Yesterday I wrote a post about what I love about the downturn. The post was was geared towards bloggers, but many of the same principles apply to business as well. Perhaps the most important of those lessons is to focus on what really matters. There has been a lot of that going on here at IZEA. We have been evaluating the macro economic environment, our financial and human capital, and the customers we love.
Over the past two years we have added a variety of properties designed to help our bloggers increase their reach and readership. One of those properties was Zookoda, a free rss to email newsletter service. While our intention was good, the realities of running a free email newsletter service aren’t pretty. We have been in a constant battle to keep the system free of abuse and stable, requiring both capital and development resources.
We asked ourselves are we better off improving SocialSpark or PayPerPost or dumping resources in something we can’t monetize near term. The answer was pretty simple.
As a result we have decided to put the Zookoda platform on ice. Users will not be able to login effective December 1, 2008. We will do all we can to assist users in getting their email lists out of the system for use on another platform. We are not selling Zookoda and all user information and emails will remain protected. Think of it as cold storage.
Our company exists to make money for our stakeholders. We make money
for our bloggers, our advertisers and ourselves. We have made money
from day one, that is our core. IZEA intends to weather this recession and emerge stronger than ever. We have supportive investors, plenty of cash, and a business model that works.
It’s never easy to make decisions like this, but I tend to look at the bright side. In the past three months our company has become more efficient than ever. We are all focused, and the long term future looks very bright indeed.
