Thursday, August 30, 2007 Toral: Earning online By Janette Toral Digital Filipino
AMAZON Omakase.
Did you know that one of the ways that you can generate revenue for your blog or website is by signing up as an associate at Amazon.com?
This is where you get a commission for any book that gets sold as long as they are referred by your site. Some earn a lot from it while others, like me, receive gift certificates once in awhile.
Last December, Amazon.com launched a new earning system for its affiliates and that is their Omakase link. Affiliate members who use it will find that Amazon.com automatically features ideal products based on Amazon’s unique knowledge about what works for your site, for your users and for the content of your page. It is pretty much like Google AdSense.
Take for instance DigitalFilipino.com where I cover Internet and e-commerce topics, the Amazon Omakase banner showed product links to books of similar topics as well. Little did I know it, the passive revenue generated was much better than before. So if you have a website and have a lot of traffic from abroad, Amazon Omakase is one affiliate program worth exploring.
Mad Crowd Media. Last month, I was able to touch base with fellow blogger, Benito Vergara, about his new venture which is Mad Crowd Media (www. madcrowdmedia.com). He was urging bloggers to be part of the community he is building and represent it to prospective advertisers. This is similar to the set up of Federated Media in the United States. As of this writing, there are 63 blogs being represented by them, including my Reflective Thinking blog.
I also run an ad network for blogs, although not as big as those listed in Mad Crowd Media. I realized that making these efforts work requires credibility and good connections.
Companies are now seeing blogs as potential advertising medium. If they are presented as a bunch, rather than just one site, then it becomes more practical. The more eyeballs, more diverse blogs with only a fraction of mainstream online media cost, the better. Having collective strength will allow the group to compete fiercely with mainstream big players.
The big challenge for Mad Crowd Media is be able to deliver to both advertisers and its blog members. In the case of blog members, they partly lend their name to make the site credible as negotiator for ads.
On the other hand, whether these sites will deliver or not will be a critical factor in keeping advertisers happy and make them firm believers in the power of blogs.
There is also a possibility that advertisers will only pick the blogs where they want to appear for all practical intent and purposes. This is true especially if eyeballs, direct referrals, are the success factors that would be used to measure campaign success.
As my network is small and is only offered to selected contacts, this is an option that I don’t provide at the moment as I look into those who are more focused on achieving search engine visibility. Nevertheless, the time for an entity like Mad Crowd Media has come. I hope it will offer great opportunities and empower the global Filipino blogger.
