Alvin wrote me, “Quickly scanned your materials, but didn’t have time to fully dig in and digest all the materials. Would be helpful if you just sent me 5 slides telling me what you are proposing, how we could help each other and the benefits/cists to each side.”

The last part got me thinking, ‘the benefits to each side.’  My current thinking has been very one sided.  I wanted him to hire me and support me as I developed and integrated Clickboards into his platform.  But what do I get out of it? A salary and advertising shares?  Well that is not exactly a trade.  I mean I have to do business with the guy and show there is a future with my involvement and provide some measure of growth for his products.

So it struck me.  I can approach Alvin saying that I want to add a Clickboard portal to your website.  I could explain the benefits to him and how this will help spur his current business.  But here is where the real opportunity comes in.  The Clickboard portal can be added to any community site whether it be local, national, or global.  People can manage their Clickboards at any and everyone of these portals no matter which website they are on.  Granted each Clickboard portal will be tailored to the site that it is on and the management of the coupons will be more in line with the site they are on, but the access to all their coupons from Clickboards across the Internet is universal.  And this will be key to Alvin.

Any and all Clickbaords can be redeemed using Alvin’s mGuanxi mobile media application.  So now I am not stuck to supporting one website but able to grow the Clickboard portal across the web while it is hosted by other people’s websites, now all of them will be integrated for the use of one easy to use phone application, produced and manned by Alvin.

Now I just have to come up with those five slides.

JIN MAGAZINE
Six month Outlook
The overall objective is to combine all our medias into one package.

Newsletter

With the advancement of our Newsletter we can now incorporate more into this giving more reviews and news that we cannot otherwise in the magazine.  This also allows us to concentrate more on giving deeper information in the magazine that we cannot otherwise in the Newsletter.

The future of the Newsletter is to provide quick promotions to our clients as well as encourage them to interact with the magazine.  For example a current project I am working on is to have Newsletter recipients to write reviews for our Website and to promote our Survey and Subscriptions.  Rewards will be given in the form of Coupons for their participation.

Coupons

In the next six months it will become fairly important to collect Coupons and Gift items that we can give away to stimulate activity on the Website and Magazine.  The Magazine will act as the initial stimulus to any promotions we want to promote.  For example at the end of the summer there will be a party (probably at the Sheraton) where we will give away the prizes for the writing and photography contest currently underway.  Prizes have been sponsored by Hyatt Hotel Jing Jin City.

Coupons can also be used to stimulate activity on the Website.  Daily, weekly, and monthly prizes can be given away for the most involved.  Other contests we can have include tickets for concerts, dinners for special occasions at hotels, drinks at bars for special events, DVDs and CDs for new releases, talent contest prizes, best weekly news about the foreign community, and more; all of this will be funded by the Magazine promoting these reward programs for the various venues.

Radio

We will begin working with the local radio stations that have English hours.  We will invite the people in our focus stories to come to the radio with us where we will interview them on the air.  If there is a band that we focus on in the Magazine we will invite them to play.  The Radio also allows us to sell advertising on our show time and to help promote our sponsors and contests.

Website (jin-emag.com)

The Website’s main new focus will be to stream the Radio programs that we create.  Again we can sell advertising before and after the streaming of the shows.  We will modify the website to be a true emagazine and we also need to change the name to jin-emag.com because Tianjinexpats.com has bought jinmagazine.com and this redirects people to their website.

Also using a new service I have found we can sell advertising on other websites for our sponsors that will drive them to our website.  We will promote our sponsors through local advertising on major Internet sites that are frequented by foreigners.  So our Website alone does not limit us to the amount of web advertising we can supply.

JIN MEDIA
JIN Goal
To create interactivity in the community

JIN Card

In the next year we want to work towards making the JIN Card.  This will allow users to redeem any promotions that they hear on the Radio, see in the Magazine, or browse on our Website or the promotions we display through other local online media outlets.  The discounts will be easy to redeem and collect and I want to just bring this up at this point.  The JIN Card will be unlike other cards that only get you standard discounts like 10-20% at participating vendors.  Actually discounts can be quite varying depending on product and time the clients want to put something on special.

As I have recently read, people do respond quite heavily to numbers in the discounts rather than flat rates.  This is a promising market and I believe with the combination of these five factors we can put much greater value into the Newsletter, Magazine, and Website, as well as our Radio portal on the Website.

This of course would include my Clickboards especially with the coupons and the redemption process through the Website and using the JIN Card.

This is a really interesting statement, so I thought I would post about it.  Some years ago I would say I used to use my social security number to sign up for anything.  I mean even at the super market they sometimes wanted it.  I asked my parents at the time what they thought, and it kind of just seemed necessary.  Later on I started to refuse and it turns out they really didn’t need it.  Same with my phone number, I usually have never given that out.  And did people from every corner of the earth know who I was?  I doubt it, it’s really just a reference number.  I’m sure the higher authorities could tap into my file, but I would still say I am pretty private.

Now I am not arguing that I feel free to give away information and that I am not scared that someone will be able to access and use information to stalk me.  Rather I am discussing what privacy is.

Privacy is actually a method of control.  When people built motes around their castles, it wasn’t really to be private, it was to control who could get in.  Thus privacy on the Internet is the ability to control who can see you.

But unlike the mote, these days privacy and control must be a two way street.  But there is no loss here.  Actually providing advertisers with more information allows them to provide you with more information.  And this is not a battle to kill the advertiser, or the Internet, or all those who sell something, rather it is the battle for optimizing mutual interest.  We all lead simple lives and actually think our buying habits are rather simple too.  So why do we need to see all this advertising?  Well the fact is we don’t.  But we do need to see the advertising that is relevant to us, and the only way to do that is to provide information that matters.

I think if I was tracked for one month to see what my buying habits were, thus giving away my privacy and control, the advertising that I received would be far less.  So how many cannibals are going to cross over my mote and climb the walls to get into my castle when all I’ve got inside is my work and my home cooked meal (although they might want to eat that)?

Yes this title is in fact true.  But in reality don’t you always feel the more you give the less you receive?  By this I mean the more you let people know about you the harder it is for them to target you.  You know how hard it is to buy your best friend a birthday gift.  I think this could be true with advertising too.  You can actually develop more control and more privacy by giving away more of yourself.

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I was thinking yesterday, ‘who should pay?’  Basically a website that I work with will post the advertisers banner on their site.  This website is promising performance and marketability from their site to the advertiser.  They are promising it is a good place to put an ad.

Well if I can improve the effectiveness of their ads on their site by being an agent between the advertiser and the admin, ‘who’s side am I on?’  By allowing three more clicks to the click-through process, ‘should the advertiser pay the same price for each and every click?’ And if so, ‘do i make a cut from each click?’

Or, ‘should the advertiser pay me to make their ads more effective?’  But as I stated before the Clickboard is free for everyone to make.  I make my money when the Clickboard has my icon on it, and eventually connects the Clickboard to my site.  Here the advertiser does have to pay me to be incorporated into my site, depending on the depth and presence they want on my site, and how focused the targeting is for the users on my site.

Back to the question.  The advertiser pays me for my icon, ‘but who makes the money on all those clicks?’  Are my ads no more valuable for the admin than regular banners, and if so, should he charge more if an advertiser wants to put a Clickboard on his site?

I hope so!