I found a really cool feature on Google Analytics.  I can actually follow someone as they travel through my site going from page to page.  It shows me the percent of people who clicked on different links on a particular page.  So as Alvin and his company from Shanghai traversed my site on Tuesday I could actually follow them as the went from home screen to Clickcard, to Clickboards, to the About page and then the the Clickcard category and so forth.  I couldn’t tell which exact button was clicked by who because there was more than one person searching my site that day, but I could see two or three distinct paths.

The problem however is when they visited the Clickboard page.  The Clickboards are supposed to be ads.  Now Google Analytics will track ads but they have to be registered.  My Clickboards are not registered, so I was unable to see if they clicked on them and how many times and how far they went through the Clickboards.  Very upsetting because that was kind of the point of their visit.  Tomorrow I will have to find out how to register my Clickboards with the Google Analytics.  My first assumption is to add the tag to the Flash coding and then repost them.  And another way is somehow with this Wordpress site.  It has an ad tracker too but haven’t explored this in detail yet.  Both options seem viable but I like the new Google Analytics tool so I am going to explore that first.

I guess I haven’t mentioned why I am so interested in mGuanxi and why I switched my focus from Jin Magazine.  First thing is first i guess, Richard, my current boss here at Jin Magazine, had the opportunity to review my proposal, well at least I put it in front of him.  Whether he looked at the numbers or not, I can’t say, but he refused the new project based on the fact that he is not looking to invest any more time or money into the Jin Media and rather focus on his logistics business.

So that said I needed new options, I was going to re propose to him but now that I think about it, that would have been futile.  So as the opportunity came to my attention when talking to Don Stewart, an indirect colleague of mine here in the office, who at one point offered himself as an angel investor, he brought to my attention several services that are in the same field I am pursuing.  One of which was mGuanxi.  Unlike the other text discount services he put before me, this media had a very unique web portal.

This web portal had the ability for people to come together and add contacts and join groups, take polls, blog, and send messages.  Much like other social media sites.  However this had no connection to their mobile outlet and the benefit to the users over Facebook and local forum websites was quite minimal.  But to me, this was a perfect platform to develop Clickboards.

By adding another tab which would represent Clickboards, using the clicker icon, users would enter a section of the website where they could manage their mobile coupons and acquire Clickboards.  Here they could share with their groups or contacts and friends and redeem points for luxury vouchers.  Really this is the high dive that could really put Clickboards on the map.  These are the top four reasons I had Don tell Alvin of mGuanxi why he should listen to me and my proposal:

Gives a reason for people to interact (to share their coupons, rewards, freebies and earn more)

Makes service free for user and adds performance for clients

Advertisers can decide what and to whom they reward

Breaches the gap between behavioral marketing and static impressions

So far, I have no response and neither does Don from Alvin Graylin from mGuanxi owner of the parent company mInfo.  He may think he is a little taller than me in his high heeled boots and can’t see the relevance of a Jin Magazine editor having come up with a good idea for him because he is a dual major MIT graduate.  But if he could stop himself a minute and so could the rest of you to review what I keep going on about, he may see the true validity that my project has.  Or maybe he is just on vacation and I need to sit back myself for a second.

The real reason I am going after my boss and mGuanxi is so that I don’t have to develop my own brand image.  Jin has a name which would make the Jin Card more recognizable here in Tianjin, and although mGuanxi isn’t a true silver dollar in terms of user interaction, it does have some strength in its name, something that I could definitely build upon.

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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.

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?