring to determine the quality of the bundled software
• Complexity of ensuring that you are following industry best practices, including Disclosure, Consent, User Choice and User Control
• Development time finding the best installer featuring the flexibility needed during the installation process and setting up the installations properly

If bundling downloads in house, here are a few pointers:

• Find relevant bundle partners
• Negotiate terms
• Review the terms of the agreement, tracking and payment
• Prepare and optimize creative images
• Optimize the file size
• Review the download to ensure that it is compliant and trustworthy and only performs functions disclosed and acceptable to the user
• Be sure the download is easy to uninstall, using the Windows Add/Remove program functionality. The uninstall process should be complete and not leave behind components that affect the functionality of the user’s computer.
• Review it from the end-user’s perspective. Is this an acceptable user experience?

Sound complicated? You can also find an out-sourced solution available through W3i.  W3i has installed over 200 million installs since it started in 2000, and is now installing over 4.5 million downloads each month bringing companies and products together with a turnkey solution, the W3i Download Network (WDN).  WDN utilizes proprietary Install IQ technology, which makes software bundling a whiz.  Install IQ is the first installer to be certified in the TRUSTe Trusted Download Program.  W3i has built a network of partners and an expertise in software bundling. 

Join the respected Internet leaders, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and Apple -increase the distribution and revenue from your downloads by using software bundling.

About W3i

W3i, owner of Freeze.com, delivers proven, integrated desktop marketing solutions.  With solutions tested and optimized on over 200 million installs–currently 4.5 million installs monthly, W3i can increase revenue and traffic for downloadable software, applications and digital content or provide a receptive consumer base for customized, targeted distribution programs.  W3i’s solutions utilize Install IQ, a proprietary download manager and installation system developed by W3i.  Install IQ is the first installation system to be certified in the TRUSTe Trusted Download Program.  To learn more about W3i, visit www.W3i.com.