Published October 1, 2007
in Reviews.
The selling of pixels or block spaces on a website was popularized by the Million Dollar Homepage. Back then, who on earth would think that anybody would want to buy a 10 X 10 pixels space on a website that cost $100 ($1 for 1 pixel)? Strangely, many people did buy them. In fact, there are many who invested thousands of dollars just to buy a space big enough to make themselves stand out from the rest.
The 1 million pixels (equivalent to $1,000,000) were sold out within months of the website launch. Many similar buy-a-pixel websites mushroomed throughout the process. Some even used a different marketing strategy buy allowing people to rent a space instead of buying them. The owner of the Million Dollar Homepage, Alex Tew came up with another project a few months after he has successfully sold out the first project — Pixelotto. Some critics do not think that Pixelotto would go far with the reason that “a second silly idea is just another silly idea”. The amount of pixels sold on Pixelotto has been stagnant for a very long time now.
Then there was Blogging’s Most Wanted, a website that sells 40 X 40 pixels space for only $15 per block. The website focuses in selling ad space to bloggers around the world. As of writing, 49 blocks have been sold while another 576 blocks are still available.
Comparing the Alexa stats of the three websites mentioned above revealed that Blogging’s Most Wanted one did pretty well at the beginning — even surpassed the traffic of the Million Dollar Homepage. However, their traffic has decreased ever since.
Is this the end of Blogging’s Most Wanted? Will there be a turn around point where it will become popular again and become the next sell out buy-a-pixel website? It is anyone’s guess. Dare you make one?
Published September 22, 2007
in Reviews.
John Chow’s evil moo-twin, John Cow has a new theme in place. I was expecting him to copy John Chow’s new theme but he didn’t. The new Cow 2.0 theme is a one of a kind theme for a pimped up cow.
The new header saw him retiring the two cows found in the previous design. The cows were replaced with cars with custom cow skin paintjobs. How intelligent.
Check out the mutated cow feed button. Looks ok to me. Ah, Mr Chow was right there before me. I wonder what he has to say about the new theme.
Moving further down, the comment area was redesigned as well. Notice the mutated cow submit button.
Ahhh…want some milk?
One thing I feel needs to be changed is the font type and size used in the sidebar and footer. It looks inconsistent to the ones used in the post area. Apart from that, the words are harder to read. Overall, an OK theme.
I read that TIME dotCom is providing a broadband service named Netlynx with speeds up to 10mbps. There are four packages available — 2, 4, 6 and 10mbps — costing from RM99 per month up to RM499 per month respectively. They are providing discounts of RM20 to RM30 for each package until the end of this year. The official website for this broadband service is Netlynx.net.my.
The domain name was registered only early this month indicating that this website is in fact very new. After scanning through Netlynx’s official website, I noticed a few improvements that are needed for it.
- Blue and red are two very strong colors. I am not an expert in color balancing for website designs but my eyes were “hurting” after a brief view of the website. Red text on a blue background is a definite no-no. I understand that TIME dotCom’s official colors are blue and red but that doesn’t mean you need to cover 70% of the website with these two colors.
- The entire website is a “large banner” consisting of six images. As much as I do not like websites designed entirely in flash, designing an entire page where all the text are embedded in images is worse.
- There are no information on where or how to subscribe. The contact number of TIME dotCom is not present anywhere in the website. It is like ordering from a menu only to be told by the waiter that none of the items are available.
It is good that more ISPs are giving new alternatives for users. I am not sure if Netlynx is available throughout Malaysia because, you guessed it, this information is not in the website.
[Via: MohdIsmail]
Blogitive is yet another great website that allows you to make money online while blogging. It has some similarities and differences compared to the other paid to blog websites. Firstly, your blog needs to be at least 3 months old and have at least 3 posts a week on average. Of course, you will need to have a decent traffic flow. One difference I notice with Blogitive compared to the others is that Blogitive requires you to have at least 2 non-sponsored posts in between their posts.
I have only started writing for Blogitive a couple of days ago. The website loads fairly fast compared to the others that I have joined. However, they do need tweak their designs a little. There are a few codes such as “end #header”, “end #content” and “end #footer” lying around here and there. Below is a screenshot of how an open offer looks like.
After you have reserved the offer, it will be listed in the reserved offers list. The problem is that both the open offers and reserved offers list is displayed on the same page. When you have multiple offers in either list, it becomes harder to view each offer because the page becomes very “long”.
In my opinion, they should split both lists into different pages. Secondly, the detail of the offers should be hidden by default. The details will only show when a user clicks on a link or something. That way, the whole page looks more organized.
Despite all that, I personally feel that Blogitive is still a good money making website. If you are blogging for money and have never tried Blogitive, maybe you should take a look.
Online Advertising Killer — another uprising Malaysian advertising website?
As advertised in the website, you can earn money from them with 3 simple steps:
- Register an Account
- Read Advertisement
- Get Paid
Online Advertising Killer is a newly launched website. It started operation mid April 2007. Currently, it has slightly over 10,000 registered members. Not bad for a new company. The website is available in 3 major languages — English, Mandarin and Bahasa Malaysia.
Here’s a sampel of their advertisement. The advertisement will be accompanied by two (or more) questions. The answers can be found from the advertisement itself. This is to ensure that the members look through the advertisment.
Online Advertising Killer’s form of advertising is different compared to other advertising companies like Google Adsense and Nuffnang. With Nuffnang, the advertisement is displayed to a group of readers. Meanwhile with Online Advertising Killer, the advertisement is only displayed to the member. Therefore, the potential buyer for an advertisement at Online Advertising Killer is only the member him/herself.
I don’t think Online Advertising Killer will make it big (I may be wrong). The main reason is that people who joined this program are looking for money, not to spend money. For example, what’s the point (for the member) to earn RM1 for an advertisement but end up paying RM10 for a set meal advertised by KFC? That way, the more advertisements the member views, the more he/she loses.
If you’re thinking that the members will only view the advertisements but will not purchase the products or services advertised, then why should an advertiser even bother to advertise?
These are just my views. Mind to share yours?
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