Cameron Olthuis

There’s been some discussion lately on how a lot of the new Web 2.0 sites are relying on page views as a business model. Richard Macmanus says…

the fundamental reason why ‘Web 2.0′ is (dare I say it) in bubble phase right now. It’s the exact same reason the Dot Com bubble occured - Page Views

Only this time around it’s much easier to effectively track ROI. Most companies won’t waste ad dollars if they aren’t producing results, so the bubble (which I’d argue there isn’t one) is going to be harder to pop this time around. We learned our lessons.

As long as the ads continue to work there’s going to be a place for this business model. I say bring on the page views. My only concern is that some of these new companies are banking on a unrealistic CPM range.

I wrote earlier today about creating hype and how 37Signals builds hype before launching new products. Apple on the other hand is just the opposite. They don’t saying anything about new products until the very last second.

Apple does everything they can to keep new product launches under wraps. However, information usually still leaks out through a few sources. Apple’s even gone as far as taking this issue to court to try and reveal these sources. I can understand the logic behind this. Apple knows consumers would hold off buying new products if new models were just around the corner.

So which is better, building hype or not?

When I think of building pre-launch hype for products, it’s hard for me to think of a better example than 37Signals. 37Signals has built a huge following of loyal evangelists through their blog, Signal vs. Noise. The large audience gives them the perfect stage to build hype for their products before they launch, an art they’ve seemed to master.

Today they’ve offered us a teaser video of a new calendar they’re adding to Backpack, their most popular product. When you dig a little deeper you can see that just about every product or book they release is seriously hyped before it’s launched.

I’m not saying all the hype is generated by them, it’s not. They announce the products and/or give sneak peaks, which in turn gets the ball rolling. The audience then creates the snowball effect. The guys at 37 aren’t stupid though, they know anytime the announce a new product or feature that it will create buzz. They know exactly how to leverage their loyal customer base through guerrilla marketing techniques.

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There was a meme going around last week that suggests new web companies are only targeting an audience of 53, 651 people, which is actually the number of RSS subscribers TechCrunch had at the time.

A good review in Techcrunch can get a company their first 5-25K beta users very quickly.

I have to admit from what I’ve seen this tends to be true. A lot of these new 2.0 startups think all the need to do is launch, get TechCrunch to write about them, and they’ll spend the rest of their days sipping mai tai’s on the beach in Hawaii somewhere. Wrong!

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Would you rather have a little bit of traffic that you can monetize or tons of traffic that you can’t?

Seth breaks down a comparison of MySpace and Amazon in his latest post, different kinds of traffic.

Amazon users visit to buy stuff, and MySpace users visit to flirt

This is a great reason why search engine marketing works so well. You’re able to bring people to your site that are actually seeking out the exact products/services you sell. Provided all your ducks are in a row this kind of traffic is very valuable. It converts at a very high rate.

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