Introducing LookupPage: The Drama 2.0 Show’s Newest Sponsor

I’m pleased to announce that The Drama 2.0 Show has added a new company to its roster of sponsors – LookupPage.

LookupPage is owned and operated by Cyclicom, a company that operates a number of online services.

Disclosures

• The information used in this review was obtained via several email exchanges I had with LookupPage’s Udi Drezner.
• I have not signed a non-disclosure agreement with LookupPage/Cyclicom.
• After writing this review, I provided Udi with excerpts containing material facts that he disclosed in our exchanges and requested that he check them for accuracy. None of my analysis was provided to him for review and thus, he and Cyclicom are reading my opinions for the first time here.

The Service

In the words of LookupPage’s Udi Drezner:

LookupPage is a user friendly service that helps people create a personal web page, highly visible on search engines when someone searches their name, and trackable so they can learn who is visiting their page. This service is highly valuable to people who want to manage and enhance their web brand presence and receive highly relevant and convertible business leads.

LookupPage’s website notes that “One of the most popular searches on the web is a person’s name, with the aim of finding more information about the person’s professional or personal background.”

LookupPage believes that by offering professionals a page that contains pertinent information about their professional and personal backgrounds, they will be able to effectively manage their online “reputations.” LookupPage also believes these pages will generate more exposure and business leads.

LookupPage offers three packages:

• A Free package that enables an individual to create a page with personal information, including current title, company, biography and relevant links. Basic statistics are provided.
• A Professional package that includes everything the Free package does and in addition, provides a personal domain name, more detailed traffic analytics, a contact system with lead tracking, SEO features, the removal of ads and sponsored ads through Google AdWords.
• A Corporate package that enables companies to create pages for their employees and to customize page templates. This package also offers inclusion in the LookupPage Business Directory.

Business Model

LookupPage has a simple business model:

• Its Free package is supported by ads.
• Its Professional package is $7.95/month, billed annually.
• Its Corporate package has a variable cost based on the number of users.

Such a hybrid business model is used quite successfully by other online businesses and it’s one that I personally employ in my own ventures.

It’s a model that can be quite rewarding provided that enough paying customers are acquired.

One of LookupPage’s greatest advantages is that it should have relatively limited costs. The LookupPage service does not appear to be “technology intensive” and LookupPage is not providing a service that reasonably requires significant infrastructure. Notably, the resources required to serve the static content its pages contain should be minimal. Thus, the “marginal cost” for each new page LookupPage serves is probably close to zero.

I was initially concerned by the potential costs associated with LookupPage’s purchase of Google AdWords campaigns for Professional customers however Udi explained that LookupPage has established global limits for its AdWords spend and plans to implement policies that keep its per-customer spend in line with the global limit.

Assuming that the limit is reasonable, a LookupPage Professional subscription should produce very high margins, since the only real notable cost that I see is the wholesale cost of the domain name that LookupPage purchases on behalf of the customer (this should be no more than $10-11).

Since billing is done only on an annual basis, LookupPage has basically eliminated the monthly churn that often plagues online services that offer monthly subscriptions.

Such a pricing model is not without its disadvantages, however. Because a customer must invest in an annual subscription, LookupPage is selling a service whose minimal cost is $95.40, not $7.95. This is a tougher sell and will almost certainly mean that some individuals pass on a purchase.

Marketing and Distribution

LookupPage is targeting individual customers first and corporate customers second.

For the former, LookupPage is primarily relying on pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization and distribution partnerships to reach prospective customers. For the latter, LookupPage is primarily relying on direct sales.

Interestingly, despite the associated costs, I think the direct sales model LookupPage is relying on to acquire corporate customers may bear the most fruit. The reason is simple: the LookupPage solution is one that realistically needs to be “sold” and one deal with a corporate customer could bring in a decent chunk of revenue, even if the per-user cost is discounted significantly.

My concern with LookupPage’s distribution model for reaching individuals is that pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization can often only go so far and it can get quite expensive, in some cases even driving cost per acquisition expenses above short-term revenue per customer.

I’m skeptical that the LookupPage service is the type of service that individuals are actively going to search for online, especially given the fact LookupPage bears some resemblance to competitive services like LinkedIn, which, of course, offer similar functionality at no cost.

In short, I believe LookupPage will need to aggressively sell its service to prospective customers and that more passive approaches (pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization, etc.) are not going to be nearly as effective as more proactive approaches (direct sales, partnerships, etc.).

Summary Analysis

LookupPage offers a simple service and it has a simple business model. I like that.

Yet my overriding concern for LookupPage is that its value proposition is not going to be compelling enough for the average individual and business.

While LookupPage feels that it is differentiated from services like LinkedIn because it is focused on the individual and not the individuals’ social networks, I question whether this differentiator is big enough to be of any real significance.

After all, LinkedIn users, at no cost, get a free page that usually ranks well on Google and can serve much the same purpose as a LookupPage page. In addition, LinkedIn’s popularity probably makes it a better lead-generation platform for professionals.

On the corporate side, I question how many companies will be eager to pay money to LookupPage to create and host simple pages for their key employees. After all, given the simplicity of the LookupPage service, there are few barriers preventing a corporation from creating online “profiles” for its employees and most companies already provide management team bios on their websites.

Given all this, I don’t believe that LookupPage has created a solution to an overly painful problem, leaving in question just how large LookupPage’s potential customer base is really going to be.

None of this, however, precludes success if success is defined realistically.

While I don’t see LookupPage becoming a multi-million dollar business, Cyclicom doesn’t necessarily need it to be provided that it keeps its cost structure in line with what I think a cost structure for this type of online business should be.

Conclusion

LookupPage is a great example of a simple online service that can be run profitably provided that its operator recognizes it for what it is.

LookupPage’s straightforward business model coupled with a reasonable cost structure gives Cyclicom an opportunity to succeed and even though I doubt highly that it will develop into massive business, for a company like Cyclicom, which is building a portfolio of online services, LookupPage hopefully doesn’t need to become such a business.

In conclusion, I have a few tips for LookupPage:

• LookupPage needs to hit the phones. This is a service that has to be “sold” and probably isn’t going to sell itself.
• LookupPage should explore white label distribution partnerships with online destinations that are well-positioned to upsell the LookupPage service to professionals as part of a network approach.

Feel free to give LookupPage a whirl and to leave your comments here.