Magnify Goes Pro
Video aggregation and community site Magnify.net has launched a “Pro” offering for users wishing to replace the standard AdSense ads on the site with customized ads.
Social network creator Ning as well as other web2.0 properties have tested out this sort of thing before. For example, on Ning you can purchase a Pro account for $19.99 a month to replace their AdSense ads with your own ads.
However, Magnify.net is doing something a little different with the option to pay for custom ads based on pageviews in units of 5,000 ($24.95), 25,000 ($84.95) and 50,000 ($159.95). Users can also remove Channel Creation links ($5.95 monthly) and enable contests for a premium monthly fee ($125.00).
Market Like a Dandelion
I’m a huge Cory Dotorow
So, when I read this, I immediately thought of the affiliate community and the lessons we could learn by thinking of our content production in terms of dandelions instead of our typical mammalian (reproduction and production are very costly and should be protected) point of view…
Locus Online Features: Cory Doctorow: Think Like a Dandelion: I know this for a fact. I review a lot of books on Boing Boing, and whenever I do, I link to the Amazon page for the book, using my ‘affiliate ID’ in the URL. If you follow one of those links and buy the book, I get a commission — about eight percent. I can use Amazon’s reporting tool to tell exactly how many people click on my links, and how many of them shell out money for the book, and here’s the thing: when I link to a book that’s out soon, available now for pre-order, I reliably get less than ten percent of the purchases I get when I link to books that are available for sale now. Nine out of ten Boing Boing readers who buy books based on my reviews don’t want to pre-order a title and wait for it to show up later.
The net is an unending NOW of moments and distractions and wonderments and puzzlements and rages. Asking someone riding its currents to undertake some kind of complex dance before she can hand you her money is a losing proposition. User-interface designers speak of how every additional click between thought and deed lops a huge number of seeds out of the running for germination.
Head over to the link above and read the whole piece. It’s short and good, but worth your time to think on how you can improve your own marketing efforts by taking the dandelion approach.
Disqus Video Comments
Although I’m not particularly crazy about doing video comments myself, my fingers are crossed that Disqus integrates them soon:
Disqus Adding Video Comments; Will People Use Them?: “We’ve now learned that Disqus, a third-party commenting system, will be rolling out its own video commenting feature, likely later this week.”
I don’t necessarily see video comments catching on like wildfire, but they do provide an outlet for those among us who’d rather just hit record on the webcam and fire away. On my Mac, it’s incredibly easy to do quick and nice looking video and most modern computers are now shipping with high quality integrated webcams.
This isn’t a “game changer” feature, but it will be a nice addition.
BTW, if you’re not using Disqus on your blog, you’re really missing out. I’ve written about Disqus here many times and Scott Jangro has done a series of excellent posts about the comment solution as well.
Can You Be Anonymous on the Web?
GeekCast 17 was literally epic in terms of length. Jim Kukral, Lisa Picarille, Shawn Collins and myself went just over 100 minutes this week.
Despite the length, I think it’s one of our best podcasts yet. We covered everything from the recent Marky Zarc disturbance in the force to Brightkite to Twitter to Hulu.com to politics.
You can subscribe to the podcast to receive it weekly in your iTunes or podcatcher over at GeekCast.fm.
Affiliate Marketing’s RSS Problem
Amen, Linda and Ian…
12 Ways Affiliate Managers Can Use RSS for Affiliate Communication - 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Blogs: “Enter RSS. Why aren’t more affiliate programs using RSS? They really should be! There are so many things that would help affiliates generate more sales, if only they could be communicated in a timely manner. How about real-time as they happen - through RSS, instead of saving up the info for the next monthly newsletter, which no one reads anyway!”
RSS is still such an underused technology, especially here in affiliate marketing, with so much potential.
I spend a majority of my screen time in my feed reader (NetNewsWire for the Mac) and wish daily that more affiliate programs and managers would start utilizing RSS.
I can has RSS, please?
