An Interview with BuySellAds.com

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BuySellAds.com [BSA] is an advertising marketplace for small to medium sized website owners/publishers. They want to help small to medium sized website publishers sell more ads and make more money from buysellads websites. They also want to help advertisers find better placements and streamline the process of dealing with small to medium sized publishers.

BuySellAds.com is a direct banner selling service. As a result you can charge as much as you want for an ad slot and you can move away from PPC or CPM etc adnetworks and start charging more, on monthly basis.

We could somehow get in contact with a nice guy called Todd of buysellads.com, and he was kind enough to answer some of our questions.

1. We are very much curious about all the guys behind BuySellAds.com, and we want to have a look at your office. If you have any video and photographs(of your employees and office) then please share it with our readers.

Hahaha, well, BuySellAds.com is run by me out of the second bedroom in my apartment. We have a programmer and an assistant site manager who also work from home and are remote. We’re a very small team, 100% bootstrapped, and trying to be as efficient as possible to make this thing work for everyone. I don’t think there’s any other way to do it.

2. How would you decide that BSA is matured enough to comeout of *BETA*?

Good question. I’ll make you a deal… as soon as Gmail comes out of beta, we will come out of beta. Cool?

3. Do you read blogs? If yes, then which are your favorite blogs?

There are only two blogs I read religiously: http://TechCrunch.com and http://OnStartups.com

4. There was a Buzz in the blogosphere, when BSA was launched. what do you think made “A” list bloggers write about your launch?

I think the idea behind BSA just rings true with many bloggers. The problem I was trying to solve is real and I wasn’t the only person with that problem: selling ads on my own was a pain, too time consuming, and distracted me from publishing more often. Buying ads was also troublesome – contacting multiple bloggers, making payment different ways, etc, it was just totally disorganized and inefficient.

5. What about the tool(suggestion tool based on real data) which would show us the value of our blogs ad space?

Yes, this is a good idea and one that we want to do. It’s one of those things that’s very hard to get *right*. For example, a site in our network CSSRemix is getting around 100K impressions per month. They are selling 7 ads across the top of their site at $350 each. That is a $3.50 CPM which is very high for our network. You will find many sites of similar caliber that cannot charge that much. Pricing ads is tricky and is not an equation – there are many many factors involved. That being said, it’s something we’re very interested in building because it is hard to build – which would make it a very valuable tool.

6. What goals do you have for BSA in coming years?

Same goals we have now, help publishers sell more ads, and help advertisers find quality niche placements from a central marketplace.

7. What was the major challenge you faced while launching BSA?

Having the guts to pull the trigger. I had the site ready to go for a few weeks before I actually launched.

8. What do you call, was a stepping stone for BSA?

Getting some of the first publishers signed up (Logopond, PSDTuts, FreelanceSwitch, etc).

9. Share a happiest moment about BSA(except the launch day)?

Seeing the first ads sold moments after the first publisher had installed the ad code 😉

10. How do you define success?

Success for me is about doing the right thing. Whether in business, family, etc., it’s important to always do the right thing and that’s how I sleep well at night.

11. What are the mistakes you see your publishers and advertisers are making, in using BSA

Changing price frequently and/or raising the price on an advertiser in their first month. It just doesn’t make any sense. The publishers who do the best with BSA raise pricing on their advertisers *maybe* once every 3-4 months. I think that it is important for publishers to find a price they are happy with for this period of time and stick with it. Even if you need to raise the price for new advertisers, you should let the existing advertisers stay at their current rate for roughly 3-4 months. As for advertisers, the common mistake I see with them is not giving a placement enough time. One month is a long time, but with some businesses advertising in this niche it can be more about branding and staying power (believe it or not) than anything else.

12. What repels you the most from a blog/website(animation at your face advertising etc)?

Poorly placed ads that don’t fit in well with the design of the site. Sites that have scripts for more than 2 ad networks. The biggest turn off, however, is seeing ads that are not targeted. If you look through all of the websites in BSA’s inventory and check out the ads BSA serves for those sites, you will see that 99.9% of them (had to give myself a little room for error) are very targeted placements.

13. Whats your view about PPC, CPM, CPA advertising?

Blah, Blah and blah. I like to keep things simple, fixed 30-day rates.

14. What are the new year resolutions for BSA?

The one is easy, get the new site launched!

15. Please tell something, that you would like all your
advertisers/publishers/ and others to know about you and BuySellAds.com

What you see is what you get. BSA is real.

We are using BuySellAds on some of our blog too, and it provides a reliable service. Once your blog is accepted into their network, your blog will be listed in their marketplace and you will get a lot of exposure. And the best part is – they pay on time!
BuySellAds is still in Beta, and we hope it will be available for all public shortly. And we recommend to try Beta Registration and see your luck with them.

Hope you enjoyed the interview