Just got off the phone with Dushyant Bhatia, the 23 year old CEO of Blogertize.in which has been gaining quite some hype and was even featured on KillerStartups.
ABOUT BLOGERTIZE
Blogertize is a young startup advertising firm-meets-online shopping portal. In fact, it’s only a few months old and was started in Sept 2008. They’re selling ad spaces to bloggers for $15 – $150 (Rs. 750 – Rs. 7,500) for a period of 3 years using pixel advertising – selling a certain number of pixels (2,000px, 4,000px etc.) at different prices. Bloggers can upload an image or the logo of their blog on this space. Roll over the image, and the blog description comes up. Here’s an idea of what the ads would look like. Gotta say, the design isn’t impressive thus far.
These ads will run alongside Blogertize’s proposed shopping portal, forum, and competitions pages. These three offerings will be split into 12 separate sections: sports, tech stuff, health & fitness, politics, money, gaming, careers & education, showbiz, travel &tourism, ‘lifes’ like that,’ literature and social responsibility. Dushyant says the company’s hoping to have a beta version of the site up sometime in February. This beta site will have information about future plans and their novel revenue model that’s been the center of all the media buzz. The entire site will be launched in April, and the three years will begin the day after the launch.
You can read about their plans more at the site and the company blog.
REVENUE MODEL
Dushyant sounds like he really has the investing bloggers’ best interests at heart. He claims that the bloggers will earn approximately 75% of the revenue from shopping portal. But he had no answer for what that would amount to in actual figures since the portal isn’t up and running yet. He also hopes to offer bloggers a dividend after 3 years. His aim is for bloggers to receive at least 100% return on investment at the end of the 3 years.
Now for some analysis for would-be-investors. Let’s start with the…
CONS
- The site isn’t up and running yet, the business model hasn’t been used before, and there’s no other site to compare this ‘experiment’ to. There’s no way to predict how it will be received.
- If you’re main goal as a blogger is to get more hits on your site – this may not be the best route. Your pixel-ad will be amid 259 other pixel ads in your particular section, that’s competition. If you’re interested in building a strong audience for your blog, you really should consider SEO, Google AdWords and using social media like Twitter – that way you’re targeting people who truly care about your content.
- I somehow can’t picture people who are shopping for say a TV to roll their mouse over your ad and think, “hmm a blog on technology! Let’s read it.” Wouldn’t they just be interested in the TV itself? I wouldn’t expect the portal to direct a constant stream of traffic to the blogs advertised.
- Call me a pessimist, but I expect the new site to have a lot of glitches. It can’t be easy to set up a shopping portal without testing it first. 2 months doesn’t sound adequate…
- Also, the site doesn’t have a strong user base – or any user base at all really. The forum has only 150 members… You’d need thousands of users to visit the site and buy items at the shopping portal before anyone will see the moolah. And any money earned will be split amongst the 2,000 or so investing bloggers.
- Found this from the Legal Notice bit:
The Author/owner is not responsible for any Down Time Due to Hack Attacks, Hosting down time, in short if the site Pixel Advertising is off line, The Author/owner will not be held responsible!.
PROS
- It’s only $15. That’s $5 per month – or $50/month if you choose the larger ad space. You won’t be losing much if you buy ad space. Plus, if the site is a hit, you’d make that amount back and maybe some more!
- Did I mention it’s $15 for three years! That’s long, and cheaper than buying ad spaces elsewhere.
- Dushyant has been getting more and more media coverage in India, and plans to get coverage in USA (he really should consider social media to build hype). People are enchanted with his business model, and the site may attract a large audience when it finally comes up. That’s potential blog traffic and potential products sold and potential revenue.
BOTTOM LINE
I’m not confident in the site being very successful in it’s first year, and I’d rather invest in social media & seo to drive traffic to my blog. After all, the site hasn’t even been launched yet! However, if you have $15 to spare, go ahead and invest it, if only for the fun. The whole thing really is just one big experiment at this point.
And doesn’t everything start out that way?
P.S. You can find a more positive review here.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Nidhi
Thanks a ton for doing that.. Nice review (though a li’l pessimestic).. hehehe
Yes, its risky no doubt about it.. but even one successful convert for a shopping portal will help one breakeven and with profit sharing am pretty sure that too will help ppl make some.. if not in first year… probably in second. So I think it would be wise to invest $15 , $40 or probably $80 in this website. But if u don’t mind taking risk $50per year shouldn’t be a problem.
Having said that, there are chances that this website might not do too well. But if u think like a businessman, I think its a risky but a wise investment. What if it works and these guys make loads of money. Proper implementation of the plan is what is required from these guys.
@Ashish I couldn’t have said it better.
One of the perks of spending more money (apart from a larger ad-space) is that your ad will be higher on the page.
happy investing!
Hi
I came across ur blog while looking for some blogertize reviews
Your review is good but quite negative I feel given the fact the bloggers are actually participating in this venture.
Check out his interview by rediff
http://www.rediff.com/getahead/2009/feb/09blog-your-way-to-your-bank.htm#mb
Though I personally am not a fan of Blogertize business model coz it looks strong on paper but not sure how it’ll work in reality but still bloggers seem to love the concept
@ Mike – thanks for stopping by! I agree it’s a negative review. But I’m reviewing it from a marketing standpoint, not a business one. Also, I am biased to search engine optimization!
Its Crap… Simple Crap..
The Fellow said he has sold 27,000 $ worth pixel and still has NO SINGLE AD on his site..
Just luring people..
Even his XML files are unprotected and his website has NO SEO…
He pays money for PR at prwed and all such sites… Just google it and you will find …
Dont Pay the Money !!! Until you see it working… Just cubestat the website and you will see the pagerank 5 digit page rank.. I wont want my blog to be there
Well
That could be the strategy.. i saw the PRs of the website.. quite a lot… also if u check the alexa rank of the website.. u’ll see that there is some action.. so it is definitely able to attract traffic. I also found a couple of well- received digg stories.. so I think the guy is targetting social media and not SEO….
As far as displaying ads is concerned, the website clearly states that the ads will appear from April. Right now the site is in BETA version and is open only to bloggers to reserve their adspace
Comeon.. lets give him a benefit of doubt.. what if this is true… we’ll come to know by April
I seriously doubt.. and CAUTION other bloggers also .. What a trap… and such work has no entry barrier…there will be 100 of sites..doing same thing and at cheaper cost..
Many places he mentioned ads will on in December…and Now April…Its like begging online
@Ankita I’m skeptical as well, but I agree with @Kapil. Let’s wait and see what happens in April. If Blogertize doesn’t come through, I’m sure bloggers will be more suspicious of any copy cat sites that may spring up.
Hey Nidhi
.
Been a while. Well, i am checking out this post after almost over a month. this post seems to be quite a hit. Well, i just dropped by to tell ya that a new BETA version of blogertize was launched recently. Its called http://www.blogertizeworld.com
The business model of the site is mind boggling and I personally feel that it will give blogcatalog and entrecard a run for their money if its a success. I wonder why these guys did not reveal their plans earlier. I think it could have benefitted them. Anyway, looking forward to another neutral review from you
Pretty sure that too would be a huge hit just like this one.
Hi Nidhi
For some reason, even I feel that this review was biased. There is no mention of the services this site is offering and I really find the concept interesting. Agreed that its risky but it seems to have a good revenue model and it shares its profits with its blogger advertisers which again is a plus point. It looks quite innovative.
@Ashish – hi again! thanks for posting the link, the new site does look very impressive… hmm, now all Blogertize needs to do is drive traffic to the site.
@Dsouza – i was going more for an analysis review than summary of the sites offerings
I’ll write another post on Blogertize in the next few weeks. Dushyant is now tweeting @blogertize (http://twitter.com/blogertize). Let’s see how that goes, and how the marketing of the site continues.
Stay tuned!
@ ashish
What? Mind Blowing business model?
1. They will miss the schedule. Blogertize was scheduled to launch on April 1, now it has shifted to May 31.
2. In my view, they are planning too much at same time. They want to launch a shopping portal, an inventory exchange, a marketplace for bloggers and much more at same time! Going oneby one could have been better for startup since they are new and lot of competition is around!
3. They are asking for link exchange(from buyers). Look at a point in FAQ: “We’d be coming with a new layout for the website when we launch the same on May 31st, 2009. The pixel page for all the categories would be strategically placed so as to divert maximum traffic coming onto our website. All the bloggers for a particular category would be asked to place a link to the pixel ad page for the respective segment. So by default, we’d be having 2,860 backlinks for all pixel ad pages combined.”
I hope they succeed but some basic logics make me fell they will not. I also did a review of them a few days ago and found that 50% of pixels are still unsold. (I have linked the review to my name, see the analysis in review!)
Hey thats great Nidhi
Do send across the link once you’re done with the post on Blogertize. Am looking forward to it. I don’t use Twitter but one of the tweets by Blogertize says that Dushyant (the owner) was interviewed by “Entrepreneur” magazine. Do you have any idea when would that be published??
Eazy Cheezy did a great follow up post on Blogertize explaining all the details and how bloggers can make money out of it. Also includes a great Midday video interview with Dushyant.
http://www.eazycheezy.net/2009/03/blogertizeworld-blogertize-gets-a-facelift-with-new-domain.html
I took a quick look at Dushyant’s twitter account, and he’s using it pretty well so far.
I’ll get back to you on the Entrepreneur article (I’ve actually been in touch with the author of the article!)
@Mr I – I read ur review. Thanks for posting it. But ironically, none of your readers were pleased with the review. The comments that you received were all against the review. Infact one of them even went on to say that u are anti-Blogertize lol. I agree that u have some concerns about the feasibility of the business model but it’s always good to have a neutral review like that of Nidhi’s and one posted on eazycheezy’s blog (link mentioned above). They have mentioned both positives and negatives about Blogertize. I think all the bloggers who have invested in this venture are very well aware of the risks associated with the business model. I feel most of the bloggers want to give it a try coz the amount of investment is low and the returns could potentiall be high if it clicks. As Nidhi mentioned $15 or for that matter even $40 for 3 years shouldn’t hurt much.
I think we are being very critical at this point. The business plan is amazing. The key is execution. Post May 31st we will get to know what the people of Blogertize have in store for us.
I invested $15. The strategy is simple – if successful, ad space prices will rocket up. I think its worth every serious bloggers investment.
@ Paaji… I have to disagree with you here. I don’t think the business plan is amazing and I don’t think it’s a worthy investment (yet).
But clearly I’m not their target and I’d love to hear your take on why you find it so appealing.
Keep the conversation going
UPDATE: there’s nothing new to blog about, except that the beta is available on http://blogertizeworld.com and it seems only ONE blog is featured per week even though they should have a large inventory of blogs which they can feature daily. *I tried looking for the rest but was unsuccesful.