Carlos Garcia is the founder of Scrapblog.
He is also the Founder & Partner of Nobox Marketing Group which serves high-profile customers such as Toyota and Mozilla. Visit the company profile here.

I don’t see ads on your site, which startups nowadays are using as a norm to generate revenue. What is Scrapblog’s business model? How does it profit and make money to handle administrative costs such as user scrapbooks server space?

We designed Scrapblog to be in a perfect format for both, online sharing and turning into high-quality photo books and DVDs. That said our main source of revenue will be photo products. The use of Scrapblog will always be free, however we will also have a “PRO” account that will include additional benefits.

Scrapblog is currently self-funded by its partners, which happen to be the same four partners of Nobox.

Coming from a service-oriented, marketing, and strategizing background, considering the many Web 2.0 areas your team could have got into, why did you choose to get into the online photo-sharing space?

I think photo-sharing will evolve in a similar way that traditional photo albums have evolved into the richer, more creative experience that scrapbooks offer. Users simply want an enhanced experience that allows them to express themselves and tell stories in a creative way. In a broader sense, I believe that the next wave of user generated content will focus on “design online” rather than just sharing photos and videos online. For the millions of users who already have their content online it is a matter of “what can I do now?”. Scrapblog offers them an easy-to-use and powerful interface for creating multimedia scrapbooks with their photos, videos, audio and a bunch of creative elements.

Being an entrepreneur yourself with Nobox and now Scrapblog, what advice can you give to the next generation of entrepreneurs?

If possible, try to grow your business organically without external capital. At least, take the time to build something of value before you go after venture capital or angel investors.

My partners and I are proud that we built Nobox organically, never having more than a line of credit. For Scrapblog, we have leveraged from our good fortune from owning Nobox to stay independent and build a valuable service for our users. This approach allows you to focus on your users and not on what investors want to hear.

What sort of problems is Scrapblog currently facing?

Our biggest challenge was to keep things simple for the user. I come from a strong usability background and we leveraged from that to avoid the temptations of adding features just because they are cool and challenging from a developers perspective. We are currently adding some very cool video integration so that you can bring a YouTube video and play it inside your Scrapblog. Technically we could get into many scenarios, but we have chosen in favor of keeping it simple for our users. Users rule! That’s my take.