THE SEEDS ARE SOWN  

Over the years, I’ve been converted into a believer in sustainability by my publishing and business partners, Rao Kolluru (an environmental expert and author) and another author, June Marshall, who is into organic food, birding, and all things natural. (She is also my wife, so she has the inside track....) 

While I find the evidence for man-made global warming inconclusive, I do agree that our use of earth’s resources is too profligate. During sometimes heated discussions, we’ve come up with the idea CarbonTicker. A tool, in the form of a web service, to make it as easy as possible to eliminate, collectively, our carbon footprint. 

THE PROBLEM IS DEFINED

Despite the multitude of Green - Clean - Carbon Footprint Reduction sites and services, individuals and companies find it next to impossible to define and reduce their carbon footprint. Web sites, services, and blogs in this space currently are plagued by the following issues:

1. The lack of an integrated Carbon Footprint calculation, reduction, and documentation tool
2. Very hard to obtain unbiased information for decision making
3. Politicization, resulting in singular viewpoints or services
4. The rapid evolution of this science, technology, and markets

These reflect the ferment and fragmentation typical of a field at the start of its exponential growth period, and the influence of the struggle between religious environmentalism pinning all the blame on mankind vs. the “show me” attitude most people exhibit.

OUR SOLUTION:  A FREE CARBON SAVINGS ACCOUNT 

We offer a practical approach that frames environmental issues as a challenge to achieve a new, sustainable global economy, at the highest standard of living. Supported by unbiased information, a free Carbon Savings Account, and numerous other tools through a “one-stop-shop” website, individuals, companies, and organizations will, for the first time, be able to:

- Set up and manage their free Carbon Savings Account
- Get unbiased information for decision making
- Build networks and beneficial alliances
- Minimize the time and effort to take action, and
- Document their progress for their own, regulatory, and marketing purposes, all in one place on CarbonTicker.com.

OUR BUSINESS MODEL RELIES ON: 

A) Gathering and verifying large quantities of publicly available information as well as user generated blog and forum entries to create a store of knowledge easily mined/filtered for unbiased information. Consumers habitually seek out sites that provide unbiased information, as exemplified by Amazon (books), Zagat (restaurants), and TripAdvisor (travel).

B) Making it very easy to act on this information through a bank account like tool called “Carbon Savings Account,” which also documents your progress for your own, as well as regulatory and marketing purposes.

C) Affiliate sales of carbon credits/offsets, green-clean fund/venture investments, and green-clean product sales, that automatically update the carbon footprint balance in your Carbon Savings Accounts. 

D) Our revenue flow, that encompasses four major revenue sources:

- Affiliate commissions from green-clean product sales
- Commission from facilitating the sale of carbon credits/offsets
- Custom mini-site/page additions and updates for clients
- Ad publishing

E)  Our visitor and member acquisition and retention program, that are both web and traditional media based. We will budget up to 80% of marketing funds for this purpose, resulting in:

-  9 million visits in Business Year #1 (2nd year of operation), growing to 36 million in Year  #5   

-  Member conversion rate of 5-10%. Membership offers our free Carbon Savings Account

-  Membership, consisting of a healthy mix of individuals, businesses, public and governmental organizations, as well as NGOs 

OUR MARKETS AND AUDIENCES

Our audience is comprised of individuals defined as “hard-core green enthusiasts,” along with a much larger slice of the population now compelled to explore sustainable ways of living, as well as companies and organizations which must reduce their carbon footprint.

The visitor/member numbers forecast in our projections are based on these statistics. about the number of potential users in the U.S. from an article in the January 2008 issue of Internet Retailer magazine:

THERE ARE ABOUT 30 MILLION HARD-CORE GREEN ENTHUSIASTS IN THE U.S. ANOTHER 100 MILLION HAVE TAKEN SOME GREEN STEPS, INCLUDING ABOUT 50 MILLION WHO ARE INTERESTED IN FIGURING OUT HOW TO LIVE THEIR LIVES IN A SUSTAINABLE FASHION.

We estimate the global market to be about three times of this size, or about 200 million and prepared our visitor and revenue projections accordingly.

We plan to run constant, high volume and memorable marketing campaigns online and in other applicable channels, including a high profile celebrity spokesperson, which we think will be essential to differentiate us. Hence the very substantial amounts devoted to marketing in the business plan: 30% of funds / revenues in the first year, declining to 18% of total revenues by the 5th year.

WE LOVE OUR COMPETITION

No current website or service addresses the carbon footprint elimination cycle in its entirety. 

Major media and press company sites, like the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, Fox News, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, etc. have sections dedicated to Global Warming - Green-Clean News and Science stories. The best known/most visited government, environmental protection, or global warming related sites from the US EPA, NOAA, NSF, UNEP, World Bank, Carbon Fund, Nation Master, CARMA, TreeHugger from the Discovery Channel and numerous others provide data that has been found, from time to time, inconsistent or contradictory. There are a number of sites, such as Live Earth, TerraPass, Climate Friendly etc., that feature carbon footprint calculators for individuals with or without carbon offsets; only a few sites, zFacts and Poodwaddle offer carbon (CO2) clocks; and no direct way to buy carbon credits.

Current and potential competitors must tackle the same task we face in creating and managing a web service that inspires and enables millions of individuals, companies, and organizations to find and act on unbiased information; to engage in productive debate; to cooperate; to build their networks; to calculate and record their carbon footprint reduction activity; to invest in green funds, as well as to buy carbon credits and green/clean products, all in one easy to use place online.

We anticipate that sites, such as TreeHugger, MakeMeSustainable, and Live Earth may pose the biggest threat. However, our insistence on developing and providing unbiased information, expert in-house knowledge, and the environmental space’s fragmentation gives us a significant advantage.

OUR WEB SITE

http://carbonticker.com/

Yes, it’s a marketing brochure. No, we do not intend to keep it like that for long.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Please ask for it!