College business sees real life
A Sacred Heart University senior, Giancarlo Massaro, has developed a web company with a unique advertisement and selling structure and growing rate of success.
AnyLuckyDay.com, Massaro”™s site, is an interactive advertising platform that enables companies to promote their products and services through social media by giving consumers a shot at winning the item.
Massaro, who is majoring in communications and technology and minoring in business administration, created the platform two years ago.
The AnyLuckyDay.com homepage opens to a daily product or service, along with an obvious blue button for visiting the sponsor and an orange button for posting a comment, both of which are required for a chance at winning. There is also a YouTube video created especially for the promotion. Users can gain additional entries in the contest by clicking on buttons to ”˜share”™ on Facebook and ”˜retweet”™ on Twitter. Each promotional period and contest is 24 hours, and winners are drawn at random.
Massaro said for advertisers, the site provides a calendar showing the days that are available for promotions and the fees. Massaro”™s fee structure for 2010, which was intended to reward early commitment, started out at $1.50 for Jan. 1, $3 for Jan. 2, $4.50 for Jan. 3 and so on up to $547.50 for Dec. 31. For each day a company purchases, it receives a contest giving away their product or service, a video featured on both YouTube and AnyLuckyDay, and posts on Twitter, Facebook, and AnyLuckyDay.com. The company also gets its logo and link on the sites calendar.
Massaro, who began working with websites at the age of 12 developed the idea in December 2008. “I was watching TV late one night and an infomercial came on, and I thought, ”˜Wouldn”™t it be cool if I could try out these products to see if they actually worked before I had to buy them? Maybe I could create a website from this idea.”™ So with a little tweaking, that”™s how AnyLuckyDay came about.”
The site launched in January 2009 and in order to get started, he began by buying products to give away himself. “I bought an iPod, a speaker system, a mouse and a keyboard to give away in the first month.” By the end of January, his site had its first sponsor and soon attracted more. Throughout 2009, it was free for companies to receive promotion on AnyLuckyDay.
“They sent me their product, and I would do a contest, write them up, and promote their company for the whole year,” Massaro said. “I had to build up an audience and credibility so it would get more companies interested.”
Massaro implemented a calendar and the pricing structure for January 2010. He intends to run AnyLuckyDay as his full-time business after he graduates in May.