Part 2 : Present and Future

What are the pros and cons of a London location for an Internet start-up?
Two of our board members commute from Oxford, so there are some 'cons' for them in our London location. However, being strategically placed off platform one in Paddington Station helps. London has been useful for recruiting new media staff, for advertising contacts and marketing partners. We hope to open an office in New York in the near future so we won't be London-centric for long.

What do you see as the most promising revenue-generating strategies for xrefer?
We are not an e-commerce site. Our business plan sees advertising and content syndication as key revenue streams. In the long term both are equally important to us. Initially we imagine that content syndication will be the most prominent strategy. There is a high demand for reliable, quality content to increase site stickiness. Advertising will kick-in as a prominent revenue source once we have a history of traffic.

The jury is still out on advertising and content as a winning business strategy - as a newcomer, how will you compete for ad dollars with the top portal and content sites?
xrefer will compete with the top sites by virtue of the fact that it is different. We are operating in the space between the portals and the classic content sites. We have a dedicated sales team and believe that it is important to work closely with our commercial partners to maximize their budgets. We believe that we will compete by being creative and offering our clients solutions 'beyond the banner' and by integrating the clients needs with the xrefer content.

You say you're not an ecommerce site, but might you consider sales of related print resources (e.g. dictionaries, encyclopedias), or perhaps taking commissions from 3rd party vendors?
We are not in the business of selling encyclopedias and dictionaries although I'm sure our publishers will sell more as a result of the exposure xrefer will give them. We do not see ourselves as entering into the e-commerce arena, but we can imagine taking cuts of transactions made as a result of xrefer traffic sent to our e-commerce partners' sites.

How will you be tackling the job of website promotion - what strategies do you think will work best for you? What kind of traffic levels do you hope to reach?
Most of our marketing will be carried out online. We will be placing banners on some high profile sites, carrying out a program of strategic linking, co-marketing with our content and business partners and working on high search engine listings. We are also strong believers in viral marketing and PR.

We hope to reach traffic levels that will put us in the Media Metrix top 500 (even top 50).

Where do you see xrefer.com in a year's time?
xrefer will have hundreds of titles aggregated and integrated into its system. We will have developed some personal features for power users and have made parts of xrefer available across a variety of platforms. It will have a high and loyal user base and feature prominently on web users bookmarks.