Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Jeff Cohen, General Manager of CampusBooks (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What I see here, which is interesting actually, talks to a similar trend. It’s a significant opportunity out there. There are tons of people in tons of different verticals who have built followings. Maybe, they could be traffic followings. It could be a blog that has a readership. It could be various kinds of social media following. There are influencers of various scale and levels of influence in all kinds of niches. I believe that there is an opportunity at this stage of the game to create technology, product, or services through which these influencers can monetize their assets. I think that’s what you’re doing—taking advantage of that influencer pool out there who can drive commerce basically.

Jeff Cohen: I would agree with you. There are primarily two types of potential customers. There is clearly the person who has a following and wants to have a product to promote to their following. That is definitely one of our customers. The other one is the person who feels that they can play the game better than other people. They feel that they know how to build a website, market, and promote it better than other people. They’re just looking for something that is a new product for them to market and promote. I do think both of those customers are out there. Some people may already own a good domain that has good traffic.

I would agree with you. The world of the web today, which is a total pivot from where the web was five years ago, is content-driven. If you have a following and if you have really good content, the people who follow you and your content are typically looking for what you, potentially, would recommend. If you can build relationships that are connected to what you’re already talking to your audience and you’re making a recommendation that fits to your market, it’s a natural fit for a business to use that as a monetization strategy. I think where people go wrong is when the product that they’re marketing doesn’t necessarily fit who their audience is. That’s the critical component to add onto what you were saying. If you have college students, this is a great add-on piece for them. If you have avid readers, this is a great add-on piece for them. If your readers are on a financial blog, it may or may not be. It depends.

Sramana Mitra: My comment is whatever it is that you’re doing, you need monetization strategies that align with that audience. Your audience is the textbook buyers so the influencer or the site owners who will be using your technology to monetize their site are people who are catering to college student audience. A finance audience will use some other technology to monetize. Money bloggers are having a field day because there is so much e-commerce and so many sites that want to monetize money bloggers. Money bloggers are calling the shots on how they can use their influence and monetize their influence. The fashion bloggers are going to that trend as well. That’s what I see as the broader trend against which I think there are opportunities to build businesses which is what you’re doing here.

Thank you for your time!

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Jeff Cohen, General Manager of CampusBooks
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