Ravi's Rants

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Archives for September 2007

Membership Sites: Not Easy To Monetize. Proof? NY Times

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In this era of the open web, it is hard to monetize information that you can easily get elsewhere.

Want to read about what’s going on with the presence of Iranian dictator Ahmedinajad in NY City? Just Google-News it up (yes, that’s different from Googling it up), and you’ll get all the latest relevant news stories you can handle, in reverse chronological order.

So why would people pay for accessing the NY Times?

Not too many would, and not for long, figured the NY Times – and finally opened up the gates.

It’s official: the “Adsense Model” is in.

Open up your content, make money from ads. This same model didn’t work for most sites just a few years ago, in what I call the “Pre-Adsense Era” in my book. But now, it can work for all sites – whether you are NYTimes.com with millions of impressions, or a LinkOverLoad.com with just tens of thousands of impressions.

Usually I never follow NYTimes links that show up in many of my searches, because I know that 4 times out of 5, I will hit a password-protected story. But today, knowing that they have removed the wall, I read a very interesting article about the new model of outsourcing, a glimpse of which I had gotten earlier looking over the shoulder of someone reading the NY Times paper on the subway.

If you want to charge for your content, make sure your content is not easily available, not easily validated, or that there is too much information that cannot be easily made sense of.

Google Supplemental Index

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In my book “No Business Like E-Business“, I write about the Google Supplemental Index (GSI – Ravi’s acronym). Basically, this is like the “alternate” Google database, where sites that are “on the way in” or “on the way out” show up.

If yours is a new site, it may show up in the GSI before it shows up in Google’s main index (google.com). Similarly, if your site has suddenly disappeared from the main index, you may find it here (before it disappears from everywhere on Google – which means your site probably violated their webmaster guidelines, and has gotten banned by the Almight G!).

Here’s more information from Google Webmaster Central about the Supplemental Index.

And don’t forget to subscribe to the feed while you’re there.

Google says it loses $1 billion a year to false ad clicks

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“Our invalid clicks rate – the activity rate – has remained in the range of less than 10% of all clicks every quarter since we launched AdWords in 2002. At Google’s current revenue rate, every percentage point of invalid clicks we throw out represents over $100 million/year in potential revenue foregone.”, says Google’s Inside Adwords Blog.

Yep, that’s $1 billion! Is it really a loss? Because that’s billing that would’ve never occurred anyway, if those were truly fraudulent clicks.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Google. You could even call me a Google fanboy. But when you put it like that, it sounds like Google’s taking a huge hit because of fraud. Doesn’t matter how you say it, sure makes them look like a hero.

Animoto.com: Making your pictures come alive on video

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I found this amazing site yesterday through one of the feeds on LinkOverLoad.com. Awesome video coming right up…

Animoto basically turns your pictures into a fantastic MTV-style video, with some great soundtracks available on their site for free, or you can use your own audio – with your pictures almost flashing in rhythm to the beats of the soundtrack, with some great-looking special effects.

When I signed up, uploaded my pictures, picked a great-sounding track they had on their site (for free) and tried to create my video (remember, their software supposedly creates all of this in an automated fashion), I got this very friendly error message:

Hi there,

We’re sorry to inform you that we have experienced an error in the
production of your recent video, “Beautiful People”. Rest assured, we’re
on the case and we’ll have it rendered as soon as we can–but, depending
on the complexity of the issue, it could take a little time.

We’ll email you the moment it’s ready. Thanks for understanding!

…

That didn’t bother me, as they are still in beta, and still hammering out the rough edges. What did surprise me, is that they promptly sent me this email the next day:

Hi there.

We’ve finished your video, so it’s time for you to go take a look.
Head to:

http://animoto.com/play/…..

We hope you like it! Give us some feedback when you get a chance to
let us know what you liked and how we can improve. Remember, no two
Animoto videos are ever the same so keep making videos and see what unique
pieces you can generate.

…

I excitedly clicked over, and was simply blown away by the results (see video below).

Remarkable idea, great (almost perfect) execution, instantly viral! Pass this along…

Video from Animoto.com

Woot Sells Out – In Style

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“The _____ swept down from the hills like a dark and hungry wind.

The first thing anyone would notice would be the _____, its long white hair flew wildly in the breeze generated by the two swinging katanas that had been enchanted to draw blood from anything, even lamp posts and cheese.

Raised in a school for ninjas who also did kung fu and kickboxing as a hobby, the _____ was …. but also possessed the secret skill of being able to ….”

I challenge you to fill in the “_____”. What do you think the text is about?

Well, then I guess you probably haven’t heard about Woot.

The passage above, is the product description of a “HP 3210 All-in-One Printer”. Yes, a printer!

Woot sells exactly one product a day – at a pretty good price. They’re not the cheapest, yet they almost always sell out the same day. Within hours, sometimes. And they don’t carry the same product more than once.

The product descriptions are remarkable: they give you the highlight, and are incredibly funny. These guys have a great sense of humor, and everything about their site has a Wootouch to it.

Today, they’re partnering with a big company. And like most other companies, they could’ve written a plain, boring press release like this one (yawn).

But Woot is different, of course. They had to do it in style.

Woo Woo, Woot!