shoppero.com launched

we just launched shoppero.com and blogging will proceed over there.

Launchdate: May 3rd

We want to launch next week. The company is not yet completely founded, but we set up shop today, we have DSL and are ready to finish the last bits for the beta.

Excitement builds up. We need plenty of caffeine the next couple of days.

Recommendations and Money

The article Why Do We Recommend? tries to list some reasons why we recommend products to other people. As we have written before, we will use the adget to do exactly that: let users recommend products they like. And yes, they will make money by doing so and no, they won’t sell out or lose their integrity.

Recommend and earn money, among other things. Also, you can earn credibility by recommending good products, you can find people who like products you like and so on. But by adding all this value to the portal, you will earn money as a positive little side-effect.

Wave of Widgets

Recently the Washington Post featured an article about Wave of Widgets Spreads on the Web, which basically talked about how widgets basically mix advertising with something useful for the user and in return get displayed on weblogs or the desktop. Interestingly enough, the author pointed out that no clear way of monetizing widgets and the widgetsspace has been found, yet.

Creating a product based on widgets really is exciting, because this space gets more and more attention each day, but it is clear that nobody really knows how widgets are really developing. Hopefully, we will add some more widgets to the mix, soon.

Conversation Economy

Wow, great article by David Armano titled It’s the Conversation Economy, Stupid, which picks up some points we have been trying to make in the past weeks. The power of conversation shows the shift from consumer economy to something new, where conversation and attention play a much bigger role:

Think about the implications here. Just as YouTube changed how we watch and share videos, some emerging media applications are changing how we interact with each other and with brands. Does this sound like marketing? Well, it is. It’s how we market to each other. Yes, that’s right—we market to each other. We always have, in fact, but now we’re doing it in a more digitally connected way. When we find our friends on any social network (pick one) we swap stories about products and services we like or dislike. We share knowledge and expertise. We define a new kind of currency fueled by conversation and founded in meaningful relationships.

So, if we look again at what Revso wants to be doing, we can slowly see the Adget evolve into a new kind of marketing tool, something that helps communicate about products. It’s all Peer-to-Peer nowadays, the old-fashinoned consumer will be less interesting in the future, it’s people with voices who matter and who influence.

The value of a click

In a recent press release by DoubleClick Inc., video ads were heralded as the new great form of online advertising:

Online video ads experience click-through rates ranging from 0.4 percent to 0.74 percent depending on the online video format. By comparison, the click-through rate for plain GIF or JPG image ads ranges between 0.1 and 0.2 percent, based on DoubleClick data.

This still means, that more than 99% of the users don’t click on the ad, doesn’t it?

We believe that an adget will lead to much better clickrates, because it is much more personal than a regular ad will ever be. We do believe online advertising will be about clicks, this is the ultimate way to measure attention, but we also assume that getting the attention will change in Web 2.0 much more than we ever expected in the wonderful times of the fullbanner and the halfbanner. Still, a click is close to nothing without measuring the conversion. We assume that funneling the attention of a user via an adget to a specific location that will be reached after the click can add lots of value to the click and make the adget experience even better for the user.

Introducing the Adget

The ideal combination of an ad and a widget surely is an Adget, not only because it sounds good. An Adget depends on the user selecting how the widget looks like and what kind of content it should display. We will offer various sizes and a bunch of styles and let the user choose whatever he wants. So to some extend the Adget will allow User-generated Advertising. We will suggest optimization options later on, but basically the user can choose how much he wants to push one product or another. If you like niche products, you offer those to your readers, if you want to go mainstream, then you need to follow that path. It is all up to the user.

The Adget, revolutionizing advertising one widget at a time.

Widgets and Attention

Widgets are the new black and we have seen plenty of new widgets appearing on the scene in the last couple of months, if not days. Soon, most pages that are generated by users will have widgets somewhere. Why? Because they are convenient and they allow easy personalization. Netvibes UWA is one step into the right direction, allowing widgets to be placed where ever they fit, in theory.

Widgets distract and widgets get attention, because widgets standout from the rest of the content presented on the site. Furthermore, since a widget offers a special take on something, presented by the user, it gets the attention it deserves. In contrast to ads that are displayed, widgets offer much more, for instance context. Since the user chooses to display the widget in whatever way he likes, we can be sure that this is really something of importance, in contrast to some ad stuck in the sidebar.

Widgets are powerful and grab the attention of the user, as long as you don’t overdo it, like Fred Wilson, for instance. His blog serves more as a directory of cool widgets, but it’s hard to gauge which widget gets attention over at his blog. Nevertheless, in the attention economy, a widget plays a vital role. Although just a small piece of code and also small in size when displayed in the sidebar, the widget grabs the attention of the user.

How to send money online?

We are in a little dilemma. We don’t have the perfect solution yet to send users the money they earn through our website.

Ideally, this should work internationally and involve no paper, just a statement as pdf in an email, along with a url where a user can claim the money and transfer it over to his bank account or whatever.

Paypal offers the option to send money, but what about Google Checkout? It seems that they only allow for the customer to pay, not to get money.

Any other ways to distribute money to the users? Ideally, there shouldn’t be to many fees involved. Also, it should integrate well into our website and work mostly automagic.

We would like to offer the user a number of ways to get his money, so that they don’t need to join whatever tool we choose to integrate but rather take the tool they are used to.

I guess it boils down to Paypal, doesn’t it?

Revso – so far, so good

We started three weeks ago with our little project and so far it looks like everything works out according to plan. The development is 75% done, whatever that means, because we assume that the last couple things will be the most tricky to figure out. Our aim is to have an early alpha a week from now. The database layout is done, most of the core functionality as well, now the work is mostly statistics and widgets.

Although we are talking about disclosure all the time, we are not yet disclosing who is behind this project. We need to figure some things out before revealing who we are and what we are doing. We hope to do so within a week or two. Nothing special, it just needs to be dealt with before we announce something in public.

If you are interested in our beta, please send an email to revsoo at gmail dot com and we will inform you once we start.