Friday, March 9, 2007

Subscription based blogging?

Would netizens pay and subscribe to a blog’s content? That’s a million dollor question. An American firm is now working on a subscription based revenue model. This issue of whether online paid content is better than free content available online has been debated for a lon time. Infact it has been debated right from the dawn of the web. A lot of firms tried it in the past and reality struck them hard. If someone is offering the same content free of cost why would anyone pay, unless of course there is a significant value add. However this is not the situation. There is minimal differentiation possible in the internet.

Infact some firms have gone 1 step ahead. Instead of asking customers to pay for content, they are paying people to create content. With so many advertising options available to publishers these days like google adsense, adbrite, commission junction and so on, the publishers feel that “content is king” One such website which pioneered the “paid to blog” concept is Gainpals.com (Gain pals - Social Networking web site India)

Digg croses 1 Million subscribers mark

Kevin Rose, the co-founder of Digg has announced recently that dig has reached the 1 Million subscribers mark. Its really incredible that in just about 2 years time they have managed such a feat. This stands testimony to the fact that whenever there’s an innovation people would stand up and take notice. As most of us know dig has revolutionalised the blogging industry.

Most of these innovations are coming from the silicon valley or the USA, in general. Its time for us Indians to innovate and succeed. Though there are a lot of technical experts in India there are very few entrepreneurs.

There are a few innovations coming up in India as well. Gainpals.com (Gain pals - Social Networking web site India) is once such new concept where the firm pays Indian bloggers to blog. Hope more such new concepts come up in India, in the future.

Leading internet portal yahoo appologises to blogger

Yahoo inc, a nasdaq listed company, applogised for having taken content from the blog of an Indian housewife based in kerala. Yahoo published the recipie from the blog of the kerala based housewife in its newly launched Malayalam language web portal.

A yahoo spokesperson was quoted saying
“The reproduction of the content was inadvertent. Yahoo respects the blogging community and the etiquette followed by bloggers. We regret any inconvenience caused by the inadvertent posting of the recipe without attribution."
She blamed the incident on a company called Webdunia.com (India) Pvt. Ltd which it had hired to develop content for its new Web site,.

Get paid to blog (Gain pals - Social Networking web site India)

Get paid to blog

After being offered free blogs, the Indian bloggers have more to cheer about now. Firms like GainPals (Gain pals - Social Networking web site India) are now offering members a monetary compensation for their valuable blogging time.

How does it work? Webizens first need to signup with GainPals at (Gain pals - Social Networking web site India) Gainpals.com is a social networking website which is similar to orkut, hi-fi and myspace. Since most Indians are comfortable with orkut, lets compare the features of gainpals with that of orkut. GainPals seem to have more features than orkut. They provide members with their own blogs, picture gallery, play games, watch videos, post classifieds, instant message, chatroom and so on. They also have a reward program which pays cash to active members. Bloggers have to post their blogs in the gainpals.com blog and they rewared top members with cash