Archive for the ‘Analysis’ Category
Myspace News has just not happened! There was a lot of press about the news feature that will be added to myspace and how it could potentially be a Digg killer, but nothing has eventuated. News Corp and Myspace have just done absolutely nothing with this service, letting it just sink into the very background of the Myspace product and drown.
The News service was supposed to be somewhat similar to Google News and many other out there in the market. It has a nice design and it currently functioning but has never been linked in to profiles or advertisements on Myspace.
Once logged in to Myspace in the left hand column in the backend of your user control panel there is a big list of all products and services that Myspace offers and their News section is not even included in the this!
Myspace News has to one of the biggest flops of 2007!
This past weekend, I spent a few hours surfing through YouTube for user generated video content. Apart from watching funny videos of people doing the Soldier Boy dance, I also use the site to check for technology related videos. Most recently was the video broadcast of Google’s 2007 Analyst Day. The event was attended by many analysts interested in finding out what the company had in store for the future years to come.
I have always admired Google because of the way they revolutionized how we behave on the web. Consumers are constantly jumping for joy when Google rolls out a new product because all they require to use these products is to sit through a few contextual advertisements. Some people think their ultimate goal is to offer every imaginable service in return for showing ads to users who wish to use their suite of products.
My question has always been how they plan on monetizing YouTube? My favorite joy when surfing through Youtube is that I can spend hours on the site without seeing any obtrusive advertisement. I understand Google makes its money from displaying text ads next to relevant content, but I can’t help but wonder how they plan on duplicating the same model when it comes to the number one video sharing site.
I think they can get away with displaying non obtrusive ads on proprietary content of big TV stations, but spreading these ads to user generated content will definitely rub a lot of people the wrong way. My only solution thus far is to start off by capping the number of videos every user can view and advising them that some text or other form of rich media advertisement may be displayed once the cap has been exceeded. This strategy in my opinion will slowly sensitize their users with respect to seeing ads next to video content.
Today was the first time I have ever used the BlogLines site, I know what your thinking (is he serious) and the answer is yes. Currently I used Google Reader to monitor all of my RSS feeds and I have never really been interested in change and after browsing Bloglines im still not really interested. However, when searching for Crenk is comes up with the results and also shows the amount of subscribers from Bloglines and currently it is only siting at 4 subscribers. Why is this? Do a lot more of the market use Google instead of Bloglines and how can I promote my own blog within Bloglines to help their users find my site and then subscribe?
If anyone has some advice on the above please let me know and I will publish it all right here!
YouTube has become a meca site in the last year. In the early days it was not so hard to upload yourself singing in from of your computer and then overnight you would be a superstar, but these days most of that kinda stuff doesnt exist and it actually takes talent to be a must watch on YouTube.
After half a year of testing out its Partners platform with only 100 contributors, YouTube has now opened up this platform to all. The criteria for the partner program is as follows:
- You create original videos suitable for online streaming.
- You own the copyrights and distribution rights for all audio and video content that you upload — no exceptions.
- You regularly upload videos that are viewed by thousands of YouTube users.
- You live in the United States or Canada.
If you actually adhear to all of the above criteria then you can apply for the program and in return YouTube will actually allow you to make money from your videos, with their revenue sharing program. They havent actually announced yet what percentage of the Adsense revenue you will receive, but knowing the Giant that is Google it isnt going to be too much. 50% if you amazingly lucky.
YouTube has long been a place where video makers couldnt make any money from their videos, but could gain exposure that would instantly shoot then into stardom and allowing them to make money from other revenue streams. As we already some videos are mostly viewed off the YouTube site so im not too sure if these views will could towards your potential advertising revenue, because most sites currently off the site dont carry any ads at all (so will this change?).
Im so happy to see YouTube open their partners section up, because the company in which im CEO will be launching our music distribution company in the coming months and we already have a lot of music videos that now actually have a potential to make money on the worlds largest video site.
For a long time now Metacafe and Revver have been sharing their video ad revenues with contributors, but it has always made me wonder why these sites havent promote that fact a lot more and actually gained some traction on what is the YouTube juggernaut.
I dont normally do this but I thought I would tell all my readers about an interesting site I have been reading for a while now, Bloggin-Ads. Bloggin-Ads was created by Mike to explore the whole Blogging Community by reviewing a blog every single day. Mike started this idea because he felt that people paying to get reviewed was not very fair to smaller blogs or blogs that do not receive income.
The site itself has a very simple but very effective design and a distinct colour scheme too boot. I really like the idea of the site and I have seen it grow to over 140 rss subscribers very quickly.
Great idea, well executed and look forward to seeing it grow even more.
My recent post about bloggers earnings reports has created quite a stir.
The post itself has got some really good comments from some creditable names around the blogosphere, such as Yaro and Everton.
The post basically looked at the earnings of a select few and then tried to understand if these figures are creditable or not. The discussion on the post has been quite mixed.
A couple of the bloggers did define there earnings exactly like i was hoping they would, but in the process Everton from ConnectedInternet.co.uk did get quite annoyed. In this case from his November earnings i couldnt tell how much traffic his site currently received for the month, so all i had to go by was Alexa, Compete, Quantcast and Technorati. In which the majority of the sites seemed to say that their traffic was very low. However, Everton did respond in a post and actually clarrified that his traffic was currently approx 500k pageviews per month, thus meaning he has more traffic then John Chow and possibly Shoemoney. Therefore, if his traffic numbers are correct and he is only earning approx $9000 per month from this then he is now under performing.
Other sites that were on the other end of the discussion was Lilian, Randy and Onion Spirit. I still think they you have to take these earning with a grain of salt and I dont understand why when people disclose their earnings the newbie’s to the internet game think that this is amazing, because it is not!! The minority of bloggers who disclose their earnings have actually been in the online blogging or marketing game for a long period of time and they now have built up good traffic and slowly finding the right technique to maximise their revenues, this is really not rocket science. So newbie’s please stop worrying about how much revenue other blogs or your blog makes and try to focus on the key areas of building readership numbers, building a community, writing good content, having a distinct focus and then you will really start to reap the rewards.
Mr Chow has an article that is so true but when you are starting out in the weblog industry you dont really realize. This discussion was about Traffic and Revenue.
John discusses his weblog numbers from a year ago against his figures now. As most people know John like to promote himself and about how much he earns from his site. If you read John’s income report than you know his blog made $27,240.83 last month. That’s a nice big increase over the $2,139.93 the blog made in November of 2006. However, most people dont realise that John’s weblog had more traffic in November 2006 than it does now.
If you are starting your own weblog then it is a lot more important to gain as much traffic as you can, but once this is achieved then it is a great deal easier to increase your eCPM than build even more traffic. John Chow’s weblog is a real life example of this!
However, what John doesnt understand is that he is an expert in increasing eCPM without interfering with his readers and turning them away from his site. To increase your eCPM quick and most efficiently is to sell advertising that is based on CPM. Thus, for every 1000 page views your revenue will increase exponentially.
Finally, as far as I am aware John currently adds in his revenues from RSS inline text links to his financial reports, but as he has so many thousand more RSS readers currently than he had in November 2006, this is also where the majority of his increase in income could be coming from.
There are a lot of bloggers out there in the “Make Money Online” market and a few seemed to have started a habit that is catching on, Earnings Reports. These reports are most written every month in which the blogger discloses his or her basic earnings, but this brings me to the point are these earning figures fact or fiction?
For a long time now blogger have been keeping their traffic reports and earnings quite, until a selective few bloggers started this habit of disclosures and now more and more are joining the fad. If you are in the niche of “Making Money Online” it has been well known that it is a strong selling point to do what you preach, so in order to be an expert you have to be making money from your blog. Thus, it seems to be that most bloggers who disclose their earnings are inflating the amounts just to gain recognition.
Some examples of earnings disclosures are:
What is really missing from all of these reports is that the bloggers dont disclose if all the money was earned from their one site or from a group of sites that they own and operate. Personally, I think the group of bloggers listed above are only trying to push their own causes in disclosing earning and they should all be taken with a pinch of salt!
The new video tools Seesmic is still in alpha but it is creating quite a stir around the blogosphere. The site currently has investors such as Michael Arrington and Robert Scoble and has to be a must watch in 2008. This site itself is quite unknown at present, so I was wondering if anyone has any more information about the company and product and if anyone is using their alpha and service.
The other day I read a very interesting comment that I just had to write about and it was from Patrick over at BlogStorm.
“The only dedicated make money online blog people really need to read is John Chow’s. I’ve yet to find any value in most of the other blogs because a lot of them post about the same things. This problem exists in most industries but over the last few months the make money online industry seems to have filled up with blogs whose purpose is to help the owner make money online rather than the readers.”
I found this comment to be right and wrong at the same time. I find that most “Make Money Online” bloggers aim to line there pockets rather than help there readers make money, and they seem to regurgitate a lot of the same information over and over again in different formats. However, with his comment about John Chow’s blog being the only one worth reading, I think is ridiculous! Some of the other large “Make Money Online” blogs are definitely worth reading, such as Dosh Dosh, Pro Blogger, Performancing and the Blog Herald.
Personally, I just find it amazing how many people are trying to blog in this niche, when there is really not too much information and ideas to go round. Plus most of the smaller bloggers dont come up with their own ideas, they just regurgitate the big boys.
This can also be found in a lot of the other niche’s, such as Tech News. Here on Crenk I try to give my opinion and perspective on tech news issue, be it i know it is most probably wrong some of the time. However, most of the sites just basically copy the news from the original source and then re-word it all. This is a huge problem for sites like Techmeme, who only seem to put an article on their site if Techcrunch writes about it! Im still yet to find a great tech news service that shows news from a variety of sources, thus at the same time give some really good opinions and reviews on sites whilst referring to an overall company and product database.
Ted Murphy at Izea is a lot of things but one thing he definitely is, is a marketing expert. This weekend Ted has thanked Techcrunch and Calacanis for helping them reach 100,000 members.
“Our good friends Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis have also done a stellar job of driving traffic and making sure the entire blogosphere knows our name. We simply couldn’t afford that type of advertising if we had to buy it. I really need to find some time to write these guys a thank you card or send a fruit basket.”
There are a great deal of people out there that dont like PPP and Izea and Im curious to see out of the 100,000 member how many of them are active. Im sure the number has probably dropped drastically recently because of the Google penalties to all PPP members.
Personally I dont like the idea of bloggers posting for small fees, especially on topics that are totally inrelevant in relation to their blogs, but there also has to be a place online where companies can go and actually pay to get some good promotion from blogs such as Techcrunch etc.
Last night I updated my iPod Touch pretty much for the first time and noticed a very exciting addition, a new add item to the calendar section. This actually was very heavily discussed when the iPod Touch was released, because it was a feature that could really assist customers to use the iPod Touch not just as a iPod but also a PDA. Most of the really large Gadget and Apple sites such as, Engadget, TUAW and CrunchGear, have all played down the addition of this “add event” feature and I have no idea why! The only think the really differs now between the iPhone and iPod Touch is the “Phone”, which Skype could change.
