Media Fundraising Drive?
Published March 14, 2004
Eric,
How about this:
Place a PayPal link near the top of the BC.org page. Everyone is invited to contribute, but longtime BlogCritics such as myself will be encouraged to contribute.
You say there are over 100 active BCs? Good. Ten dollars (on average) from each of them means an immediate influx of 1,000 dollars. This cash can then be used to purchase advertising space on better-known sites that are known to drive traffic.
Also, I am curious about one aspect of the Amazon links. Say I click on a BC.org link to an Amazon.com product, and then I purchase a different product. Does BC.org get a slice of this, or does BC.org only get a piece of those products actually "advertised" on BC.org?
The reason I ask, I will be buying my textbooks for the summer semester from Amazon.com. If I can bring you some revenue by clicking on, say, an Amazon link to the movie BASEketball, then purchasing some college texts from that same page, I would be happy to do so. I bet many others here would be as well. But we need to know if this actually works to our benefit.
Finally, here's a somewhat dishonest idea:
Whenever a major news story breaks, like the Madrid attacks, encourage your BlogCritics to post some keywords (such as "Madrid" or "ETA") on their own sites, with a direct link to the BC.org home page. If enough BlogCritics follow through, this will likely bring in more visitors. And if there is enough commentary on our site about the incident in question, it won't really be dishonest either!
Please, let me know if you have Comments/Suggestions/Ideas...
RJ Elliott is a graduate student studying Criminal Justice at the University Of Central Florida. His likes include nature, sports, and pierced blondes. He dislikes daytime television, left-wing dictators, and lead-tainted Chinese imports. He is ambivalent about Angelina Jolie.
- Media Fundraising Drive?
- Published: March 14, 2004
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- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Culture: Administrative, Sci/Tech: Internet, Culture: Media
- Writer: RJ Elliott
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Comments on this articleComments
Excellent question; I buy all my toys, books, and CDs from amazon, so this would be good to know.
I've pondered reviewing an item so I can go buy it and benefit BC. But then again, I need to own it before I can review it.
But you figured that out before I did, didn't ya, smarty pants?
Thanks RJ, I really appreciate the concern and the thought going into your efforts. Re Amazon: if you go into Amazon via Blogcritics (by clicking on a product link) we do get a small cut if you buy another Amazon product other than the one we have linked to, but it's a smaller amount than the direct link.
The thing about Amazon is that we have actually done a pretty good job converting the links - especially for reviews - into sales. The problem is that we are mostly selling "low ticket" items like books, CDs and DVDs, and with the referral rate average of 5%, you can see it takes a ton of sales in the $10-20 range to add up to much. As traffic continues to rise eventaully this will add up to a significant amount, but that is still a ways off.
What would make a HUGE difference is if people started buying "big ticket" items like computers, phones, audio equipment, iPods, and such things that we do feature pretty often, but people just aren't in the habit yet of making these kinds of purchases from Amazon through us. This would make a tremendous difference right away if we started to get some of those kinds of purchases.
Regarding the marketing fund: it's an excellent idea and one I have thought about for a while. What I haven't decided yet, and would appreciate thoughts and input on, is would the money - say $1000 - be better spent buying actual ads or hiring a PR company that specializes in the Internet (I'm not aware of any that specialize in blogs yet, that might be a very good business for someone!) to spread the word for us.
Thanks for bringing all this up RJ, it has broken the ice on very important matters I haven't felt quite right about bringing up.
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/13694)
I could buy my textbooks for next semester this way too, if it works.