Interview with Blogertizeworld.com

Posted on June 1, 2009
Filed Under Economic/Business news, Save money and/or time, Startups

Who are the founders of the site? Where is the startup based?

Founder, CEO – Mr Dushyant Bhatia        [Twitter - @blogertize]

The startup is based in Mumbai, India

Over 75% of the bloggers advertising with us are from India, USA and UK

What makes this startup unique? What is the technology behind it?

This is the first web startup worldwide which has raised funds to run its online business by selling pixel adspace on its website. The idea is to combine various important pillars of internet marketing viz-a-viz affiliate marketing, promotional quizzing models, e-commerce, micro blogging, online community etc with pixel advertising. Blogertizeworld is an online portal which sells adspace to bloggers for a 3 year period under 12 segments namely sports, technology, health, politics, finance, gaming, education, showbiz, travel, life, literature and social responsibility. Adspace is available to 2,860 bloggers only on first come first serve basis. Our objective would be to divert a chunk of the traffic coming onto our website to these blog advertisers which will help the latter to dig up a couple of loyal readers which inturn would assist them in monetizing their blogs.

What are the main characterstics of your startup?

The concept of the website is similar to that of a mutual fund where the cost of running this website is distributed among a large pool of bloggers and the rewards for their investment is something which no other blogger community offers. Bloggers purchase adspace under various categories for a fixed period of 3years. The pixel blocks are available in four different sizes of 2000, 4000, 6000 & 8000 pixels. The larger the button, the higher it is placed attracting more visitors in turn resulting in increased ad revenue.

A chunk of adspace proceeds would be reinvested in various revenue generating avenues mentioned below which will help bloggers in monetizing their blog without them having to promote the same.

The following are the service offerings of Blogertizeworld.com

• - Online shopping portal
• - Online marketplace
• - Podcasting facilities
• - Online community (discussion board)
• - Ad exchange network
• - Promotional quizzing and contest portal
• - Blogertize ROI analytics
• - Exposure via newsletter
• - Profit sharing

All the services mentioned above shall launch on Sep 01, 2009 and have one common objective. i.e. To attract traffic and divert a chunk of the same to these 2,860 blogs advertising with us.

Is your startup free?

No. bloggers purchase pixel adspace on our site at a neglible price starting from $15 for a 3 year period. i.e.$5 per year and get constant traffic for next 3 years starting from Sep 01, 2009

What is your business model?

The whole idea of utilizing pixel advertising was to raise funds for this online startup. The concept of the website is similar to that of a mutual fund where the cost of running this website is distributed among a large pool of bloggers and the rewards for their investment is something which no other blogger community offers.

Some of the monetary incentives for bloggers who invest with us are:

1. Online shopping portal – We’d be having the bloggers advertising with us place a link to our shopping portal on their blog. If any visitor to their blog clicks on that link, he/she would be directed to our shopping portal and if that person purchases anything from our shopping portal, upto 75% of the profit would be given to that respective blogger. The main idea is to create an online trading store and have distributors i.e. bloggers all over the world
2. Online market place – Bloggers advertising with us will have an option to open an online store for free for the first year of operations. No yearly fee of commision on final sales shall be charged for the first year and so can sell their products via our website FREE OF COST
3. Adnetwork exchanges – We help our blogger advertisers manage their ad inventory & assist them in earning ad revenue via the idle ad inventory available on their blogs
4. Revenue split: – The revenue split would be 80-20 (Bloggers advertising with us – Blogertizeworld)
5. Podcast publishing services – Free podcast hosting services provided to bloggers advertising with us
6. Exposure via Newsletter- Visitors to Blogertize could subscribe for monthly newsletter for any of the 11 segments of their choice. i.e. A member who’d like to keep himself/herself updated about the latest in the tech circuit could sign up for the monthly tech newsletter, the content of which would be provided by the bloggers advertising with the site. The link to the blog from where the content is extracted would also be mentioned in the newsletter to give latter the exposure it requires
7. Profit sharing element – We plan to share a certain proportion of our total profits after tax. This may include profits earned via various avenues like blogertize community, market place, shopping portal, podcast facilities, ad-network exchanges, ad revenue etc. We’d be distributing a small proportion of profit (after tax) to our bloggers on yearly basis starting from the second year of operations. The profit share may differ on yearly basis depending upon various factors. The concept would be similar to that of a dividend being distributed by a public company to its equity shareholders, the only difference being that the bloggers advertising with us do not own stakes in this company. The ratio of distribution for $15, $40, $80 and $150 pixel buttons would be in the ratio of the amount invested i.e. 3:8:16:30.

What is the main idea behind it? Why is your startup worth spending time?

The main idea of this startup is to help those bloggers in monetizing their blogs who cannot spend 4-5 hours a day on promoting their blog. Our objective is to attract casual blog readers and divert a chunk of them to the blogs advertising with us. As of today, a 125×125 banner ad on a PR3 blog costs somewhere around $25-30 per month which at most can get approximately 500 odd visitors. On the other hand, BlogertizeWorld offers a 3 year adspace for as low as $15. It probably may take around 6-8 months for a blog to receive 500 visitors via Blogertize (for a $15 button). So any traffic diverted for next 28-30 odd months would be a bonus. In addition to that, Blogertize gives its members an opportunity to make a small fortune via its various revenue generating avenues.

What are your plans for the future?

We are planning to rope in more interest groups. Cannot reveal much right now but we’re in acquisition/collaboration talks with a couple of cash strapped medium-sized startups in US, UK, Israel and India. The idea is to wrap up these with our operations and relaunch them under our brand.

Who are your main competitors?

There are many individual competitors worldwide. Since the range of our service offerings is so huge, we’re bound to have atleast 2-3 big competitors for each avenue we explore. We’re still new and are concentrating on getting our baby steps right. Once we achieve that, we could concentrate on competing with the established players.

Any other information that may help to describe your startup?

Out of the total 2,860 spots, we’vre received registrations from over 1,800 bloggers. Adspace worth $50K has already been reserved. Once we receive our 2500th registration, we shall double the adspace prices.

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