Websites that make money from YOUR updates

Never thought this was possible? Well, there are websites out there that make money when YOU write a blog update! Or even when you tweet to your own followers. How's that possible? Well - all they need to do is aggregate your data on their webpages and then have advertisements bring them the money. Typically, such a website will be owned by someone you want yourself to be associated with. Alternatively, they might also have some sort of an incentive for you to stay and have your content published through them. The system is definitely not illegal. In fact, it might be a great idea for you to make money from the internet - just think of something that can leverage the power of the masses. It could be something like a website that pulls data from other websites. Remember though, that one should always give credit to the source you're getting your data from. It's just plain ethics :)

Here's the first website, from Guy Kawasaki, that makes money for him when people write their blogs. Alltop is a great idea, and it solves a real problem - giving people one place where they can find all the top blogs and websites that cover a certain aspect of online publishing. What's more, it has become a rage with bloggers to have their content listed with Alltop. How Guy did it is just plain clever.

What's more, AllTop is also emerging as a one-stop for people to research on various topics that they cover (40 of the top searched topics on the internet). There's a whole section for people who're interested in blogging. You can see entries from your competition, all at one place.

And here's another website - TwitterTops, that attempts to do on twitter what Guy did with blogs and websites. The idea may be smaller, but the central theme is the same - to bring top tweeps together. In its current avatar, the websites appears to only collate TwitterTops from various geographies. Hopefully they'll be able to eventually amass tweeps based on their expertise as well. After all, just being the top twitter user in a particular country or city doesn't mean as much as being a twitter authority on a subject! The TwitterTops management needs to wake up and take notice!

Of course - you can also argue that all the top bloggers are eventually making money off of other people's hard work - TechCrunch does not itself make all the great web services they talk about. Popular Science doesn't invent all they write about. But at least these guys write about stuff! AllTop and TwitterTops promise not to write about stuff - they are only going to show the world what YOU have thought of! If only I could think of the next similar idea that could fly :)

Thanks to the social networks that make discovering such websites easy!  

Today In History - ROCKEFELLER SAVES $198

Again, from the NYTimes on 21 September 1907, John D. Rockefeller saved $198 by cutting the wages of eleven collegians working on his Forest Hill estate. The men worked on tending the garden and lawns, and kept the drives in shape. The layoffs of today, with the severance and other benefits, are far better.

The students, who earlier made $1.50 per day with an eight-hour shift, would now get $1.25 per day with ten-and-a-half hours of work. That's a massive 36% cut in hourly wages!

Oh, and before you pass a judgment on Mr. Rockefeller here, it's nice to know that he contributed more than 85 Million to the cause of education between 1897 and 1907. Link to the original story here.

Advertise Your Blog Using BlogRush

Play this post

"The Fastest And Easiest Way To Instantly Drive A Flood Of Targeted Readers To Your Blog... Absolutely Free!" That's the bold claim BlogRush makes in the website. With the multilevel referral scheme, it might come quite close to delivering on the promise. since no money is involved, it isn't one of those (illegal) pyramid schemes but the benefits are still on similar lines.

When you place the BlogRush widget on your blog, it shows relevant posts from other bloggers next to your posts. Every time your page loads, you get one credit to show your blog on other blogger pages. Neat eh? Moreover, when you refer someone and their page loads, you still get a credit. That's also the reason why all the BlogRush links in this post are referral links...

In their own words,

BlogRush is a "Cooperative Syndication Network" that rewards its users for their contributions to the network -- from the impressions they provide of the BlogRush Widget to the referral of other users through 10 'generations' of activity and the impressions of the widget that they provide. BlogRush was designed to be incredibly viral and to provide its users with tremendous distribution leverage to receive exposure for their blog content (onto related content blogs) that they could never achieve on their own; at least without a massive advertising budget.

There you have it - the best (so far) way to promote your blog for free. We already know the advantage of a targeted readership - people interested in what you are writing are more likely to stick around your blog and this will directly affect the revenue you generate from your efforts.

So go ahead, use one of the referral links in this post (or visit www.blogrush.com directly) to get code for your widget and start reaping the benefits of targeted readers.

Update:Just got a mail from BlogRush explaining the 'The Syndication Credit System Formula' (the formula used to derive your credits). Here it is:

Your Traffic = 1:1
1st Generation Of Referrals (Directly From You) = 1:1
2nd Generation Of Referrals (i.e. Jen in the video) = 1:1
3rd - 6th Generation Of Referrals = 1:4
7th - 10th Generation Of Referrals = 1:8

1:1 means you earn 1 syndication credit for every 1 impression of the
widget by your own traffic or by any users located on the 1st (direct)
or 2nd generations.
1:4 means you earn 1 syndication credit for every 4 impressions of the
widget by any user located on the 3rd to 6th generations.
1:8 means you earn 1 syndication credit for every 8 impressions of the
widget by any user located on the 7th to 10th generations.

Hopefully this clarifies your doubts on how the service works. In case you are wondering how BlogRush plan to monetize their service, I got that answer in the mail too - Soon you will be able to BUY Credits!

Other bloggers who wrote about BlogRush:

Why You Shouldn't Rush into BlogRush at Search Engine Journal

Tips for Using BlogRush to Generate Traffic for Your Blog at ProBlogger

BlogRush: 8 Reasons to Be Wary...and Optimistic at Mashable

Try Blogrush Widget for Free Referral Traffic Till 10 Levels at Quick Online Tips

BlogRush - Getting More Blog Exposure Through Syndication & Leverage at Squidoo

If you would like to make legit money on the internet, do check my other posts:

Make money from uploaded videos

Earn magazine subscriptions by watching ads

If you are a website owner, also check Amazon's Flexible Payment System

Your videos can earn you money!

Play this post

I have posted earlier about making (not so tangible) money by watching ads. So far, it only gets you magazine subscriptions but soon it might become a part-time source of income. If you are like millions of other internet users, though, you would be watching videos on YouTube or one of the other popular video sharing networks. You have probably also been uploading and embedding videos but never really wondered if all your effort could net you any moolah... until now!

Recently, at their first anniversary, Revver announced that they have paid out one million dollars to content owners and distributors (people who embed Revver videos in their sites or blogs). Here's how it works - As a content owner, you upload a video and Revver shows pre/post roll ads whenever someone views your video. From the revenue generated, you get half the amount and Revver keeps the other half. If you are a distributor, Revver gives you twenty percent of the total revenue generated before splitting between the content owner and itself. All in all, a nifty deal if there ever was one for video sharing.

If you would like to view Revver's press release, you can find it here.

Some other video sharing networks that share advertising revenue with content owners:

Flixya shares 100% ad revenue with content owners

Metacafe gives content owners $100 for every 20,000 views of their uploaded videos

YouTube and DailyMotion have made revenue sharing deals with some of the top contributors on their sites

If you have a video camera, there couldn't be a better time to go out and capture the world. Who knows, you might even get the most viewed video on the planet! Oh, and here is the current most viewed video on the planet (Metacafe would've paid the owner something like $3000 by now!)

To get more traffic to your blog, do check my post on Blogrush . Don't forget to help me by getting a referral! Another way of helping me - digg or stumble this post. A little motivation goes a long way :) BTW, you can also earn access to magazine subscription issues! Learn how.

Suggested Mashup - QuickInsert and AdPerk

Play this post

This post earlier on how a reader can make money by watching ads. Alternatively, AdPerk also allows you to get subscription issues of a few magazines just by watching a short commercial. All-in-all, a pretty neat idea - until you think of the positive implications this may have on bloggers who are planning to monetize their blogs, but an essential payment service is still missing.

To bridge the divide, there's QuickInsert. In their own words,

You have a site, a blog, or webspace. We protect and host your membership content. This content is known as your "protected content" and is unavailable to non-users. Once a visitor registers on your website, they are either prompted for payment via Google Checkout/Paypal or are activated instantly. They can then login on your site, and your site's protected content becomes available!

As a blogger, now you can keep snippets in your main blog and keep the full posts accessible only to registered users. But that's not as far as you can go - imagine (as suggested in this post's heading) a mashup between the two services and you have a wonderful money maker. You can get your readers to view short ads before they can read your posts. Everyone benefits! Well, except the readers of course as they now have more clicks before the content becomes available.

Using QuickInsert is easy and you don't need to do any extensive HTML/Javascript editing before getting this to work. What's more, your readers/users will not be redirected to any other site. Payment and logging-in will be taken care of at your site itself.

If an entrepreneur out there is reading this blog, here's your million dollar idea! Don't forget to make me the (honorary) co-founder.

Other blogs that reported QuickInsert:

The QuickInsert Blog

QuickInsert: Charge for Your Content at Mashable

Protect or Sell Your Content via QuickInsert at Jeffro 2.0

QuickInsert - the free and easy way to protect and sell your content at Hotscripts.com

Make money by watching ads - AdPerk

I have reported here earlier on how a visitor's attention can attract a value for itself. AdPerk brings you (currently) magazine subscriptions that you pay for by watching upto a minute long ads before getting a link to the magazine edition. This is a pretty nifty way of paying for a service, and I get a feeling it's going to be very successful.

At present you can only get subscription issues of Dwell and Popular Science but this is going to change soon. I see from their site that they're recruiting advertising personnel so as to get more companies to have their products available through this mode of payment. It's understandable why they're focusing on magazines - the marginal cost of producing another online issue is zero. Hopefully they can expand to include other similar services that users can pay for by watching some ads.

I have contacted AdPerk to know if they are thinking of offering their services to Bloggers. After all, bloggers spend a lot of their time writing on what they think their viewers will like. Instead of waiting for a random user to click an ad, wouldn't it be better if every user can see a video ad while reading the blog? Will update this post when I get their response. Meanwhile, if you're planning to get your iPhone this way, I would suggest you take a year's leave to watch all the videos they'll stream your way...

Update:The response of the AdPerk team on when/if the system will be rolled out for blogs -

We just launched the company a little over a month ago so we’re in the very early stages. We’ve been working to make our platform completely scalable so as we move forward, you’ll see new titles added more quickly. We have several additions in the cue to go live over the coming weeks.

Re: rolling the concept out to bloggers is absolutely the direction we’re heading (in) – it’s a matter of executing on some of our established partnerships. We hope to have some solid news about our plans in the coming months

Other blogs who wrote about AdPerk:

AdPerk Signs on Popular Science for Free Subscription Rewards Program at Mashable!

Watch commercials and get free stuff with AdPerk at Download Squad

AdPerk rewards consumers for watching relevant online videos at 901am.com

Fruitless Fruitcast - Ads in Podcast? Not now!

Play this post

Any idea what happened to the much talked about service that appends audio ads to your podcasts? Fruitcast is the first service that came to mind when I thought of adding a podcast to my blog. After all, it won recommendations from TechCrunch, SolutionWatch, Mashable, ProBlogger, LifeHacker and SoloStream. So what exactly happened to this wonderful idea? It seems Fruitcast is taking a break from business (who does that?) to come up with some more wonderful ideas. Or perhaps the high CPM rates brought them down?

Here's what they said when they started out back in November 2005 -

‘Want to earn income from your labor of love? Putting ads on your podcast is now as easy as signing up for an account and changing the URL of your podcast’s RSS feed. Tasty!’

I hate to see love's labor lost and Fruitcast is currently proving fruitless. In the meanwhile, Kiptronic has come up with a similar service and I think they also took all of Fruitcast's customers with them.

It sure would be nice to see more competition in the field of serving ads with podcasts, and I'm sure Fruitcast is working on something wonderful behind the curtains. Just don't take too long guys!

Like this post? Write your thoughts in the comments!

Amazon launches Flexible Payments Service (FPS)

Play this post

Amazon today goes head-to-head with PayPal by launching the Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS). It is a set of payment service APIs that facilitate the transfer of money between two entities (people or computers). The service provides more tools than Paypal to help developers set-up payment on their sites. This service will cover different types of transactions and the user will be able to make one-time/recurring transactions and also set-up weekly limits on transfers to any particular receiver.

There is no limit to the number of payment instructions. Moreover, "Developers can create payment instructions that are as simple or complex as they desire. For example, creating a relatively complex business model around micro-payments is easy to do with Amazon FPS. Our aggregation feature lets you track and aggregate micro-payments into a single payment transaction, saving on transaction processing costs and avoiding having to build complex ledger functionality into your own applications. Without this capability micro-payments would be difficult or cost-prohibitive."

The service is also customizable to accept different ways of receiving payment (credit cards, online bank transfer and Amazon Payments balance transfer), view account balances, transaction history and transaction details.

As a developer, you can also apply for monthly volume discounts as per the following:

• 2.5% + $0.30 per transaction for payment volume from $3K- $10K
• 2.2% + $0.30 per transaction for payment volume from $10K - $100K
• 1.9% + $0.30 per transaction for payment volume over $100K

Overall, seems like PayPal finally has a real competitor. Moreover, Amazon already has products that it sells (unlike PayPal) and it won't be difficult to integrate this service first into their own systems. With Amazon's consumer base and having given a lot of options to developers, this may be one big step by Amazon to become the leading online service provider in this sector.

Related blogs:

Amazon Launches Payment Service to Rival PayPal - Mashable

Amazon rolls out Flexible Payment Service - Scobleizer