Many Facebook users have wished for a dislike-button. But the biggest social network on the planet obviously doesn't want to start click-fights for popularity: “If you love something, like it – if you don't let it go”. I'll try a different approach and offer you the full binary options aka the two basic emotions: I encourage all readers to use the new “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” symbols below every single comment to express their opinion:
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Usually, I don't get too excited about new ad networks – but since Contenture has been developed by the team behind Clicky, I'm quite sure that this service deserves a closer look. The idea is simple: by paying a monthly flat fee to Contenture, users help webmaster make their sites sustainable. Via a JavaScript-Snippet, the Contenture networks measures users' visits to participating sites and spreads the money accordingly.
Basically, Contenture is reversing the classic ad model: instead of generating indirect revenue streams via AdSense and affiliate banners, webmasters profit from their regular users. I think that Contenture enters the stage at a quite early time, but basically the financial sustainability will become one of the key questions of the future web. There are some caveats involved though: such a network can only bring benefit to its webmaster if enough users are willing to pay – since most surfers are even reluctant to pay for online-services, I doubt that the big rush will take place instantly.
But the team has obviously kept that challenge in mind and came up with a *very* tempting idea:
Contenture is a new way to monetize your web site. Ad revenues are poor, unless you're a big name – and even then, they're still not that great. With Contenture, you make money for every visit to your site from a Contenture user. Furthermore, Contenture makes it dead simple to add premium level features to your web site with very little work. Think of it as a way to take your site Freemium. For example, you could give paying users priority access to new articles, exclusive access to your archives, an ad-free experience, and more. These features are built right into Contenture, but you can do even more with a little work on your end.
Now what's so special about that? Think about it this way: during the last weeks, a number of big affiliate networks – especially Clickbank – have got into a struggle with several kinds of malware-clean-up software: once those programs start deleting CB-cookies, the fun part is over. Contenture offers a much more stable system and establishes a monetization system which doesn't require any ongoing user actions. Once a couple of popular bloggers start posting mini-tutorials or premium contents (Twitter reports are still pretty hot), Contenture will experience a massive grow:
Contenture offers web sites the ability to (optionally) add premium level features to their web site. One of these features is to remove ads, but that's just one of many. For example, a site could give paying users priority access to new articles, exclusive access to their archives, special commenting abilities, and more. These types of features are built right in to Contenture. In other words, we're bringing the Freemium business model to the masses.
Here's another way to look at it. Contenture is the first that lets content providers create premium “micro services” throughout their sites. This is a crucial variable that other micropayment services have failed to implement.
And this is just the beginning – there are more features to come, like pay-per-article, tools for subscription-based models and much more. In this respect, Contenture not only is the first “anti-ad-network” but at the same time a valuable toolkit for developing micro-payment models.
The pricing seems rather reasonable to me – the minimum fee is $6,99. Users can pay more on an optional basis. Contenture keeps 20% of the revenues, which is very low compared to the standard 50% of most ad networks. Contenture works with all types of sites, but there are plugins for WordPress and Drupal – the integration is one in two minutes. There is no approval system, but Contenture reserves the right to delete accounts.
Conclusion: Contenture arrived a little early, but the idea is great and from my two years of Clicky experience, I definitely know that these guys understand how micro-traffic analysis works. There are no downturns involved – I activated the Contenture plugin on datadirt today and I'm not expecting a massive income stream yet, but I expect this to grow quite big. So it's probably a good idea to jump on the band-wagon as soon as you can.
More reviews:
Stefan Jacobasch on Contenture [in German]
Micropayment-Based Freemium Models For All. (If People Use It.) on TechCrunch
The anti-ad network
Monetize content without ads?
Widget-enabled themes are a good thing, Martha Stewart would probably say – and rightfully so. Configuring one's sidebar directly via CMS and drag-and-drop is doubtlessly a nifty feature we bloggers don't want to miss. To kick things up a notch, WordPress allows for an infinite number of different Sidebars. This comes in very handy for putting different sidebar contents on the blog homepage, the single postings and the static pages. But most bloggers who start experimenting with multiple sidebars experience a major draw-back: most plugins can only be used in one sidebar exclusively.
This means that if you have different sidebars for your homepage and your single posts, you cannot for example include the tag cloud widget in both sidebars. (more info: How set up multiple sidebars) But worry not, of course there is a very handy plug-in which solves this problem: Duplicate Sidebar Widgets does what its name implies: it enables you to make up to 25 copies of any widgets, therefore being able to use the same one in up to 25 sidebars. (You probably won't need that many, though.) btw: just in case anything goes badly wrong, you can always delete your widget-copies later. This solution works for most widgets, but some complex scripts simply refuse this treatment. (Top Commentators is one of those.)
But luckily, there's Samsarin PHP Widget. While the standard text-widget may only contain HTML but no php, the Samsarin Widget will gladly accept php input. So basically the first step is to copy the php-widget using the aforementioned Duplicate Widget Plugin, and in the second step you have to enter the desired php-function-call manually. This does not just sound like a bit of work and readme-digging, it actually is – but using this method gives you total flexibility in designing your widgetized sidebars.
I'm not too big a fan of mixing personal twitter accounts with automated postings, so I set up a dedicated twitter account for this task. If you prefer to receive datadirt postings via tweet, just follow @datadirtrss. Of course I'll continue to use my personal acccount @datadirt for manual updates, while the frog-bot will send out automated updates via the new account.
Of course I set the profile to auto-follow – by the way, let me remind you of the twitter auto-follow accounts list, which keeps growing and gives you some instant followers (which is especially useful if you're starting a new twitter account and want to “polish” the numbers a bit: it's a psychological issue, as most users won't follow an account which has less than 10 followers).
If you run a WordPress blog and want to set up your own posting-bot, this is what you have to do:
So good luck with all your twitter endeavours – seems like building an additional traffic stream always pays off!
PS – Note to twitter-spammers: I realized that many accounts follow fellow tweeters who have their account on auto-follow. After waiting till they receive the follow-back love, they quickly unfollow. I regularly (about twice a month) go through my “following” list anyways – I simply used to kick out the bottom-feeders, but since many are trying more than once, I've started blocking everyone who unfollows me quickly after the follow. And I urge you to do the same if you want to keep your account clean.
Back in the days the pagerank algorithm was the greatest invention of all SERP times, and Xsara has learned the importance of organic link growth very fast. And since other SEO dogs know this as well, she now wants to increase commenting activity on here blog via the use of a dofollow-plugin. And she strives to be number one for the query “nofollow dog blog”… but there's a long and winding road in front of her!
Ever been jealous of you neighbour's miraculous dTree? Oh, I see – you have no clue what a dTree is. Well, those things don't grow in gardens, that's for sure: we're talking Scriptaculous here: dTrees are the nifty little menu structures with the “+”-signs that make hierarchies expand or collapse.
No more need for manuel coding, WP-dTree by a guy who calls himself “Plugin Author” does the trick: