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ICQ History Log For:
586491 bryant
Started on Tue Mar 06 15:36:21 2001
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sam 24/11/20 3:11 am im looking at different sites toassignto acq
ppl for ad sales.. which ones would u prefer
(genre)
bryant 25/11/20 6:04 am Sports and Gaming come to mind. I'd say Mens
General, Fashion and similar as well except I
don't know if we have any.
sam 25/11/20 6:07 am do you have any special sites that you'd like
to pick you know you can do great on
sam 25/11/20 6:07 am i think jon wants rpgamer and squaregamer :)
bryant 25/11/20 6:08 am Heh. Actually if I can keep out of gaming
I'll be happy, but I suspect I can still
leverage old contacts so I'm not looking to
avoid it. Let me look around the different
channels this afternoon and I'll see if I can
eyeball a few sites that have decent size and
substance that I think I can work well.
sam 25/11/20 6:09 am ok great
sam 27/11/20 12:39 pm any luck on the sites?
bryant 09/12/20 11:19 am Kevin Jenkins at MPOG isn't lazy. He's put
every campaign up on time or faster and has
never once complained openly or not. Yet he's
extremely frustrated and angry right now.
sam 09/12/20 11:21 am well not every one.. but a majority refuse to
coopreate
sam 09/12/20 11:22 am so what is he frustrated about
bryant 09/12/20 11:22 am We should directly and harshly penalize those
that don't. I don't think we need to reward
the ones that do - but I think they should be
treated well.
sam 09/12/20 11:23 am i dont think we treat them badly?
bryant 09/12/20 11:23 am The communication that's come down in the past
week. How it's been handled. Nothing is
concise or to the point. I can forward his
email if you like.
bryant 09/12/20 11:23 am Many of them do feel mistreated right now. A
lot feel like they're being openly threatened
right now.
bryant 09/12/20 11:23 am I'm not on "their side" here. Just telling
you what we're running into down in the
trenches on this.
sam 09/12/20 11:24 am sure..feedback is always good so we can let
our WRC's have better diplomatic communication
skills.
bryant 09/12/20 11:27 am Sent. That email is mild and diplomatic
compared to what we're getting today. The
main problems seem to be that they want
directives to be straight and to the point.
Not one of them has argued with me the merits
of putting the campaign up - it's all been
about the delivery.
sam 09/12/20 11:27 am thats funny
sam 09/12/20 11:28 am well, sure.. but 90% of the webmasters arent
cooperating with direct and to the point
directives
sam 09/12/20 11:28 am so i think g3 took this approach to create
rapport with the webmasters
sam 09/12/20 11:28 am and build realtions
sam 09/12/20 11:28 am you cant please everyone.. i think he's trying
to build a relationship and communication and
rapport..
sam 09/12/20 11:29 am perhaps one solution is to divided the
webmasters into 3 groups
bryant 09/12/20 11:29 am It seems to be doing the opposite. I just had
an hour long call with a webmaster who spent
the time venting about his approach.
bryant 09/12/20 11:29 am You're right though, you can't make everyone
happy.
sam 09/12/20 11:29 am 1. who like direct and to the point
communication.
sam 09/12/20 11:29 am 2. who like to be "babied" w/ video, etc.
sam 09/12/20 11:29 am 3. who need to be threatened
bryant 09/12/20 11:29 am Heh.
sam 09/12/20 11:30 am i think he should make a list and treat them
accordingly :) ill talk to him bout that
sam 09/12/20 11:30 am which webmaster was venting :)
bryant 09/12/20 11:30 am I'm sure you all have gone around and around
over this. I guess my approach would have to
be short and sweet, then those that don't
cooperate get the campaigns inserted by us and
we fine them some good % for it.
sam 09/12/20 11:30 am personally, i wouldnt do the video stuff.. i
think his stuff is hilarious.. but its getting
their attention :)
sam 09/12/20 11:30 am yeah..thats the other approach we need to take
also.. we talked about this yesetrday
sam 09/12/20 11:31 am have an in-house team do it w/ those who dont
cooperate ..and delay their payment
sam 09/12/20 11:31 am until they do cooperate
bryant 09/12/20 11:31 am I don't think there's any downside there
except the energy we have to espend to cover
the slackers. But noone can fault us for
doing so and fining the ones that don't
comply. They all know what the climate is out
there, and what we have to do to monetize.
bryant 09/12/20 11:32 am eXpend rather.
sam 09/12/20 11:32 am i read kevin's email..he does have a point..
mass emails are bad.. i hate doing mass emails
myself
bryant 09/12/20 11:32 am These campaigns are how they get paid. They
don't do their job and help roll out the
campaign, they don't get paid, or at least
don't get paid 100%.
bryant 09/12/20 11:35 am Anyway, all just food for thought. We'll
figure out what's the best way to do this.
I'm in my 14th hour - so calling it a day.
Couple RFPs out btw, nothing that will have us
swimming in cash - but I'll let you know what
kind of responses we get back. Every little
bit helps.
bryant 09/12/20 11:35 am Oh and Reviewboard has agreed to close. I
know you liked what you saw of them.
bryant 09/12/20 11:36 am BTW - last thought. One thing brought up by
another webmaster today was the notion of a
webmaster congress of sorts where they have a
unified body (and thus a representative) to
relay concerns, their voice, etc. How would
you feel about that?
sam 09/12/20 11:37 am union! eww
bryant 09/12/20 11:37 am Heh.
sam 09/12/20 11:37 am i just fwd: that email to g3 and cc'd you guys
bryant 09/12/20 11:37 am Can see lots of pitfalls, might also be a way
the webmasters police themselves and deal with
slackers. Don't know.
sam 09/12/20 11:38 am yeah, we always wanted an in-house webmasters
advocate.. that was david woodruff at one
point.. its not a bad idea
bryant 09/12/20 11:38 am It's easy in the Marines, the platoon takes
care of the problem child and everything goes
smoothly. =)
sam 09/12/20 11:38 am heh.. maybe we need to setup a platoon and
brigade per category or area?
sam 09/12/20 11:38 am we're alrready starting that.. asia
webmasters, europe, usa gaming, usa general
sam 09/12/20 11:39 am maybe better to get one of their own to be the
'rep'
sam 09/12/20 11:39 am for 5 to 10 sites at a time.. i dunno
sam 09/12/20 11:39 am but lets start by getting g3 going in the
right direction first
bryant 09/12/20 11:39 am Maybe a little bit of both, I don't know.
It's a concept though. And might help them
feel empowered.
bryant 09/12/20 11:39 am TOTALLY agree there. =)
bryant 09/12/20 11:39 am I'm out. Have a good weekend. Will be around
if anything comes up.
sam 09/12/20 11:39 am ok cya
bryant 09/12/20 11:49 am Amazing news on CNet lady btw.
sam 09/12/20 11:50 am yeah thats great.. she needs all the info u
guys were asking for though, and more..
demographic surveys, target audience, etc.
sam 09/12/20 11:50 am of course, proof still has to be in the
pudding.. im not too excitd until we see money
flowing in the bank :)
bryant 09/12/20 11:51 am No, I'm the same way. But that's definitely
encouraging. Let me talk to Jon about the ad
bullets. Maybe there's a way to streamline
that. I've been spending time recently
looking at media kits of our competitors, so
at least we have an idea of what is needed at
the base level.
sam 09/12/20 11:52 am yeah.. we just need to concentrate on the
online media kits too.. she doesnt even use
offline media kits. something nice online
would be awesome.. of course, having our
webguide and better navigation (dynamic) links
on the inside efront part to let
advertisers/ppl navigate efront would help
tremendously.. we need more programming
resources for that though..we're backed up:(
bryant 09/12/20 11:53 am Actually all the ones I've been eyeballing
have been online. I think that's more or less
the standard these days.
sam 09/12/20 11:58 am ive been talking to the maxpc sales guys.. and
know their entire cycle, figures, etc. pretty
much..
for the number of sales ppl we have (4)..we're
not doing that bad in total revenues per
head.. we need to increase that to 10-15 sales
ppl though
aug: 160k, sept: 320k, oct: 260k, nov: 1.7mil
aug: 3 ppl, sept: 4 ppl, oct: 4 ppl, nov: 4
ppl
we also have chris -- who is setting up local
salespartnerships ($0 yet)
and brad - who moved from dennis's biz dev
group to sales recently..who isnt counted in
the above
sam 09/12/20 11:59 am brad has a $35 cpm deal for 2 mil imps in the
gaming channel for 70k..that was pitched in
person today and they were enthusiastic.. he's
saying he'll get it signed monday.. we'll see
bryant 09/12/20 12:00 pm Heh, well sure - now I feel like a punk with
my little $15k RFPs here and there. j/k
sam 09/12/20 12:01 pm everything helps.. heck, if after rampup you
can pull in 50k/month consistenly.. thats
great:)
sam 09/12/20 12:01 pm sometimes ppl forget to pay the bills..they
try to go for homeruns.. ilike lot of smaller
deals coming in too .. someone's gotta pay the
light bill
bryant 09/12/20 12:03 pm No, I agree - was just joking. I want to
develop a relationship with EA, we do that
even at a low level and it can turn into
something that rolls at a higher.
sam 09/12/20 12:05 pm oh is this for EA? great.. i know mike murphy
tried to do something w/ them for skinz and
stuff in october but that didnt go through
bryant 09/12/20 12:07 pm Yeah. Still have some good entrenched
contacts over there. We're going to try and
start with a campaign for a Wes Craven (or was
it Clive Barker) game called "Undying" and
possibly "American McGee's Alice". If we get
those and it goes well, they're interested in
rolling campaigns across their different
departments, and are acutely interested in our
capacity to serve their commericals via
streaming FMV ads down the road.
sam 09/12/20 12:07 pm hey.. Rad is availalbe this weekend to work on
the online media kit.. should we brainstorm
and give him a spec and layout/etc?
that would be awesome to get that done this
weekend..because we have maxpc guys strting
next week .. i can get him into the loop as
well
bryant 09/12/20 12:08 pm Yeah. I have a couple quick links I can shoot
somewhere as at least a reference.
bryant 09/12/20 12:08 pm Obviously the sooner we get that up the easier
life is on a lot of fronts. Certainly
especially Ms.CNet, but also on the grassroots
pursuits as well.
bryant 11/12/20 12:22 pm re: SomethingAwful.com
Lowtax (ICQ#19629905) Wrote:
My site's down *again*
sam 11/12/20 12:23 pm yeah matt is at globalcenter moving servers
around i think
sam 17/12/20 9:20 am hey Will.. what were the terms of the RB deal
sam 17/12/20 10:10 am Are you there? Need to talk
bryant 17/12/20 10:27 am Hey, just walked back in. What's up?
bryant 17/12/20 10:28 am I can shoot you the last version of the RB
contract if you like?
bryant 17/12/20 10:29 am Basic concept is $14k and a normal amount of
stock. No wacky clauses except he was still
going to get his stock (based upon the
existing vesting schedule) if we terminated
him.
bryant 17/12/20 10:32 am Where we are with RB right now is his mom (a
lawyer) wants to add some meat to the
contract. Just simply specify some things
that are implied and meant, just not spelled
out. I warned Phil (the owner) about it all
falling apart if new terms were introduced -
so he's actually working on our behalf to a
certain degree to reel his mom in.
sam 17/12/20 11:20 am hey Will are you there
bryant 17/12/20 11:47 am Sure am.
sam 17/12/20 11:49 am Been talking to Roy. I'm sure he's filled you
in on the direction we need to head down for
the near term. The ad market's much tighter..
not much low hanging fruits out there and we
really have to work for our keep now :) Which
means more resources towards the area and
scaling back on untargeted RON acqs for
pageview growth somewhat until we can fully
monetize our assets.
bryant 17/12/20 11:50 am Yeah, we've been talking about that.
Completely agree there.
bryant 17/12/20 11:50 am Any acqs right now should probably be
something like breastfeeding.com and not
anycrapgames.com, etc. I'm actually pretty
excited to hear we can support regional ad
sales. Going to see if I can work Jax and
Columbus.
sam 17/12/20 11:51 am yup.. we have chris higgins doing local sales
too (chrish@efront.com)
bryant 17/12/20 11:51 am Or perhaps OH/FL - we'll see how that plays
out.
bryant 17/12/20 11:51 am Great, I'll touch base with him Monday.
sam 17/12/20 11:52 am That means we have to get more exp. sales ppl
(we're starting to do that here) and cut back
on other resources. I bounced this off of roy
already and want to bounce this off of you.
Basically, streamlining our ops in the office.
We let jason go few weeks ago; basically he
was unprodcutive. Brad pulled in a 60k sale
(30 cpm).. so he's starting to kick up.
sam 17/12/20 11:54 am On your side, I wanted to talk about sharon;
it might be in her and our best interest to
part because of our immediate needs. I know
she tried very hard and was dedicated on the
acq. side. I'd like to get your thoughts on
this proposal:
* Let her know about our direction
* Pay her through the end of the year.
* Vest her 5000 options immediately (and waive
the excercise clause of 30 days to 1 year or
something).
bryant 17/12/20 11:55 am I think that's both reasonable and fair.
Certainly it addresses our needs, and between
us I see that as an approprite opportunity to
streamline.
sam 17/12/20 11:55 am Trying to allocate more funds on the sales
side and with you doing Sales and Roy helping
out more on the traffic side, we also have
Lloyd coming on board for tech sales and
Monique as well (cnet)
sam 17/12/20 11:56 am Since you're her immediate supervisor there,
would you like to talk to her or do you feel
it would be better for me to do so?
bryant 17/12/20 11:56 am I think I would rather if that's okay with
you.
sam 17/12/20 11:56 am That's fine; that's why I approached you
first. It's a touchy subject obviously and I
want to make sure we do it right.
bryant 17/12/20 11:57 am Absolutely, agree 100%. I think handled the
right way she can see it as a positive. I
know what drives Sharon, and she may well come
out of this without any negative feelings.
bryant 17/12/20 11:58 am It's never a real positive - but variables
allow it to be as non-negative as possible.
=)
sam 17/12/20 11:58 am Right, and we'll do whatever we need on our
side. including the option stuff -- she
deserves it.
bryant 17/12/20 11:58 am I'll talk to her this weekend.
bryant 17/12/20 11:58 am Is it safe to assume we (Jon, myself, Brian)
should continue to pursue clear revenue
opoprtunity acquisitions?
sam 17/12/20 11:58 am okay thanks. let me know and i'll let mike
frue get the paperwork in writing (with the
options, etc.) so she's secure.
sam 17/12/20 11:58 am yes
bryant 17/12/20 11:59 am OK, I'll make that secondary to ads right now.
Have a few leads, going to put some of the
quality ROI types in a holding pattern.
sam 17/12/20 11:59 am our big push is revenues now.. i'd like to
spit out 20% of our revenues and put it in the
bank as a cushion
bryant 17/12/20 11:59 am That may or may not include RB, when I get
their contract I'll talk to you and/or Jerry
about it.
sam 17/12/20 11:59 am who knows how long this market will last
sam 17/12/20 12:00 pm okay. I think RB can get us alot of
storerunner (ecomm) revenues, no?
sam 17/12/20 12:00 pm with every review essentially.. al ink..
bryant 17/12/20 12:00 pm It can't last like this forever. I'm no
analyst but I don't see how it can't start to
strengthem in the new year.
bryant 17/12/20 12:00 pm Absolutely it will.
sam 17/12/20 12:00 pm do you know how many daily visitors he gets?
sam 17/12/20 12:00 pm thats a very good indication of conversino on
the srunner links
bryant 17/12/20 12:01 pm uniques? Not off the top of my head, but I'll
find out. He's an odd one. 22MM PVs 1/00,
650k when I started talking to him. 3.5-4MM
now, with a clause in the contract that he has
to hit 7MM within 90 days. At his current
growth rate, he should more be around 10MM
w/in 90.
sam 17/12/20 12:02 pm wow.. from 22mm to 3 mil huh.. what happened
bryant 17/12/20 12:02 pm Botched acqs process that lasted 5 months with
a company overseas. They just wanted his
backend.
bryant 17/12/20 12:03 pm The upside there for us is that he's growing
at an unprecedented rate, so we effectively
get a 20MM site (if/when it returns to that)
on a 7MM contract structure.
sam 17/12/20 12:03 pm ok..
let's say we get $1 cpm.. that 7k
and if we can get 7k on storerunner.. which is
70,000 clicks a month.. which is 2000 a day
sam 17/12/20 12:04 pm do you think he can generate that? if so, or
if we could get him to somehow do it
sam 17/12/20 12:04 pm then we can sign :)
sam 17/12/20 12:04 pm because storerunner for us is very short
payment terms.. helps with cashflow alot
bryant 17/12/20 12:05 pm He is very easy to work with, which is a
quality I look for in acqs targets these days
to be honest. I don't know what a common CTR
is on Storerunner, but I don't think there's
any question his would be amongst the higher
CTRs.
sam 17/12/20 12:05 pm i know!! no more kids
sam 17/12/20 12:05 pm i think we all learned alot
bryant 17/12/20 12:06 pm Hell, we may be able to get him on board with
SR even if he doesn't sign. Don't know how
that might work, maybe some sort of payment to
him... Just a "what if" contingency.
sam 17/12/20 12:06 pm good idea.. maybe even try to get it to him
now.. 'test of his traffic' as an excuse or
something
bryant 17/12/20 12:07 pm Yeah, even some of the non-kids are pretty
confusing. I try to keep them docile (the
ones that vent towards me), but in a few
particular cases it's increasingly difficult
to understand that level of rage coming from
someone who works about an hour a day for an
above average (according to US gross
standards) salary.
bryant 17/12/20 12:08 pm I'll talk to him on Monday. He's actually
anxious to get aboard with us, it's his
partners (damn Carter administration lawyer)
and his mother that are slowing us down.
sam 17/12/20 12:08 pm yeah i know.. well, guess what? im going
through the webmaster sites, payments, etc.
right now.. starting with the ones who arent
cooperating, im kicking them out..
bryant 17/12/20 12:08 pm So SR now as opposed to later may well be
feasible with him.
sam 17/12/20 12:08 pm that sounds good
sam 17/12/20 12:08 pm to start off the relationship.. so we can
gauge the return too
bryant 17/12/20 12:09 pm I can't say anything but 'good' to that. I
look forward to hearing from some of them how
much worse the grass is on the other side of
the fence.