Four Click Freedom

Well I think I may have stumbled upon someone willing to give me RMB100,000 to create my idea.  However, as I am thinking how I will do this all on my own, even if I do find a really good programmer, things remain to seam difficult.

So now I am still thinking of how to incorporate my current boss into this affair.  I went to him today to discuss a few things.  One of them being the value of jinmagazine.com.cn.  If you see on my site it is worth $518 and his website which I recently did a homepage makeover is only worth RMB580.  So my blog is actually worth more than his website.  Our two competitors in the land of Tianjin Expat sites are between $10,000 to $15,000.  Even redoing the website so that all the links work and it is really flashy isn’t going to help.  Even promoting contests through the magazine that drive people to the site isn’t going to help much.  Richard told me that money wasn’t a problem as long as he can see a revenue stream.  Well when you are competing in a $30,000 market your share really can’t be that big.

So I was thinking that I would transform part of jinmagazine.com.cn into the Clickboard website.  The first step is to clean up his website so everything is functional, then I can begin incorporating the Clickboards.  Basically we would issue a JIN card and promotions can be gathered from all three websites, plus using Alimama we can put local ads on websites across the Internet where we can put Clickboards and people can collect discounts.  Then we can even incorporate print ads to carry text message codes so people can acquire the coupons when reading magazines in town.

But Richard is not going to pay for any of the development, probably just keep my at my shitty salary.  So that is where the angel investor comes in.  I would continue to make the backbone of the magazine each month, but the actual editing would be done by someone part time.  I could still write articles and do some design critique, but all the other little stuff can be taken care of by the consultant and a part time editor.

I on the other hand would have an income I could use to recruit students and we could put this into action.  However, this would now entail three parties: Richard, the angel investor, and myself.  Before this goes any further I need to see a lawyer and find out what I can protect.  If I can incorporate everything into jinmagazine.com.cn, then what is mine in the end?  I have to have some legal entity, and does Richard in the end pay me for facilitating his website?  How would it move onto bigger arenas past that of Tianjin?

Well I have talked about this before, but now I have an extenuation of my idea.  To encourage people to click, every click can be valued at a certain number of points.  So for every click on a Clickboard, users acquire points either on my website or across the Internet.  These points can then be used to purchase special promotions from my website.

Facebook and Google are scary.  In this time of economic downturn it is no time for hustlers. When information is at stake, security is a key component to peoples trust and when you abuse this, we could start fighting a long uphill battle in the months to come.

My example here is with advertising. People are still going to have to spend money to get back on top and get their businesses back up and running. The first cuts in budgetary plans are usually at the advertising budgets. But these are also the first to be replaced.

Many people these days are wondering where to put their ad dollars. Print media is said to be dying. Everything is apparently going online, and why not, you really get more specific information that way. But what about the targeting of these ad dollars and the amount you pay. This is starting to create real concern. Google is running a monopoly and adjusting prices based on ‘falsification’ of Adwords’ performance. And sites that have over a million visitors a month are getting the rod because they have to put ads on their sites that only pay them when they get clicked on, greatly devaluing their site.

The real scare comes in when Google and Facebook hide certain critical points that concern your rights in their ‘terms of use.’ By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. Facebook recently said the same thing.

This selling of personal information for any use under the sun is not what I intended when I signed up for these programs. With Facebook I get to choose my friends and who sees my photos and stories. Now that Mr. Matt Zuckerberg says any advertiser can buy anything on my profile, it doesn’t feel quite as private. That is pretty scary to one day run across myself in some book about people in Tianjin.

I for one am not using Facebook anymore. I have had about enough of it anyway and only get on 30 seconds a day to read the feed. Google I am attached to still though. I am even thinking to get the new Google phone. But there is a difference.

Google is an ad agency and they use the information themselves. There is no need for them to sell off their inventory; it does more good in their own hands. As for them being a monopoly, that is probably true, but at least I can still get my mail.

So what about Clickboards.net?….

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WujWuj will assuredly fail like everything else similar because they require so much interaction for a product, too much hunting, and everyone always wants the lower price.

Solution, offer the rebate later.  Go ahead and shop buy anything you want and share what you bought, brag about it, get others interested, but don’t wait for the savings.

With your online account tracking your history, anyone in your network, according to your setting of filters and privacy, can review some of the favorite items you’ve saved on or bought lately.  If they are interested too, they can go get it.  Say one hundred people in your network bought Super Bowl memorabilia for full price, well according to WujWuj, if they had bought it through their group buying, they would have all saved 20% if they waited and bought together.  Well you are still a group and you all still bought the same stuff, so why not still get the savings.  This is possible if you offer the savings later after the purchases have been made.

You can still promote the things you buy and attract more people to your purchases, thus still taking action, and therefore still applicable towards recieving savings.