Written on November 20, 2008 – 1:14 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The problem with crowd sourcing is the overabundance of opinions, suggestions and remarks you’ll get from the community. How to sort these out? And how can you decide which ones can be taken seriously? A possible solution for this selection problem is to add an expert layer.
BloggerInsight has done just so. The service connects Chinese expert bloggers with high tech companies which want to enter the Chinese market. According do BloggerInsight, there’s little reliable market research and that which does exist is expensive and generic. By asking bloggers for their opinion, companies might get better information on how to enter the tough market.
BloggerInsight CEO Lucas Englehardt wants to redefine market intelligence. In the press release he says, “By connecting clients and expert bloggers, BloggerInsight hopes to fundamentally alter the economics of information and lower the barriers to success.”
Then he adds a rather interesting point: “In doing so, BloggerInsight hopes to reward new media for its independent voice”. Of course BloggerInsight just wants to make money, but a new way of monetizing blogging can be an interesting side effect. Most bloggers are experts on their field of interest and their opinion is worth a lot of money.
Bloggers roundtable during China2.0
In the US and Europe, many bloggers act like consultants in their free time - or the other way around. In the hard Chinese market though, an intermediary like BloggerInsight might be necessary. Only if it was just for breaking the language barrier.
BloggerInsight is the portfolio company of Web2Asia, one of the three parties which organized the China 2.0 tour I participated in last week. Read an interesting interview I had with co-founder Markus Fuhrmann here.
I hope you like that post!
The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our '
About' page and subscribe to our
RSS feed.
Do you have a start-up that we should write about?
Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
Written on October 27, 2008 – 10:38 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Last Friday, Amsterdam was the scene of Holland’s first international blog conference BLOG08. Pete Cashmore (Mashable), Loren Feldman (1938media.com), Hugh MacLeod (Gapingvoid), and Scott Rafer (Lookery) all crossed the ocean to tell the European crowd how they could turn their blog in a successful one. Two of them, namely Cashmore and Rafer, focused on monetizing blogs.
Nobody wants money?
When the Mashable founder asked the crowd about monetizing, something noteworthy occurred. Anne Helmond reports:
When asked, hardly anyone in the room actually wants to monetize its blog. Pete is kind of surprised, especially if he asks the same question in the US where everyone raises their hands.
Language barriers
At first, I wasn’t really surprised. After all, most BLOG08 attendees report for a rather small group compared to bloggers who write in English. A Dutch blogger for example, only has an audience of 17 million people. Americans have a crowd of at least 300 million readers at their disposal.
What did struck me as odd was the reluctant attitude of most visitors towards money. Like it’s some kind of crime.
More revenue means more time for blogging
I’ve been blogging for a year before I made some money out of it. And ever since I started doing that, my blogging skills improved. More revenue means more time for blogging. I was able to quit my sorry day job and spend more time on reporting about tech.
A precondition on making some money with blogging is writing in English. Simply because you can reach a larger crowd. That’s not something I came up with. No, one of Holland’s most remarkable journalists, Nico Haasbroek, once told me that.
Write your articles in English, German, or French, so you can sell them to any magazine or newspaper.
Content producers should not be involved with advertising
Sure, my English isn’t perfect yet. But thanks to the euros earned, I can soon start following some English lessons. While I’m doing that, I keep another rather important lesson in mind. As read in Michael A. Banks’ Blogging Heroes, stated by Ken Fisher from Ars Technica:
Content producers should not be involved with advertising, to avoid even the appearance of advertised-influenced content.
So, work your ass off, create great content, and find an advertising partner like Federated Media as soon as you can make money out of your blog.
[Photo credit: Floris Dekker]
Email
Facebook
Netlog
Linkedin
Twitter
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
