“Some people laugh immediately while others become curious as to what our site is all about. Naturally a site of our nature is controversial so we leveraged that to its fullest potential through our promotions.”

The best moment of a crazy college hookup story is getting to share it with your friends. But what if you don’t want all of your friends knowing this story is about you? Matthew Weaver & Kevin Lance Co-founders of Bootydrop.com have solved this problem for you.

Bootydrop.com is the only online community for sharing hilarious college hookup stories, anonymously. Each outrageous story is accompanied by the University the storyteller attends, comments, voting on whether it is bootylicious or not, and the ability to share the story with your friends via Facebook and Twitter. They have truly created an interactive gossip experience, and saved people the shame at the same time.

 

MO: First, how did you come up with this concept? Personal experiences?

Kevin: While residing in our Indiana University dorms freshman year, Matt and I were consistently brainstorming entrepreneurial ideas. We noticed our friends would gather for hours in the lounge after partying just to share their humorous tales from the night. We wondered why the stories had to end there. What if they could continue to spread and entertain people around the world?

We wanted to put our lounge experience online so we bought the domain name “bootydrop.com” and put our dream into action.

MO: Did either of you have business or web development backgrounds or was this your first venture? Talk us through the beginning phases.

Matt: Kevin had business experience through his powerselling status on ebay and dealing with customers there. However Kevin nor I had any web development backgrounds.

1) We needed to own the site BootyDrop.com. First we purchased thebootydrop.com off of GoDaddy.com, but we knew that having a “the” in front of the name would make the name less memorable. BootyDrop.com was owned by someone just as a parked domain. After about two weeks of negotiation with the owner of the website, we were finally able to call it our own. The domain was appraised to be worth about $2500 at the time.

2) Understand what exactly we wanted our site to become. We wanted to keep the website 100% anonymous. People like to refer to websites such as College ACB as a bulletin board, where anyone can go on, and post about anything. This is exactly what we did not want. We wanted to be a website for humor and not destroying reputations. To post a story on BootyDrop, you must register with your university email address. You will be sent a verification email with a temporary password (to confirm authenticity). From there you are automatically assigned a randomly generated user ID. For instance, if I register from the University of Mississippi, I could be assigned something like OLEMISS76394. This prevents any back tracking to the user. We don’t ask users to disclose their name at any time on our website. We are 100% anonymous.

3) What schools will be on the BootyDrop list. We decided to start with the ACC, Big 10, and SEC. We will grow based on which other schools have the most site traffic, and student demand.

4) We needed to decide who was going to do the web design. We emailed and called over twenty different web developers getting quotes, and seeing who was right for the job. We ended up going with a company out of Saint Louis called Insite Advice, LLC, and we are extremely pleased with the results.

5) Our site’s revenue is based off Ad’s. We needed a place to have our funds separate from our personal accounts. Therefore we created BootyDrop, LLC.

MO: The hardest thing about many internet startups such as yours is gaining traction. How have you conquered this problem?

Kevin: BootyDrop.com itself is a unique name that garners attention. Some people laugh immediately while others become curious as to what our site is all about. Naturally a site of our nature is controversial so we leveraged that to its fullest potential through our promotions.

We began with simple things such as advertising on campus via chalking, Facebook ads, and contacting the student newspapers of the universities we are located at. Also we created a Facebook page and Twitter account where our users can interact with us. Finally we had t-shirts made that can be seen worn by students at universities. Our shirts grab attention with the tagline “got booty?” on the front, with our web address written on the back.

Quite simply, the name BootyDrop is hard to forget, and we work hard to make our users’ web experience as equally unforgettable.

MO: How do you believe you are distinguishable and better than your competitors such as FML and Text from Last Night?

Matt: There a few extremes in the college website arena. There are websites such as College ACB, which has been criticized for damaging students reputations. It is not monitored and is not “truly” anonymous. Users can anonymously post about their classmates in a negative light while identifying them with their full names. Then you have the other side of things like Texts From Last Night. This website is fantastic, but, you can only send something so long. You cannot truly tell a story with a simple text message. We found that the humor often lay in the details of the story.

Therefore we believe we are better because we have a targeted approach where users are not limited to a short text message format. Registration on BootyDrop is extremely simplistic, only requiring the users’ .edu email address. After the user registers successfully, they are instantly provided with a randomly generated User ID. This assures the masking of any users’ email, post, comments, and rankings. Plain and simple, there is no back tracking to the user.

Also we provide true anonymity for both the user posting and the person(s) in the posts. We personally review all posts that come through to make sure posts adhere to the culture of our website.

MO: Have you had any backlash from Universities? Are there any problems with associating these stories with specific universities?

Matt: We have received some minor backlash from people who believe our site demeans women. However we point out that nearly half of our stories are written by women. Also the stories are between two consenting individuals. Therefore it seems unreasonable that our site is demeaning to anyone.

As far as associating stories with specific universities, it has yet to be an issue. Students must have the university email for it to appear from a specific school. Therefore stories are authentically from the university they say they are.

MO: How do you make money from BootyDrop.com ?

Kevin: Our primary source of income is through ad revenue. We are paid based on CPM (The price we are paid per 1000 visitors) and CPC (The price we are paid per visitor click) banner methods. Also, we have inquired about partnering with other college humor websites, thus expanding our networks (and visitors).