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INK2NET.COM – "Connecting the Print World to the Digital World"
Headquarters: Atlanta, GA
Team:5
Phone: 401-369-0981
Email: dbellamy@ink2net.com
Business Summary
Ink2net is the social networking and on-line search tool that will revitalize the print industry. The company has created a process that will harness the emotional and intellectual connection to print advertisements and articles and create continuously engaged, on line mini-communities organized around this content. The website will serve as an entry point for "Google-like" content searches, increase ad revenue, and create a large e-commerce opportunity for both our partners and customers.
Customer Problem
- Consumers have begun to abandon traditional print in favor of on-line consumption (real time news, social networking, etc.). Ink2net will make print media consistently relevant by connecting it to on-line content, features, and options.
- Magazines currently have no way of tracking the true effectiveness of articles or ads displayed. Ink2net can create a Nielsen-like on-line rating service for printed media. In addition, users will be able to immediately translate the "emotional connection" to an advertisement into an actual on-line purchase of products highlighted within those advertisements. Ink2net will track these purchases, providing another measure of ad effectiveness.
User Products/Services
When a user is a reading a magazine and finds something of interest they can text message us from their phone and store the page reference in our system, or they can enter our site and search our database for the desired content. Once on our site they can receive additional links related to the subject in a selected article, store an ad or article into a personal library, view user comments, insert an article link and comments directly into their personal blog or social discussion group of their choice. Specific to ads, users will be able to purchase product found in magazine advertisements directly on-line. As the service matures, Ink2net will also offer discounts and best-price suggestions to users for all advertised goods.
Partner Products/Services
Analytical reports will be made available to partner magazines which will detail among other things: frequency of clicks and user ratings associated with articles and advertisements found in their respective magazines, purchases of products associated with advertisements, summary of overall trends across magazines by category of most accessed content.
Target Market
The key markets that Ink2net will target are the $10B+ on-line advertising market and the $23B print advertising market in the US. Outside of the US, our target markets are China and India as they have increasing levels of Internet penetration and could benefit from a product that creates a true linkage between print media and the web.
Customers
Our targeted users are all consumers who access magazine content, whether in print or on-line (a recent report by Nielsen suggests that these are largely two distinct groups). To generate the initial core group of users we will target those who read business periodicals to improve strategy, profit, and work life (we expect them to heavily leverage the ability to text, store, and share information without having access to a networked PC. We will also target specialty magazine readers (i.e. weddings, hobbies, etc.) due to high likelihood of establishing on-line social interactions related to mutual and relatively intense interest in specialized content. Who will ultimately use it? – Professionals, Consumers, Students. Where will they use it? – Airports, Subways, Book Stores, Grocery Stores, Barnes & Noble’s, Vacationing.
Sales/Marketing Strategy
Ink2net will initially focus on two things:- Increasing our user base: We will focus on improving the efficacy and usability of the site for users. We will be employing focus-groups, sending targeted e-mails to identified user bases with links to relevant (to them) articles on our site, coupon/discount offers, updates on features and additional content, constantly seek user feedback and tweak the site design based on that feedback.
- Developing magazine partnerships: We will focus on regional specialty magazines that have developed a strong subscriber base. These magazines will tend to have strong editorial, community-based content, focused around a hobby or an event. Our goal is to work closely with these magazines and explore additional services as we continue develop our full product offerings. The key goal will be to develop the platform and relationship agreements.
Business Model
Our revenue model is based on Magazine Setup and Monthly Management Fees, Traditional print-media Advertisement Agreements, Banner Advertisements and Affiliate E-commerce Agreements.
Competitors
Current competitors include on-line sites that are rating on-line news stories, e-commerce engines, search sites, blog networking sites, mobile phone content players, and digital media management sites. However the majority of these groups focus on on-line users and on-line content exclusively, ink2net is a bridging solution.
Competitive Advantage
The ability for our users to store their article & product references into a personal “library” will create a high switching cost for each user. Therefore strategic growth of a user base that will consistently access our “storage” facility is essential to creating a fairly robust, implicit barrier to competitive pressures.
Management
The members of this team have track records in creating value for both small and Fortune 100 enterprises. The CEO’s expertise is in both in technology and M&A and has held global positions in small and large companies . He started out as an entrepreneur at 19 and took the company to the front page profile on the Wall Street Journal. The team has participated in, and failed at, several start-ups prior to this one.
Financial Information
Funding Stage: Product In Development |
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