Tech entrepreneurs have done it again, this time infusing money-making opportunities into Web 2.0 widgets.
My friend, Jim Kukral mentioned that WidgetBucks will have a launch at Tuesday midnight EST. But who can really make money out of this?
Before you rush out and install on your blog, I’d do some due diligence to make sure you’ll earn something decent and that you’ll get paid.
From WidgetBuck’s website: “WidgetBucks comes to you from the folks at Mpire Corporation, the award-winning meta-shopping service. Mpire’s extensive shopping data experience, including its proprietary contextual, analytics and relevancy algorithms, power WidgetBucks. Founded in 2005, Mpire is backed by Ignition Partners and former eBay executive and Pay Pal angel investor Richard Rock.”
What is WidgetBucks?
It’s a javascript-based widget (a small banner-like graphic) that you install on your website or blog, and it uses a comparison shopping type engine to pull relevant listings (the FAQ says “Product listings from 30,000 merchants including trusted leading brands”) and displays it there.
It works on a PayPerClick basis, so it’s similar to adsense, though at $3-6 eCPM ($3-6 per 1,000 visitors), it’s claimed to pay much higher than the industry average of $1-2 eCPM.
Of course compared to affiliate marketing, where I earn about $10-$100 per customer, WidgetBucks and AdSense will seem like chump change.
As has been mentioned before in this blog, (more…)
Last Friday, blog social network MyBlogLog co-founder Eric Marcoullier posted on the official MyBlogLog blog his “So Long and Thanks For All The Fish” post, announcing he would be leaving the company with the most commonly displayed blog widget, a company which Yahoo! acquired for $10 million earlier in the year.
Every MyBlogLog blogger will have some relationship with Eric. After all he’s the default “friend” when you join the network.
With Eric’s departure, will new MBL members be greeted by Yahoo! Community Manager Robyn Tippins?
It was just a little over a month ago that MyBlogLog ran their ad on StandoutJobs to hire two wickedly good developers.
In the video ad, Eric, seen with MyBlogLog co-founder Todd Sampson were talking about the atmosphere at the young company, and it’s a pity to see Eric’s departure.
He’ll be gradually phasing to becoming one of the bloggers in the MBL community, creating the moniker bpm140 and will be blogging over at marcoullier.com.
I’m thinking bpm140 could be an abbreviation for (more…)
One of the WordPress development team, Ryan Born, noted in his post WordPress 2.2 Release Candidate 1 will not include a tagging feature, the next version could include a comprehensive taxonomy framework which could open up the field for interesting plugins.
The year has been an interesting one for WordPress bloggers with the release of about 5 major and incremental upgrades since the start of the year.
It’s interesting to see WordPress grow from more a GNU General Public License hobbist project, to a comprehensive solution that corporates are increasingly embracing.
The fact that new WordPress versions currently do or will eventually include native functions like:
- Email functions like (phpMailer)
- Tagging (which helps out the information sorting and relevance process in the age of info overload)
- Widgets (to expand its functions from it’s base text/graphics-information Content Management System publishing origins)
- XML-RPC APIs for otherwise static “Pages” as distinguished from the dynamic “Post” counterparts
- Further ATOM feed and API support for increased content distribution syndication
These initiatives give WordPress a big step up from other more Web1.0 corporate-oriented blogging platforms.
And ultimately it’s about choice. If you choose to (more…)
