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Description:

OUR AD NETWORK DELIVERS:

• 80 MILLION IMPRESSIONS PER MONTH
• 3 MILLION CLICKS PER MONTH
• GROWING AT 16% MONTH-OVER-MONTH without any marketing
  

The Backstory:

I launched Entrecard ad network 11 months ago, and in that time is has spread to 20,000 blogs delivering 80 million impressions per month. We’re growing fast, and in the next year alone we’re on track to sign up between 40,000 to 80,000 more blogs.

The reason so many bloggers love Entrecard is that it brings them traffic! Through our toolbar, the ads they buy on each others blogs, and the thriving community, any blogger joining Entrecard instantly gets a stream of traffic, comments, subscribers that only increases the more they participate! It is a proven system that works, and our growth attests to it.

At the heart of our ad network is a virtual currency that bloggers use to buy ads on each others blogs. The currency is also used to buy all types of products and services in our marketplace. The potential to grow the marketplace is absolutely enormous. Members earn our virtual currency by “dropping their card” on other sites with the widget, commenting on blogs, publishing posts on their blogs, entering and winning contets by other bloggers, or buying them on ebay.

Our core product is our widget network, which serves 125×125 advertising across 56 vertical channels in the blogosphere, doing about 80 million impressions per month.

We also have a Firefox Toolbar - used by our bloggers/publishers to visit other sites, purchase advertising, and pack the power of the site into the browser. This toolbar is used by 7000 bloggers.

We’ve partnered with SezWho, to give people credits when they leave comments, and we’ve partered with OIO publisher to make EC an accepted form of payment on all types of advertising across the blogosphere.

Why am I selling:

Entrecard holds a very special place in my heart. The vision for the company is enormous: aggregating all the advertising inventories across the long tail of the blogosphere, creating a virtual economy for the blogosphere at large, and providing them with a virtual currency that integrates with all other types of services via API.

I am selling because I have come to a stalemate. Entrecard is growing fast, but I do not have the resources to put behind it. I recently met extensively with Venture Capitalists who were going to make a 700k seed investment and a 2-5m follow on Series A investment in 6 months. The deal fell through in the 11th hour, right before the terms sheet, because they lost faith in my ability to execute the plan after a series of tests in which I did not know I was being tested. The valuation we were discussing was 8 million. We were going to open a headquarters, hire 10 people, and go straight to the top. Then it fell apart, and after getting my hopes up, I just haven’t been able to get back on my feet. I’m a wreck and feeling like a failure to come so close only to drop it due to my idiocy.

I also received an Angel investment several months ago at a valuation of $500,000. The network has more than tripled in size since I received that small investment. Month after month the growth rate just increases.

A word about the economy

Entrecard is, in reality, a micro-economy. We have people earning our virtual currency in a totally free market that allows them to spend it as they please, send it to others as they please, and engage in trade and exchange. Our chief product is the advertising that bloggers buy on each others blogs.

Currently, we tax purchases of advertising at a rate of 75%, so the “credit economy” has a 25% accumulation rate. As the new owner, you must roll out virtual goods that people can spend their credits on. I have a whole list of all the virtual products that we wanted to develop and release, but never had the resources. These virtual goods would take credits out of the economy, thus increasing the value and the scarcity of the credit.

Looking for someone with resources and experience who can execute - and take it to the NEXT LEVEL

The vision for this company is enormous, and it will require resources. I want to see it get there, with or without me, and do what’s best for the company and what’s best for the members. With the right team of people at the helm, a VC deal would be a cake walk for Entrecard. Or, if you have resources to invest and don’t need outside Capital, this will easily be a multi-million dollar company. I think that it already is. The VCs I recently worked with thought so too.

Revenue

The ways to generate revenue off this site are endless. I just never had enough resources necessary to implement them. Off the top of my head, here are 4 ways you could instantly generate a large stream of revenue, and in fact 4 things I would have done already if I had the resources:

1.) Credit Transfer Tax: millions of credits are transferred daily through Entrecard. If you charged $1.00 for every thousand credits transferred, you’d be rich.

2.) Monetize the ad network: Currently our widget network is doing about 80 million impressions monthly across 56 vertical channels. The logical thing to do is to take a % of those impressions, probably 25% to 33%, and serve your own advertising through it. The more targeted you can make the ads, the higher CPM you can get.

3.) Implement the credit exchange: right now, people are buying and selling tons of credits on eBay. If you built an exchange where people buy and sell their credits exclusively through the site, and you take a commission, you would make a ton.

4.) Listing fees in marketplace: Right now we have a marketplace where people can buy and sell any type of product or service, and pay with our virtual currency. However, the “shop” as we call it, is incomplete. It needs to be developed to include seller feedback, like ebay, and possibly an escrow so that the seller does not receive payment until it’s received by the buyer. Once you fix the shop system, you can roll out a marketplace-widget to bring the point of sale to the individual blog. From there just charge a small listing fee ~.25 cents for each item listed.

Existing Revenue

We make a small stream of revenue, enough to pay for our servers, currently selling credits and advertising on our site. About 2000 per month, give or take. However, Entrecard is not “monetized” yet, and however you choose to monetize it re: the 4 ways above will determine your success. If you implemented all four methods today, Entrecard would easily make $30,000 per month.

Not looking to sell to just anyone with the money

I want to be very clear that I am not looking to sell this site to anyone who can write a check. I want to be absolutely certain that whoever I let carry on the EC torch is going to fulfill my vision: to fix the marketplace, roll out a shop widget, invest resources into the site to make it better, and monetize it effectively so that it becomes a sustainable business that can thrive. I do not have the resources this requires, or I would do it myself.

The best-fit owner would be someone who is enthusiastic about new media, someone who either has a team of developers or can hire a team of developers, and someone who wants to seek Venture Capital, and maybe has some existing connections.

Once in a lifetime opportunity

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Within a year, Entrecard will be on about 100,000 blogs at it’s current growth rate. That is not a joke, and it’s acquisition territory for some of the giants like IAC, Microsoft, etc. No existing companies can serve display ads across that many blogs.

Whoever buys this site, if you develop it and hold onto it for a year or two, will sell it for 20 million + easily. This is the textbook case of a fast-growing startup that is destined to the top.

Final Words

As I struggle to try to bring this website forward without the resources I need, I can only imagine what someone could do with it if they actually  had the resources to throw behind it. With a designer, a developer, and some capital to invest, and a years time, this is easily worth tens of millions of dollars.

If you are seriously interested, send me a private message and we’ll chat by phone. There is so much to discuss with Entrecard, so many questions that you’ll have about how it works and how to move forward, that email or private messages would just be a waste of time.

Comes with one-year advisors from Me personally

No one knows Entrecard in and out better than me personally, and I will consult you whenever you like, for as long as you like (within reason). I want to see this thing succeed and get to the top, and have very strong opinions of how that will happen.

Revenue Details:

Revenue

The ways to generate revenue off this site are endless. I just never had the resources necessary to implement them. Off the top of my head, here are 4 ways you could instantly generate a large stream of revenue, and in fact 4 things I would have done already if I had the resources:

1.) Credit Transfer Tax: millions of credits are transferred daily through Entrecard. If you charged $1.00 for every thousand credits transferred, you’d be rich.

2.) Monetize the ad network: Currently our widget network is doing about 80 million impressions monthly across 56 vertical channels. The logical thing to do is to take a % of those impressions, probably 25% to 33%, and serve your own advertising through it. The more targeted you can make the ads, the higher CPM you can get.

3.) Implement the credit exchange: right now, people are buying and selling tons of credits on eBay. If you built an exchange where people buy and sell their credits exclusively through the site, and you take a commission, you would make a ton.

4.) Listing fees in marketplace: Right now we have a marketplace where people can buy and sell any type of product or service, and pay with our virtual currency. However, the “shop” as we call it, is incomplete. It needs to be developed to include seller feedback, like ebay, and possibly an escrow so that the seller does not receive payment until it’s received by the buyer. Once you fix the shop system, you can roll out a marketplace-widget to bring the point of sale to the individual blog. From there just charge a small listing fee ~.25 cents for each item listed.

Existing Revenue

We make a small stream of revenue, enough to pay for our servers, currently selling credits and advertising on our site. About 2000 per month, give or take. However, Entrecard is not “monetized” yet, and however you choose to monetize it re: the 4 ways above will determine your success. If you implemented all four methods today, Entrecard would easily make $30,000 per month.

Traffic Details:

The core value of Entrecard is not it’s destination site. The Entrecard.com site is visited only by new media publishers.

The real value of Entrecard is the widget network that spans 20,000 blogs, that is adding 100 more blogs every day, that is delivering about 80,000,000 impressions per month. So the traffic to the actual site doesn’t mean much.

Also, it is worth noting that when we launched our toolbar, traffic to the site dropped dramatically. This is because we have 7000 people using the toolbar now, and the toolbar gives them everything the site gives them, so they no longer need to visit the site as much. So whereas before they had to go to the site to find sites to buy ads on, visit other sites, and purchase the ads, they can do it all now through the toolbar.

Trading visits on our site for perpetual visibility in the browser was a strategic move; it consumes less of our resources and creates a better user experience.

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