Advertising at Weblogs, Blogvertising

Business Thursday: Weblogs are popular and so became advertising at blogs. It is a way for bloggers to monetize beside paid postings and for marketers to reach a new and often engaged audience. Advertising at weblogs is called blogvertising, which indicates that it is something in particular. This might be the audience, which often is a niche, the reach, the size of adverts and the position of ads at the pages or even a special code of a blog. Bloggers might want control of the ads shown. There are a couple of advertising networks around, which have specialized in blogvertising. As it is popular blogvertising has become embraced by common advertising networks, too.

BlogAds is such a network specialized in blogvertising. What makes it special at BlogAds is that they are selling ads for a fixed period of time opposite to the common pay per click or pay per view. Bloggers got control of the ads they show. The BlogHer Ad Network is a great example of what blogvertising means for niches. BlogHer is a network of weblogs by women and the ad network serving just this community.

CrispAds again is different. Ads are supplied automaticly by an advertising server as it usually happens at advertising networks. But bloggers are able to get ads targeted by choosing relevant topics. CrispAds is offering a broader choice of media currencies like pay per click, pay per acquisition and pay per view. Another specialized advertising network is Smorty. Smorty offers pay per click advertising and paid blog posts.

Last but not least there is SocialSpark. SocialSpark is a marketplace connecting bloggers and advertisers. Opposite to the blogvertising services named above blog publishers are able to negotiate with marketers directly and negotiate terms. Furthermore SocialSpark is a blogger community to find friends and to exchange ideas with like minded publishers.

Some Stats about the Live Video Scene

At the first posting about Live Broadcasting from a Mobile Phone there has been a "vague estimation" about usage number for live video broadcasting with about some thousand actively participating people. Now some numbers have been published about a similar live video service on the internet. It is about Stickam, a live web cam chat community. At Stickam, too, people may set up own channels and stream live. Other people may join such a channel to talk with each other. So whereas this does not exactly meets the issue of personal broadcasting as described above it is live video, too.

The interesting thing is that the Stickam community has the large amount of two million members as reported at the article Stickam Top Online Video Site For Teens: Nielsen. The data comes from Nielsen Online, a media rating company. At the Stickam homepage the number of streams served is mentioned with nearly two billion actually. The Stickam community is most popular with young people. By the button live streams there is a listing of live channels. Live shows got between a few up to above 1000 viewers. The numbers at rankings are really impressive. There are shows with up to about 50000 daily viewers, 700000 weekly and 3000000 monthly viewers. The all time high is claimed by Leo Laporte with above 7000000 views, a channel about information technology.

We will see what happens, when people are equipped.

Earning Money by Citizen Journalism

Citizen journalism describes stories or media by everyday people, who like to write stories or who do capture photos or videos. This may happen occasionally or more ambitiously. And as there have been several articles at this blog about live broadcasting and storing that live video or photos by personal broadcasting services (see the label live video) and the possibilities of citizen journalism here come some information on how to sell stuff.

So if you really got a story or aim to sell something, it needs some contact to the media. This may happen by a direct contact. Direct contacts often are offered at particular media websites or at newspapers. Usually one uploads the media or send it by multimedia messaging. Some publishers may pay you. iReport.com for example is a website by CNN, where people can upload videos and other media. The most interesting stories will make the way to the CNN news site or tv channel.

A further way are marketplaces specialized in participatory media or user generated content. Some of these marketplaces do welcome or are even dedicated to citizen journalism. At these websites one may list and sell content. CitizenSide is such a marketplace, where photos and videos are traded. They do especially welcome amateur photographers and there are no requirements related to quality. The content is what makes the media valuable. The same is due to Scoopt, which is rather specialized in photos but do market videos, too.