… upwards of a half million pageviews per day

Interview by Mike Sullivan of Sully’s Blog


Peter Frank is a college student at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.  He founded Sumdae, LLC, while still in high school.  The business started on the premise of buying Internet domain names and reselling to end users at a profit.  Peter now owns and operates CollegeACB.com.

CollegeACB.com or “Anonymous Confession Board” is a controversial hot spot for college students, boasting upwards of a half million pageviews per day.  Although originally created by two other students, Peter is behind the enormous growth of the site.  CollegeACB.com is described as a web-based community for college students to voice their opinions on college life while remaining anonymous.

MO.com:
You obviously have a strong entrepreneurial spirit, forming a business while still in high school.  What drivers, experiences or influences did you have at such an early age that positioned you where you are today?  Did you come from an entrepreneurial family?

Peter Frank:
No one else in my immediate family line has been particularly entrepreneurial, but my parents have always supported me in every way they could.  They had trust and allowed me to sign up for a Paypal account at thirteen.  That freedom allowed me to start my first business with a friend (we sold Counter Strike admin privileges).  From that point forward, I was always trying something new to make money.  Eventually (around fifteen), I stumbled into domain names and websites and now here I am.

I have a drive from within to be successful, and generating profits allows me to see my success concretely.  Equally important to making money is the sense of satisfaction from beating competitors and/or the market.

MO.com:
You have been featured in countless blogs, newspapers and most impressively, TIME.  Have you had any difficulty handling this rush of attention?  What impact has it had on your day-to-day life?

Peter Frank:
I had my fifteen minutes years ago, so I know how ridiculous the media can be.  It hasn’t really impacted me too much in my daily life, though the attention at times can be both exciting and aggravating.  It is also quite frustrating when my quotes are taken out of context to make me look bad, but I guess that comes with the territory.    I’ve certainly learned to become much more careful when talking with the media over the last year.

MO.com:
CollegeACB.com is clearly controversial.  While some describe it as “practical and helpful”, others describe it as “hateful and hurtful.”  How do you react to those that claim to be victims of online bullying or others who claim their reputation has been destroyed?

Peter Frank:
Well, first of all, we have to remember that the content is 100% user generated.  We have never called for salacious gossip (in stark contrast to JuicyCampus and most of our competitors).  We simply seek to provide an open forum for discussion – in fact, our categories are divided into: Advice, Sex, Issues, and Academics.  I’m not naïve to how the site is commonly used, but that is the result of students pushing discussion towards their peers, Greek life, etc.

We have no legal obligation to remove any content (other than copyright material).  Neither our competitors nor JuicyCampus ever remove offensive material.  Not only are there automatic user moderation features in place, but we have always tried to make a good faith effort to comply with emails and post deletion requests when a named person asks.    We provide the open forum, and we do our best to remove objectionable material when contacted.

MO.com:
When Juicy Campus, a similarly themed site, folded due to public pressures, you had the insight to purchase and redirect that traffic to CollegeACB.com.  How did you come up with the idea to do that?  What impact has that had on the overall success of CollegeACB.com?

Peter Frank:
I contacted Matt Ivester, owner of JuicyCampus after they announced they were going to close.  I initially wanted to buy his entire inventory of ads, but he came back at me with an offer to buy the traffic to the site for a period of two months.  I acted almost immediately and paid his asking price for the rights to the traffic.

Pre-JuicyCampus closure we had roughly 60,000 pageviews a day.  After the deal we began to see roughly 500,000 pageviews a day.  Traffic varies greatly by month (summer is slow), and day (Friday and Saturday are slow), but the traffic has been consistently growing since the deal.

MO.com:
The site is not lacking for content by any means, with over 500 college boards and thousands of posts.  How does the site currently generate revenue?  Do you have thoughts around additional revenue generation methods?

Peter Frank:
Currently we use simple banner ads and are paid on a CPM basis.  Because the site has UGC (user generated content) and often contains objectionable text, it is hard to find high paying advertisers.  However, I’m confident that we’ll soon be able to sign larger advertising contracts.  After all, during peak months we do have over 350,000 unique visitors and roughly 25 million pageviews.  I’d like to think that that much traffic from college students would be worth significant amounts.

MO.com:
Do you have other business ventures underway outside of CollegeACB.com?  What are your plans after graduation?

Peter Frank:
I do, I own Texts.com and am working on getting that set up as a fully-fledged website.  I also own several hundred other domains that I’d like to slowly build out and/or sell.

I don’t have any concrete plans for after graduation.   I haven’t ruled out graduate school of some sort, but I’d love to jump right into a fast moving company right out of college.  Maybe I’ll even be able to work for myself – who knows.