Startup Stories – Todd Garland of BuySellAds

When Todd Garland launched his company BuySellAds just over a year ago I can remember thinking “Oh happy day” because finally there was a site to help automate what was a rather painful task – managing sales of ad inventory on our various blogs. In the intervening months BSA has come out of beta, signed up publishers by the armful and is today serving well over 1 billion ad impressions a month. I caught up with Todd to ask him how life is going at the helm of a startup in a notoriously tough industry.

Netsetter:
You’re a web developer with a good decade of experience, were you responsible for building the BSA service from scratch? Do you still work on the site alone or has the team grown? How’s the workload fared over the last year?

Todd Garland:
Yes, I wrote every line of code and designed every pixel of BSA’s first version. It is far from perfect, but in general it works – people can buy ads and people can sell ads. Over the past months we have been 150% focused on the new version, so there have been very few updates to the current site except taking it out of private beta. With the new version, I’m responsible for the front-end code and design. I have a brilliant developer working on the entire backend and overall infrastructure of the site. So yes, the team has grown a little bit. The workload has been great, there’s always something to do One thing I don’t think many people know is that I had been working another full-time job up until January 1st 2009. Before then, I was running BSA early mornings, nights, and weekends. Right now, we are in the process of hiring a couple more folks to help push BSA and our other projects along.

A screenshot of BuySellAds' upcoming redesign

Netsetter:
What sorts of challenges did you face in building and deploying the service? Did it all go according to plan?

Todd Garland:
Well, I think the biggest challenge is a mental one. When you’re building a site like this (or any startup for that matter) there are good days and there are bad days. Some days I would wake up and think that it was the absolute worst idea ever and that it was never going to work. And, other days I would wake up and think that it was the best thing since sliced bread. Once BSA was “ready” to launch it took me a few weeks before I actually pulled the trigger and launched the site. So there was definitely a mental battle that was a challenge for me. Surprisingly, the actual launch did go according to plan and there have been very few issues with the code, ad serving, etc. since. The only thing that did not go according to plan is how many people signed up and how many ads were actually sold in the first few months. I couldn’t believe it.

Netsetter:
Is the site entirely self-funded? Have you had any business experience prior to launching this business? If you haven’t do you think this has helped or hindered the business’ development?

Todd Garland:
Yes, BSA is 100% self-funded right now. Prior to BSA I was Partner at an interactive agency in Boston called Mindfire Interactive, and most recently I was Lead Designer/SEO Specialist/Front-end Engineer at a hot startup called HubSpot. The best part about my experience at Mindfire is in the sheer number of websites I built over the 3 years that I was there. With HubSpot, since I was there very early, I gained a lot of experience in seeing how a company grows from just a handful of people to over 70 (very quickly, a couple rounds of funding, etc.). My experience at HubSpot also gave me a chance to really improve my front-end coding, application design, and SEO skills since I was able to work on a single application/product vs. just building a bunch of sites like I did at Mindfire.

Netsetter:
The ad market is very competitive and with a global economic downturn, this has been a difficult period to be in this line of work. Yet despite that, BSA seems to be going from strength to strength. What do you attribute your business’ success to?

Todd Garland:
Indeed, there is always news of doom and gloom in the ad industry these days Well, BSA is a little different than most ad networks whose financials are responsible for this gloomy news in the ad industry. Here’s why we continue to grow despite the bad news:

• Our commission is the lowest in the industry, 25%.If it were lower than 25% we would not be able to sustain a real business. I made it as absolutely low as possible when I launched for a few reasons: (a) I didn’t want publishers to raise their rates and therefore render the ads less effective for advertisers. (b) I simply didn’t want to take more of the publishers money – I want them to like BSA and not grimace every time an ad is sold.
• Our inventory is legitimate, quality, and highly targeted.
• We don’t sell what the industry calls “remnant inventory” And publishers have full control over the ads that are sold on their site(s). Ever see one of those ads for losing weight on TechCrunch where the stomach is animated? That’s remnant inventory, 100% un-targeted junk.
• Our ads are priced right.Most ad networks are large companies with tons of staff, and that is why they take a 40%+ commission on ads sold. This also results in inflate CPM rates because they need higher margins. And, they’re relying on targeting and selling to huge national brands.

  It is these huge budgets that are getting cut right now who are no longer buying the overpriced ads, because targeting is really hard and nobody has done it *right* yet.

• Most of these reports do not take into account niche ad networksThey’re simply not big enough to influence the report. In aggregate, however, I think you will start to see a lot of ad revenue flow towards these niche networks like BuySellAds.com.

Netsetter:
Although I have actually come across services with some similarity to BSA – that is that they manage your inventory for you in approximately the same way – I’ve never seen one which has had so much success in a single niche. In the web and design niche it’s positively rare to find a blog or site that doesn’t sell their ads through BSA. Was this a deliberate tactic on your part and how did you go about focusing in on the market?

Todd Garland:
This makes me very happy Yes, it was deliberate. Before starting BSA I was running a couple design related sites – running these sites was a hobby of mine and through my frustration in selling ads on those websites I started BuySellAds.com. Collis, you actually purchased an ad on one of my sites for FlashDen.net one time. Truth be told, I just really like this niche and I frequent many of the sites in our network every day. It was a good fit from the start. When I first launched I took a very organic and personal approach. I knew some owners of other sites and simply contacted them to see if they would let me sell ads on their site. Luckily, I wasn’t the only publisher frustrated by selling ads, and the problem I was solving was widespread in this niche.

Netsetter:
I know you’ve got what promises to be an impressive new version of the site scheduled for release shortly. What else is on the horizon for BSA?

Todd Garland:
Well, I always like to have a few tricks up my sleeve. There is still a huge list of improvements that we’re planning to make to the new version of BSA after it is launched and this will continue to be our top priority. Beyond that, we are going to be introducing some new types of ads (don’t worry, nothing flashy or annoying), and we also have a couple other websites in the works on separate domains that are new-ish ways to help website owners and content producers monetize. I do plan to stay true to my roots and remain focused on the web design and development niche on all projects, but the new version of BSA will make it easier for us to expand into additional verticals when we are ready.



Todd Garland of BuySellAds!

Netsetter:
Have there been any crises you’ve experienced, with the site, with the business, with hosting? How did you respond and how did it affect the site?

Todd Garland:
YES! On Christmas Day 2008 our stats server went down for the first time. Now, this wasn’t a huge deal since we were not actually showing these stats in the app and it doesn’t really impact publisher websites, but it was bad timing. Luckily my family understands that it is important that these servers always be UP and I was able to excuse myself from the festivities for a little bit to fix things.

Netsetter:
If you could go back and do it all again, is there anything you’d do differently? Anything you wish you’d known?

Todd Garland:
Yes, I would have taken the idea more seriously and launched back in early 2007 when I first started playing around with it. Although, this would resulted in me never working at HubSpot. And, I learned a lot of programming, design, and business lessons at HubSpot that’s really helping me out now.

Thanks Todd!!