Many of you know, I’ve been working hard on getting the doors at Art Buy the Inch open. I’m still trying to bootstrap the gallery and I’m finding it difficult to do so.
When it comes to bootstrapping there are a number of great articles out there. Guy Kawasaki has a few very interesting articles about it and Garage, is an excellent resource for any one starting on any venture.
Everyday I’m losing time and I’m trying to get doors open as soon as possible. It’s sort of a frustrating spot to be in although, out of frustration comes some creative ideas to get help speed along the work that needs to be done.
I have several ideas to help generate the money I’m looking for. I was considering selling advertising on MoHDI or Art Buy the Inch. It’s something that wouldn’t be too difficult to set up. After looking into the cost of advertising on a variety of sites and comparing what advertisers would get through my site, I feel like I could offer a very great deal as far as advertising rates go. The CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) ranges quite a bit, our good friends at Gawker Media has a reasonable CPM ranging from $4-$10 depending on the size Portland Business Journal theCPM is $23-$50. I suppose there are a number of things to consider when buying advertising, it’s important for me to know these things so, I can actually sell some advertising. One thing an ad buyer is going to look at is the audience, I have a general idea of the MoHDI audience is… ‘

Our average reader is most likely a wealthy 30 year old, single, wealthy, female philanthropist.

So.. when ad buyers look at who’s seeing the ads, the next thing to consider is the size of the ad. I’m probably not going to be offering massive full page ads although, I’m sort of thinking something that fits nice in the side bar. The buyer is also going to want to know placement of the ad too. An ad buyer is probably going to want to know what kind of clicks they will get from a certain ad. So lets say 1% of people will actually click on your ad that’s about 10 clicks per 1000 impressions. At $10/impression the ad buyer is paying $1 per click through. Sounds expensive. Now let’s say that out of the people that click through 1% of them will actually buy something (seems reasonable right?). So in our made up scenario 10,000 impressions would cost about $100 and out of those impressions only 100 people actually click on your ad, now out of those 100 people only 1 person will actually purchase something. It’s hard to say if that 1 person will continue to buy or not, a lot of it depends. Also I’m using 1% as the click through rate and 1% as the Conversion Rate (number of people who take desired action), ideally and realistically these numbers are going to be about 5% for the CTR and Conversion Rate. So with 5% as the magic number getting 5 customers for $100 can be pretty lucrative depending on what you are selling. This is why advertising works.
So after understanding all of that. I can generate a decent advertising package for buyers at a very reasonable rate and hopefully help to get the doors of Art Buy the Inch open sooner than later.

My next step is to build a placeholder for the newly coming ads and some sales materials for people interested in purchasing some advertising through MoHDI. I should probably crunch the numbers a few more times and do a speculative analysis of hits for the next year. It might be a bit before I start pushing the ads on people.

I should probably finish my entry into the instructables win a laser contest as the deadline is July 1st.

I’ll be sharing some more of my Fund Ideas Campaign strategies and ideas very soon.

I should also mention there are some new products in our shop and I have some framed art for sale too.