Clearly, the “commercial activity online” taboo is a bit slow to die off, but my first paid ad is a good one. I wasn’t depending on ad income to survive …which is an awfully good thing! That’s what enabled True to survive in the long run.
Anyway, that first ad is a “win a car” game from Yoyodyne, which is run by one of the earliest Internet marketing mavens, Seth Godin.
But even at this point, there’s no web site mentioned! It’s still the Dark Ages of the Internet:
Seth had it all figured out by the next week, though: the second run has a web site URL, but the primary point of contact shown is still an email address:
Even then, I didn’t depend on ad revenue to live on: I expected to run at a loss for up to two years, and mostly use book sales and newspaper syndication to pay the bills.
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In 1998, Yoyodyne was sold to Yahoo for $39 million, which is perhaps why Seth Godin became known as a marketing maven….