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monetize posts

Filed under: Internet, Social Software, web 2.0

Well duh, of course Facebook wants to market your data

Hey, want to hear some big news? Well, don't expect to find it in this article from The Telegraph about how Facebook plans to finally monetize their service.

Now, despite what articles like Nick O'Neill's on AllFacebook say about "official word" poo-pooing the Telegraph article as being totally off-base, it certainly seems plausible enough.

It's not as though Facebook is a home for orphans or an animal shelter. It's a gargantuan social networking site that employs hordes of people and requires a massive IT infrastructure to keep the wheels turning.

How exactly do people expect them to pay for that? Bake sales? Telethons?

No, they're going to do it in the way that makes the most sense for a site that has gigabytes of personal information about: they're going to whore out their polling system your data to any company that is willing to pay for access to it.

It's not like people didn't see this coming. Last January, Grant wrote about how Facebook put the boots to Robert Scoble when he tried to scrape his own friends list for data. Would they have been that upset if they didn't have other plans for that information up their sleeves?

At this point, Facebook's claims that quotes were misinterpreted sound a bit like damage control. Time will tell, but come on, folks. What do you expect a business to do with a database chock full of tasty marketing data like the one Facebook has amassed?

Filed under: Internet, Blogging, Google

FeedBurner + Google = AdSense integration (but not the way you'd think)

FeedBurner AdSense
RSS feed publisher FeedBurner has rolled out a new option for monetizing your website. You can use FeedBurner to add Google AdSense in between posts on any blog or website. What you can't do is the place Google AdSense advertisements in your site's feed.

It's a bit puzzling that the Google-owned RSS publishing company is launching a service that has nothing to do with RSS feeds. There are plenty of other ways to place AdSense ads in between posts on your blog.

FeedBurner makes the process pretty easy as long as you have "FeedFlare" on your website. All you have to do is login to your FeedBurner account, click the monetize tab, login to AdSense, and choose the type of ads you want to use. You can choose from 468 x 60 pixels or 300 x 250 pixels.

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, DLS Interviews

Six ways Twitter can make money

A web 2.0-sized boatload of buzz has surrounded Twitter, the addictive service that allows its users to answer one simple question: what are you doing? The service has made appearances in everything from your friend's blog to the New York Times, and everyone seems jazzed about how fun tweeting is. While we're all having a good time, however, its creators, Obvious, keep hinting at how many practical uses they have up their sleeve for Twitter. Even though they haven't revealed any of their cards just yet, the rest of us are left wondering: how is such a seemingly frivolous service going to make money?

As a user who has taken the Twitter pill hook, line and sinker, I've been mulling this question for some time now. I came up with a few strategies, but then I figured: why not run them by the Twitter crew themselves? The least they could say was 'no comment,' but fortunately Evan Williams, one of Obvious and Twitter's founders, responded with a few of his own. Read on for my attempts at making Twitter some money (I'm waiting for my job offer Ev), as well as some choice words and ideas of his own from Evan.

Read more →

Filed under: Blogging, Web services, Commercial

Make money on your blog with Auction Ads

Auction Ads
Auction Ads is a new service that lets bloggers generate revenue. Like Google Adsense and similar services, Auction Ads gives you a line of code to embed in your blog. The result is a column or row of ads for eBay auctions on your web page.

Unlike Google Adsense, Auction Ads isn't context based. In other words, while Adsense scans the page to find appropriate text-based ads, you enter a list of keywords to create an Auction Ads campaign. In some instances, this means you get ads that are better tailored to your blog. On the other hand, if you frequently write about different topics and forget to update your Auction Ads campaigns, this method could be more problematic.

Auction Ads is essentially an eBay affiliate. So you could run the same sort of ads on your site by signing up directly with eBay, but Auction Ads makes the process a whole lot easier. Bloggers get a portion of the revenue generated when someone clicks through their site to either purchase something from eBay or sign up for a new eBay account.

For a limited time, Auction Ads will pass 100% of any revenue generated on to the blogger. When that promotion ends, Auction Ads will begin to take a little bit off the top of any money you make.

[via TechCrunch]

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