University Primetime
Background
Before University Primetime
In my search for remote work, I stumbled upon an opportunity to write articles for a college lifestyle blog called Yilb (Your Internet Life Base). This blog aimed to replicate the success of established sites like Her Campus and Barstool Sports. The business model was straightforward: generate revenue through monetized traffic. The company had just raised about $100,000 to launch this venture, and it was in desperate need of content creators. I applied and was accepted as a writer, but it quickly became apparent that the payment system was flawed. Writers were compensated based on the revenue their articles generated, but the traffic monetization was so poorly managed that it yielded mere cents on the dollar.
It was then that I realized the team handling the technical aspects of the site was ill-equipped for the task. Having spent years building WordPress websites on a freelance basis, I felt confident in my ability to revamp the site. I reached out to the founder, [redacted for privacy purposes], and proposed taking over the technical duties. He agreed, and that marked the beginning of my journey into the world of technology management.
With the technical reins in my hands, I quickly made changes that addressed both personal and team-wide grievances. It wasn't long before my efforts transformed the company’s fortunes. By optimizing ad placements and site performance, I single-handedly propelled the company's revenue from under a dollar a day to several hundred dollars daily, without any increase in traffic.
This newfound profitability caught the attention of the founder, who soon decided to step back to pursue a job at another company. He appointed me as the Interim CEO, entrusting me with the task of steering the company forward.
For the next six to eight months, I focused on growing Yilb’s revenue streams. We reached a point where the site consistently generated over $500 a day from advertising. However, the writers, who were instrumental to our content-driven model, still worked without pay, a frustration that underscored the need for change. I held control over the AdSense account, where all revenue was deposited, but to my dismay, I discovered that the founder had been siphoning off all the profits for himself. This revelation was a breaking point for me, as I couldn’t continue supporting a company that exploited its contributors.
University Primetime
Before my time at Yilb came to an end, I fatefully crossed paths with Jason Olephant. Jason had just raised around $100,000 from friends and family to build a college-centric social network called University Primetime. After seeing what I had built at Yilb, he reached out with a proposition: he asked me to join his team to develop and manage a blog that would help drive traffic to the website in the hopes of creating new users for the network. After things ended so abruptly with Yilb, I felt like I hadn’t yet accomplished what I wanted to do in this blog space. As a result, I decided to accept Jason’s proposal and join the team.
The Social Network
The concept behind University Primetime was to recreate the college experience online, filling a gap left by Facebook's evolution into a family-friendly platform. I immediately saw the promise in this venture. As a college student, I understood the value of a social network that could help students connect with their classmates.
I immediately saw the promise in this venture. The idea of a social network tailored to college students resonated with me, as did the potential for generating substantial advertising revenue. However, within three months of joining the company and launching the blog, it became clear that the social network was not living up to expectations. The development company hired to create the platform was not delivering. Their designs were outdated, and the functionality was lacking. As the budget dwindled without a viable product, Jason became understandably concerned about squandering the investment.
At the time, over 80% of traffic was going to the blog—and of the traffic that did go to the social network, we had a retention rate of under 0.5%. Additionally, because the blog was integrated directly into the social network platform, I had very little ability to control or improve the blog. This lack of functionality hampered my ability to grow or monetize the blog effectively. I had no control over the site’s structure, and this limited our ad revenue potential.
University primetime's social network pitch deck (2013)
The Blog Pivot
As Jason continued to panic, I decided to propose a potential solution: pivot away from the social network platform and instead focus on developing and monetizing the blog. At the time, the blog was the only part of the platform seeing any traffic. By doing it this way, we would start generating revenue for the business and avoid running out of cash to keep the servers afloat. Without many options, Jason agreed to this new approach.
As soon as he was on board, I began developing a new blog website built on WordPress. By building in WordPress, not only would we improve stability and make it easier for writers to create and manage content, but it would also enable me to optimize the site and ad deployment in order to maximize revenue potential. We redirected our limited resources into creating a lean, monetized blog that could sustain traffic and generate hype around University Primetime.
Hacking Growth
Our next step was clear, but it wasn’t going to be easy: we had to drive traffic to the site. The challenge was daunting, especially with almost no budget for advertising. I remember the long hours I spent tweaking our SEO, fine-tuning every detail to make sure we were as visible as possible. At the same time, our team threw everything we had into social media, trying to expand our reach and get our content in front of more eyes.
But as the days turned into weeks, it became clear that our efforts, while well-intentioned, were moving slowly. We were gaining ground, but not fast enough. The urgency was palpable. We needed a breakthrough—a way to connect with a larger audience, and we needed it sooner rather than later. This wasn’t just about growth; it was about survival.
Our breakthrough came with a simple yet ingenious idea: creating Facebook groups for incoming college freshmen classes. By establishing these groups for top universities across the country, we tapped into a rich vein of engaged, targeted users—our core demographic. These groups, each representing thousands of potential site visitors, provided a platform for us to share our content directly with students. By pinning articles to the top of these groups, we drove substantial traffic to the site, allowing us to test and refine our ad strategy.
The results were astonishing. Within a year, we were generating daily ad revenues of around $500, with peaks reaching as high as $2,000. The Facebook group strategy proved to be a game-changer, and we temporarily set aside our original social network ambitions to focus on growing the lifestyle blog into a sustainable business model.
This period taught me invaluable lessons about A/B testing and the importance of data-driven decisions. I learned to exercise patience and resist the temptation to make hasty judgments based on small data sets. The experience of building a profitable digital media property from the ground up was a defining chapter in my career. Looking back, I recognize the groundbreaking potential of our approach, which, while controversial in hindsight, paved the way for innovative revenue models in digital content creation.
Growth and Monetization
As we continued to develop the blog, we faced a critical challenge: how to maximize ad revenue. Inspired by the insight that increasing page views per user session would lead to more ad impressions, we decided to implement a strategy that would revolutionize our content structure. We began splitting articles into multiple pages, each requiring users to click a "next" button to continue reading. This approach, particularly effective for list articles, significantly boosted our ad impressions.
The results were transformative. Articles structured with multiple pages saw revenue spikes of 200% to 400%. Our list articles, ranking everything from top party schools to college tips, became a staple of our content strategy. This shift not only increased our daily revenue but also solidified our position in the market.
By the end of this transformation, University Primetime was generating between $500 and $1,500 a day, with occasional peaks reaching up to $5,000. Over six years, our strategic pivot and relentless focus on monetization led to over a million dollars in ad revenue. University Primetime became the third-largest college lifestyle blog, trailing only Bro Bible and Her Campus, and even surpassing Barstool Sports at the time.
Legacy and Impact
My journey with University Primetime came to an end when I moved on to new opportunities. The company, unfortunately, struggled after my departure and was eventually acquired by another firm that failed to maintain its momentum. Today, University Primetime exists in name only, a shadow of its former self.
Reflecting on my time with University Primetime, I am reminded of the power of tenacity, innovation, and ethical leadership. These experiences not only shaped my professional path but also reinforced my commitment to building enterprises that balance profitability with integrity. The lessons learned during this period continue to inform my approach to business and technology management, underscoring the importance of adaptability, strategic thinking, and unwavering ethical standards.
Credits
Closing Thoughts
services
Technology
Wordpress Dev
A/B Testing
Data Analysis
Digital Marketing
Marketing
Digital Marketing
Prototyping
User research
…
Advertising
A/B Testing
Data Analysis
Digital Marketing
Prototyping
User research
team
Founder
Jason Olephant
Technology
Kevin Ross
Marketing
Kevin Ross
Monetization
Kevin Ross
Tools
Web
Wordpress
Yoast SEO
Search Console
Google Analytics
Advertising
Google Adsense
Facebook Ads
Google Ads
Taboola
Marketing
Figma
Sketch
Planning
Trello
Slack
Project Management
Jira
