Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 4)

Sramana: As you were going through this process, you likely found there was a multivariate optimization algorithm that could apply. How do you feed that algorithm? How do you decide which keywords should even be considered in the beginning? Mike Mothner: That stage of the process involves creating a net of keywords. We call that

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Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 3)

Sramana: How much did you charge your first client? Mike Mothner: Our fee back then was $250 a month to manage her budget. Her budget was $1,000 a month.

Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 2)

Sramana: So you graduated from Dartmouth, turned down Goldman Sachs, and decided to focus on Wpromote. What was your next move? Mike Mothner: It was June of 2003, and I moved back to L.A. I had a good idea what I wanted to do to expand Wpromote. I was using PPC to drive an organic

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Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 1)

Michael Mothner is the founder and CEO of search engine marketing firm Wpromote. The company has maintained over 2,700% growth from 2003 through 2007. Michael has a degree in economics and computer science from Dartmouth College. Sramana: Mike, what is your story leading up to Wpromote? Where are you from? Mike Mothner: I am 29

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From 0 To 31 Million Dollars With Search Engine Marketing & Inventory Financing: Kim Pedersen, CEO of 1000 Bulbs (Part 6)

Sramana: In 2004, after you received inventory financing, were you still getting 80% to 90% of your business through pay-per-click marketing? Kim Pedersen: Yes. That is not true today, but at that time it was. Search engine marketing is key for us today. We take 99% of all sales orders on the Internet today. We

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From 0 To 31 Million Dollars With Search Engine Marketing & Inventory Financing: Kim Pedersen, CEO of 1000 Bulbs (Part 5)

Sramana: Aside from improving your personal managerial skills, it also sounds like you were unaware of various technical capabilities that could have helped you with your business, like inventory management software. Were you aware those types of software programs existed? Kim Pedersen: The real problem for me was the challenge of purchasing additional inventory while

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From 0 To 31 Million Dollars With Search Engine Marketing & Inventory Financing: Kim Pedersen, CEO of 1000 Bulbs (Part 4)

Sramana: Even though you had no formal metric tools, you must have had some sense of the impact these ads were having on your business. Kim Pedersen: That is a correct statement. I could tell by the number of sales orders I received each day because the number kept going up.

From 0 To 31 Million Dollars With Search Engine Marketing & Inventory Financing: Kim Pedersen, CEO of 1000 Bulbs (Part 3)

Sramana: How did you handle the e-commerce transactions when you first launched the website? Did you just generate leads that you would complete by visiting in person or over the phone? Kim Pederson: I would put listings of our inventory online, and visitors could print out a copy of our inventory list and mark the

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