Kyle
If you haven’t noticed advertising is moving away from traditional online pay per click models of years past. Advertisers are reaching out to both mobile and social media channels for advertising.
Companies like Ad.ly,MyLikes and Sponsored Tweets allow individuals with good social media followings to capitalize on their tweets, likes and recommendations by offering cash based incentives. Blab Bubble is a new startup that’s coming into the same space with a new spin that may work out even better in the long run.
Blab Bubble spent a lot of time and money researching the market to find out where social media advertising is breaking down. They found two key areas that had the biggest pain points.
The first was that many advertisers felt that traditional social media advertising sites were too cumbersome when trying to create campaigns. The other area that needed improvement was in the startup and small business arena. Most social media advertising companies targeted big brands and enterprise. Of course, with that, they were pricing small businesses and startups out of the market.
Blab Bubble has created a simple, easy to use interface for businesses of any size to set up social media campaigns. The process takes just a few minutes and the campaign is off and running. Blab Bubble also offers very easy to understand pricing, how about $.40 per click no matter who you are.
We got a chance to interview BlabBubble to find out more about this Indianapolis startup and their spin on social media advertising.
What is Blab Bubble?
Blab Bubble is a Do‐It‐Yourself platform for businesses to launch social media campaigns directly into virality. Blab Bubble works because it gathers together thousands of social media users and gives them incentive to post the newest, most relevant links on their personal social networks
Blab Bubble takes word‐of‐mouth advertising and social networking to a new level by providing its users the ability to cash in on sharing content. This is pay‐per‐click advertising for social media feeds, and it is simpler than ever. Anyone can sign up for Blab Bubble and earn money while sharing links. Users are given a daily link that is specifically chosen for them based on their personal preferences. This helps eliminate spammy posting, while giving companies realistic word‐of‐mouth advertising. The Users are selected to post certain links based on specified location, age, gender, interests, and social networks. When users post these links they are paid for every legitimate click ($0.20/click). So basically users are getting access to new social media campaigns that relate directly to their interests (links they would normally share anyway if they knew the links existed) and the users get paid to share them! It’s a double positive for our users (not to mention it’s free to sign up).
Businesses are given the ability to create their campaign by providing a link, writing a quick description, selecting from specific parameters to narrow down who will post their link (businesses want relevant posts, not random posts), creating a maximum budget to close the campaign once reached, and deciding the expiration date in case the budget is not met. This gives businesses total control over their campaign sharing without having to deal with sales people, worry about not qualifying, paying unknown prices (it’s always $0.40/click for businesses), and not knowing who is posting their links.
Blab Bubble prides itself on simplicity for businesses and users alike. Blab Bubble reaches millions of social media users, but also maximizes results with its unique parameter options for businesses. Links can now be posted and immediately reach thousands of social media users!
Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?
Andrew Lamping is the founder of Blab Bubble. Andrew was an entrepreneurship major at the University of Indianapolis where he became the first president and helped in founding UInterprise, the UIndy entrepreneurship guild. Andrew has also sat on the judge’s panel for the Global Entrepreneurial Leadership Conference held at UIndy. Andrew started a company, Adrenaline Advertising, while in school and has been running the company for the past 2 years. Adrenaline Advertising is a captive market digital signage advertising company. While speaking with businesses about advertising with Adrenaline, Andrew noticed a theme: everyone wanted a social media presence, and everyone wanted virility on social media. The opportunity was there, so he decided to build the easiest, most user‐friendly, and effective tool for small‐business owners to launch social media campaigns online. That is when Blab Bubble was born.
Where are you based?
We are based in Indianapolis Indiana
What is the startup culture like in Indianapolis?
The startup culture is amazing! There are a lot of enthusiastic, exciting, strong startups in Indy. The resources are continually growing here as well. There is an event called Verge that has really helped bring together the startup community in Indy. They bring hundreds of entrepreneurs, investors, and developers together every month to listen to pitches, network, and make deals. In the past few years I have felt the startup buzz really grow in Indy, and I think we are quickly becoming one of the better cities for entrepreneurs and startups in America. There are some very cool things happening here!
What problem does BlabBubble solve?
For businesses: The problem is that going viral is extremely difficult. It can cost businesses tons of money, waste ridiculous amounts of time, and take a lot of extra work to build a social media following. These are resources most startups/businesses can’t afford to invest in. Blab Bubble gives them a do‐ityourself resource to solve this problem. Blab Bubble puts the control in their hands, but eliminates the ridiculous costs, time, and work involved in social media marketing.
For Users: The problem is that website owners are making tons of money with pay‐per‐click advertisements on their websites, but people with personal social media pages (pages that have thousands of visitors every month) have no possible way to earn extra cash. Blab Bubble solves the problem by giving people a way to make extra money while doing something they already do.
How did you come up with the idea?
I was working with companies talking about advertising, and everyone was talking about how they wanted to build an online social media presence. They all wanted viral ads, but had no idea where to turn. I started looking at the resources available (MyLikes, Ad.Ly, SwagBucks, etc.) and immediately saw an opportunity. No one was offering a simple, easy to use resource for do‐it‐yourself social media marketing. Ad.ly was offering celebrity endorsed tweets, so if you didn’t have $10,000 to pay a celebrity for one or two tweets, this resource is not an option for you (there is NO minimum budget at Blab Bubble). MyLikes makes its users do work. People are generally lazy, and want the easiest way to earn money. MyLikes also pays their users based on popularity. This doesn’t give new users incentive to join unless they are willing to look long term (and lets face it, Americans are not generally longterm thinkers). There were no do‐it‐yourself resources for launching viral campaigns, and everything seemed difficult and risky for businesses. That’s why I came up with Blab Bubble; the startup friendly resource for viral campaigns.
Something we like to say at Blab Bubble is: If we could pay one celebrity to share a link with one million people, why can’t we pay one million people to share the link with one person each?
The other big concern with potential users is spamming. No one wants to see his or her newsfeed littered with spam. The idea for Blab Bubble is to eliminate spammy posts by selecting specific campaigns for our users based on their interests and information. If a user generally posts links about cars, motorcycles, and racing then with Blab Bubble their links will be about cars, motorcycles, and racing; not flowers or cheeseburgers. These are links they would normally want to share, which eliminates the spammy nature of posts. Blab Bubble also limits it to one link per day to help eliminate spamming.
What’s your secret sauce?
For Blab Bubble, what really makes us different is our simplicity. We don’t want businesses and users to spend as little time on Blab Bubble as possible, while still receiving amazing results!
What has made us tick so far has just been our personality. In Indianapolis we have started to gain the reputation as a really cool, young company. Our marketing is focused on college‐aged users, so we go out to them and give away awesome promos. We have spent the summer giving out Blab Bubble sunglasses and tank tops. Our fans are getting involved through social media by instagramming pictures of them wearing their new BlabBubble.com apparel, tweeting about the company, and joining us on Facebook. It’s important to get to know your customers on a personal level, and Blab Bubble has done that very well this summer getting to know our users and becoming the “cool kid” in Indy.
What is one challenge you overcame during the startup process?
The biggest challenge so far has been convincing users that Blab Bubble is not a scam! When you tell someone “you can post links and get paid 20 cents per click” their initial reaction is a sarcastic “okay!” It sounds too good to be true, so it has been difficult. To overcome that issue we created a very personalized marketing approach. Our strategy has been to go to the people and teach/legitimize the company. If we can have a few seconds to speak to our potential users, they understand why Blab Bubble is so good. In the first two weeks of marketing we had over 1,000 page visits with a 23.6% conversion rate in obtaining signups. The popularity and excitement surrounding Blab Bubble has shot through the roof in the past month.
What’s next for BlabBubble?
Launching! The biggest, most exciting event for Blab Bubble is coming later this summer when we launch. Right now we expect the launch date to be late July or early August, but we will keep everyone informed through social media and the website.
At this moment, Blab Bubble is looking for companies who would like to have exclusive access to the platform and join us for the launch later this summer. We have thousands of users excited and ready to share some awesome new
social media campaigns, so we are offering exclusive access to Blab Bubble for companies who wish to take advantage of our over eager users! For companies interested in joining us for the launch please contact Andrew@blabbubble.com and we will take care of you. We are inviting any company to join us for the launch, so please don’t hesitate to contact us!
Linkage:
Sing up for Blab Bubble here at Blabbubble.com
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