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Publication: Marketingsherpa.com
Date: 17th May 2001
Title: Whatsonwhen Expects Profitability from Licensed Content Sales by
Late 2001
Two
years ago, as head of the travel section for one of the UK's largest ISP's,
Emily Spencer was searching for a content licensing company to sell her
constantly refreshed listings for events tourists might want to attend
around the world from German operas to Brazilian carnivals. Mission impossible,
so she quit her job and launched Whatsonwhen to fill the gap in the content
market.
Marketing Director Joel Brandon-Bravo says, after a bit of initial pricing
"trial and error," Whatsonwhen settled on charging about US$5000
a month for the full service including 120 countries and 15 interests
categories. Clients can also slice and dice feeds with varying costs;
and, choose between XML feeds vs. a hosted events section that looks like
their site.
Initially, like many others, Whatsonwhen did ad revenue share deals with
some sites instead of requiring cash up-front. They've renegotiated most
of those deals since the banner market tanked. They've also switched to
carrying purely affiliate-relationship ads on their own destination site
instead of selling ads on a CPM basis. (Affiliate ads pay you when your
visitors click through to become another site's customers.)
About 80% of the Company's revenues now come from content licensing and
20% from ads. According to Brandon-Bravo, revenues currently cover roughly
75% of costs; and, he expects to hit profitability by fourth quarter this
year. This may not be just wishful thinking. On March 30th, two investors,
European Equity Partners and Telsun Ltd, believed in the Company's future
enough to cough up the funding to see it "though to profitability." Which
makes Whatsonwhen one of the very few online companies getting further
backing these days.
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