Tag Archives: money

Freemium services and the downfall of ad-based stuff

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Not that my opinion matters much, but it’s my blog and I’ll voice my thoughts if I want.

When people as big as digg.com, who have huge contracts with Microsoft for their advertising, aren’t making money then you kinda have to realise that advertising can no longer fund services any more. I’m not an economist so I’ve no idea why people aren’t advertising as much,  but they aren’t.

cnet says that more services next year are going to be freemium, so some parts of the website will be free just like normal, but there’ll be options for premium stuff too. I’ve no idea what services someone like digg could offer as a paid feature though. In fact, a lot of websites I’ve no idea how they’ll monetise themselves without advertising being the focus.

Since the content is all user generated they couldn’t have any content that’s only for paying customers. digg already found out with revision3 that letting people pay to see the programs early never works – they just get leaked and then their viewing figures suffer. Doing that would be ridiculous anyway on digg.

Maybe it could remain exactly the same, but digg promote their API stuff more, and put a lot more work into it (I’ve no idea what type of stuff it can do at the moment, since I’ve never looked into it), and then charge developers for using it. Or allow 100,000 calls to the API per month for free, but if you use more than that you pay a monthly fee. After all, people using the API are benefiting largely from the traffic that they’re getting from digg. Matt Cutts gets a huge number of people to his website from digg, and if he were charging for advertising on his blog (he doesn’t) then the traffic from just digg would be worth a few hundred pounds per month at least. He’s not using the API to be fair (I’m just using him as an example of how much traffic from digg can increase your advertising possibilities), but I’m sure he could increase his page views even more if he were.

So, making data portable (with APIs) and then charging for extensive users, or access to more features within it is a way people could make money I suppose, but I can’t see Facebook or MySpace so willingly giving away their data on their users. Especially with the privacy factor too. Though, they both do have APIs for their applications and stuff, maybe paying developers could have access to more functions.

So far my only idea is that websites that have an API can charge for usage within it. But how will those developers make money? Obviously, they can’t release an API from the data they’re getting an API from, even if they could that’d end in a vicious cycle looking for more and more developers to use the API.

An obvious way for non-content based websites to make money is charging for their services. That’s what zamzar seems to be doing. Considering half the advertisements have dropped off their front page (it used to be flooded with flash ads) they must be making some money from that.

Gaming websites like Kongregate make money from game sponsors at the moment, which I don’t think is the same as advertising, and will probably still stay strong. But, like Neopets and Second Life, with their selling virtual items, I think Kongregate is starting to do the same, and pretty successfully.

Last.fm have already gone freemium I guess, you can listen to most tracks three times before it tells you you’ve reached your limit, but you can pay £1.50 and listen to them all you want [update 2008-12-30: apparently, you don't get onto the *public* beta just for paying :(, you still get some cool features for subscribing though]. That’s not a lot to be honest, and I’m happy paying that for unlimited, legal streaming. That’ll probably increase if they get another label to join, or even when it comes out of beta. So, they’re not going to have much trouble.

The only people I can see actually having trouble in that case is content people like news providers (who don’t really want to make their content portable) and bloggers. They could write books though! News providers like Wired could always bring out a news paper, or a monthly magazine. Bloggers could bring out books, like Darren Rowse did. They could even have premium online content for subscribers, but Britannica Encyclopedias have that model, and it looks like their finding that that’s not how the internet works.

Eight days of happiness meme

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Maxi tagged me. I think he’s expecting me to do this on LJ, but no.

Today’s happiness is probably waking up in my bed again. <3 I’m back home for christmas now (rather than in Leicester for university), so I got my own bed, and I got to have actual cereal! Rather than toast. And now I’m going to get something else that doesn’t involve cheese. Being back home rocks.

Unfortunately, I may have overstepped my budget by buying a TV and an xbox, so I’ve no idea how much I can actually spend at the moment. I’m pretty sure I have enough money for all the stuff I’ve current bought though, so nothing should be bouncing.

When I get back to university (some time in January) I should have my bursary, which is £400 though and I’ll be back on track. My original budget played on the hope that I’d already have that £400, so I’m not really off budget, it’s just a little out of sync at the moment.

Never dressed for the occasion

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The biggest problem stopping me finding full time employment at the moment isn’t finding work, that’s actually easy. There are stupid amounts of people hiring full time programmers, so I’m not too worried about that. Unfortunately, I can’t go for any of those positions, since I don’t have a suit to be interviewed in… So, when I get paid from by my previous client, I’ll spend that money on a suit.

Well, I’m excited.

I’m also excited about getting to 70. Shamess is currently 53, and I’ve gotten to that “ugh, do I really have to keep leveling you?” part of the game. I guess I’m a little bit bored of WoW for the moment. I’m sure if I have a break, I’ll be up for it again.

Up and jogging

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I’m pretty much done with building the site now. All that needs to be done is the Javascript bug fixed, and add a few more “more information” pages and it’s pretty much done… I may add some more impressive scripts to make customer feel more like I know what I’m talking about (which I do!). It’s ready for customers at the moment though, I just need to do advertising.

As soon as I get £10 availiable I’ll start an AdWords campaign, which would be fun to try out, since I’ve only ever played with the sandbox before. If I pick keywords well I should get a ROI pretty fast. It’s not really like I can lose money, unless lots of people come and don’t buy.

It could be awkward doing business on the same domain that I’m using personally though… Well, at least they’ll read that I’m excited about helping them, and commited.

Oh, yeah. Also, I was going to say that I’ve emailed the WordPress theme place to see if I can get registration there to upload Eventide. That should increase traffic here, hopefully, which may send traffic to my WordPress hosting. If not, at least people will stop using Beccary’s broken version.

A clear outlook

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I only have one exam left now, which is one that I’m expecting to be hugely easy so I’m not at all worried about it. Getting an A in it would be awesome though… It’d definitely help me out with UCAS points, since I’m really worried about those at the moment. Looking at my AS results, I really don’t feel like I can get what I need for Brighton – which is a near impossibility – I might just scrape DMU, which is a sucky thing to say since I slated them for giving me a really low offer… I guess the main lesson I’ve learnt with A Level is that even if you think they’re likely to be easy, you still have to put in the effort. Kinda like even if you’re a level 42 hunter, if you take on six level 30 you’ll probably get beaten.

I’m not at all worried about getting into university though. The way I see it is that I’m likely to get into DMU. If I miss that, it really won’t be by much, in which case I can fight my way through clearing. If all fails miserably, I’ve still got all of next year to reapply. I can even resit an A Level unit or two if I really have to, not getting into university won’t push my timetable back at all.

The problem of this being my last exam though is that I’m actually unemployed once it’s over. Dad’s nagging me that my child support money will stop in September so I’ll have to get a job to pay him the money he’s losing out on. What I think he meant though was that I needed to get a job in order to pay him board money. Which is really a dumb thing to say, since I’m hoping to have moved out of this house long before September anyway. I just have to start looking for a job now; I’m not really sure where to start though. I’ll make an appointment at the Job Centre tomorrow, I guess.

Meanwhile though, I’ve bought shamess.info and I’m using part of that to advertise freelance, hosting and SEO services I can start offering. That’s something I wanted to do before, but never really had time in between World of Warcraft and college. Now it’s just World of Warcraft I can start focusing on that full time, till I get a job, then I can focus on it full time.

Side note: I’ll start to move this blog over to shamess.info too soon (probably tonight) so things may get a bit confusing, since I’ve never migrated a WordPress blog before. I figure I won’t touch the files, and just change the ServerName. Hopefully, most people won’t even notice the URL change, if I set it up right.

Oh, also, I’m going to start updating DebianTips again. It still gets okay traffic for a neglected blog. I need to touch up some of the older posts with stuff I’ve learnt new though, before I start doing more stuff.