Igrick: Money, money, money
This is a translation of this entry by igrick.
UPD: markf explains this feature more clearly here.
Folks, today I'm announcing something especially important. I will be focusing on ways to make money off your LJ, expand your audience and increasing feedback from your existing audience - for those interested in that.
At the end of last year during a meeting with bloggers I explained that this year LJ will offer ways to make revenue off blogs. The time has come to give details about this program.
So, lets look at the main points. Here I will intentionally mix up information on history and promotion of your diaries and earnings from them. Those things are closely related, after all.
First and probably most powerful way to earn money or build up your audience will be Self Promo block in your journal - the same one you can see on main page now and working on the same auction-based system. The only difference is that rules for this one will be decided upon by the journal's owner. Journal's owner will be able to allow ads there or let people be promoted there for free or not allow someone to use it at all. The history will be fully customized.
In short, rules will probably be as listed below.
1. The block will appear on all journal pages, in new and old posts.
2. Participation will be determined by journal's social capital.
3. Maximum time of post's presence in the promo block will be determined by journal's social capital. For example, for journals with high social capital it will be equal to 2 hours. For low social capital journals it will equal 24 hours.
4. All tokens minus some negligible expenses will be transferred to journal's owner.
5. All round-offs will be in journal's owner's favor.
6. Rules of participation will have to be determined by an LJ post, link to which will be given in LJ Shop.
7. All information about expulsion from promo will be public and available in LJ Shop.
8. Links to own posts in the promo block will be free.
9. Friends Only mode will be available. It will allow mutual friends to use this service for free for mutual promotion.
This instrument will allow some people to earn tokens in their journal and, for example, to spend them for main page promotion. Other will be able to promote their journals in other journals on similar subject. It will also allow to promo for every wallet*.
*translator's note: I haven't a clue what he wanted to say here. Maybe that it will be possible to transfer earnings from promo block to any electronic wallet?
By our estimates, journal's owner's earnings from this instrument will surpass earnings from Google Adsense or banner ads tenfold or maybe even hundredfold. For example, if you earn 3,600 tokens per day (you will need maximum price of only 300 tokens), that will be 32,000 rubles per month. Minus some expenses it will make no less than 25,000 per month. And that's only conservative estimates.
If we talk about those who are being promoted, current SelfPromo system proved its effectiveness already.
This is what it will look like in LJ Shop:
translation:
central area, with the egg in king's mantle: This service allows users to place their posts in other journals in exchange for LiveJournal's internal currency. Post can be placed for the duration of 24 hours but can be replaced with other user's post if they pay a higher price in auction. Payment for unused promo time will be returned. More details in Help.
below it: Journals, My orders, Order in a journal.
pesen_net Cancel
Someone already placed a post there
(highlighted by yellow the post that was placed in the journal)
Remaining: 01 hour 14 minutes. History
Link to your post:
Current price:
Your price:
Enter number of tokens (divisible by 100).
I confirm that my post fits the criteria set by dertyolopore for promo block.
And in the journal:
translation of header of the block highlighted by yellow:
place your post here for 14,500 tokens
Another instrument - to promote or to earn revenue - will be ability to set a price for repost. It will be possible to set price both to ability to repost your journal posts and to have someone's posts to be reposted in it.
Reposts will also be changed drastically. Now posts will not be duplicated in reposter's journal but the original post will be inserted into the journal. That means that all traffic generated by the repost and all comments will be counted towards author's social capital. This way only the original post will appear in ratings.
Of course, reposts will not require payments by default. But the author will be able to select two additional modes.
1) set a budget for the post and price for each repost depending on social capital or minimal price - that way every reposter will get tokens for reposting until budget is spent.
2) set a price for repost and every reposter will have to pay for the ability to repost.
Journal owners will also get a new analytic instrument and a way to improve the figures. Specifically, every post will have information about what percentage of total subscribers had read the post and how many other users did. That means the author will be able to select optimum time or weekday which will give him his maximum audience.
At the same time another paid instrument will be added. This one will allow author to increase those figures by changing the way the post is displayed in the friends list. Simply put, if someone had opened their friends list a month after the post has been made, they will still see it without reading the friends list backwards to the day of the post.
And finally I want to touch upon the topic of grants which were announced last year and which were expected to start working from February of this year. Short reminder of what I'm talking about: LJ will give out 30 millions of tokens (which equals $300,000) to users to spend on their journals' promotion.
We intentionally moved backwards the staring date for this program. This was done for one specific reason: to align the program with the program for earning money off journals. This way the main bulk of those three hundreds dollars will become other users' earnings.
And for the dessert: you are probably wondering whatever you can do with the tokens you have earned? It's simple: you will able to receive them as rubles. Or dollars if that's better for you.
That's not all, but it's the main part. Other instruments will be announced later. I will write about this again when testing for the new instruments will start, around May this year. We will gather a pool of journals willing to participate.
Don't change the channel. And be careful with your social capital - as I've already said, you will be able to use it yet.
Important addition from this thread:
leotsarev has asked if paid users will see those ads as well.
igrick replied that of course they will see it as those ads are journal owner's choice, not something LJ has put there.
To this leotsarev has quoted part of help section on ads, which says: "Paid and Permanent Accounts: You will never see ads on LiveJournal, even when viewing a Plus account's journal, as long as you're logged in." and igrick has confirmed that there will be ToS changes in regards to the new SelfPromo block.
In the other branch of the same thread igrick has pointed out in reply to the initial comment by leotsarev that currently they can see posts that have been paid for in other people's journals.
leotsarev replies that this is a private decisions not involving LJ. By the contrast this promo system will generate revenue for LJ.
igrick says that LJ will not get revenue off this, the user will.
Other people have asked how Paid and Permanent account owners can get their money back. None of the comments with this question were answered.
UPD: markf explains this feature more clearly here.
Folks, today I'm announcing something especially important. I will be focusing on ways to make money off your LJ, expand your audience and increasing feedback from your existing audience - for those interested in that.
At the end of last year during a meeting with bloggers I explained that this year LJ will offer ways to make revenue off blogs. The time has come to give details about this program.
So, lets look at the main points. Here I will intentionally mix up information on history and promotion of your diaries and earnings from them. Those things are closely related, after all.
First and probably most powerful way to earn money or build up your audience will be Self Promo block in your journal - the same one you can see on main page now and working on the same auction-based system. The only difference is that rules for this one will be decided upon by the journal's owner. Journal's owner will be able to allow ads there or let people be promoted there for free or not allow someone to use it at all. The history will be fully customized.
In short, rules will probably be as listed below.
1. The block will appear on all journal pages, in new and old posts.
2. Participation will be determined by journal's social capital.
3. Maximum time of post's presence in the promo block will be determined by journal's social capital. For example, for journals with high social capital it will be equal to 2 hours. For low social capital journals it will equal 24 hours.
4. All tokens minus some negligible expenses will be transferred to journal's owner.
5. All round-offs will be in journal's owner's favor.
6. Rules of participation will have to be determined by an LJ post, link to which will be given in LJ Shop.
7. All information about expulsion from promo will be public and available in LJ Shop.
8. Links to own posts in the promo block will be free.
9. Friends Only mode will be available. It will allow mutual friends to use this service for free for mutual promotion.
This instrument will allow some people to earn tokens in their journal and, for example, to spend them for main page promotion. Other will be able to promote their journals in other journals on similar subject. It will also allow to promo for every wallet*.
*translator's note: I haven't a clue what he wanted to say here. Maybe that it will be possible to transfer earnings from promo block to any electronic wallet?
By our estimates, journal's owner's earnings from this instrument will surpass earnings from Google Adsense or banner ads tenfold or maybe even hundredfold. For example, if you earn 3,600 tokens per day (you will need maximum price of only 300 tokens), that will be 32,000 rubles per month. Minus some expenses it will make no less than 25,000 per month. And that's only conservative estimates.
If we talk about those who are being promoted, current SelfPromo system proved its effectiveness already.
This is what it will look like in LJ Shop:
translation:
central area, with the egg in king's mantle: This service allows users to place their posts in other journals in exchange for LiveJournal's internal currency. Post can be placed for the duration of 24 hours but can be replaced with other user's post if they pay a higher price in auction. Payment for unused promo time will be returned. More details in Help.
below it: Journals, My orders, Order in a journal.
pesen_net Cancel
Someone already placed a post there
(highlighted by yellow the post that was placed in the journal)
Remaining: 01 hour 14 minutes. History
Link to your post:
Current price:
Your price:
Enter number of tokens (divisible by 100).
I confirm that my post fits the criteria set by dertyolopore for promo block.
And in the journal:
translation of header of the block highlighted by yellow:
place your post here for 14,500 tokens
Another instrument - to promote or to earn revenue - will be ability to set a price for repost. It will be possible to set price both to ability to repost your journal posts and to have someone's posts to be reposted in it.
Reposts will also be changed drastically. Now posts will not be duplicated in reposter's journal but the original post will be inserted into the journal. That means that all traffic generated by the repost and all comments will be counted towards author's social capital. This way only the original post will appear in ratings.
Of course, reposts will not require payments by default. But the author will be able to select two additional modes.
1) set a budget for the post and price for each repost depending on social capital or minimal price - that way every reposter will get tokens for reposting until budget is spent.
2) set a price for repost and every reposter will have to pay for the ability to repost.
Journal owners will also get a new analytic instrument and a way to improve the figures. Specifically, every post will have information about what percentage of total subscribers had read the post and how many other users did. That means the author will be able to select optimum time or weekday which will give him his maximum audience.
At the same time another paid instrument will be added. This one will allow author to increase those figures by changing the way the post is displayed in the friends list. Simply put, if someone had opened their friends list a month after the post has been made, they will still see it without reading the friends list backwards to the day of the post.
And finally I want to touch upon the topic of grants which were announced last year and which were expected to start working from February of this year. Short reminder of what I'm talking about: LJ will give out 30 millions of tokens (which equals $300,000) to users to spend on their journals' promotion.
We intentionally moved backwards the staring date for this program. This was done for one specific reason: to align the program with the program for earning money off journals. This way the main bulk of those three hundreds dollars will become other users' earnings.
And for the dessert: you are probably wondering whatever you can do with the tokens you have earned? It's simple: you will able to receive them as rubles. Or dollars if that's better for you.
That's not all, but it's the main part. Other instruments will be announced later. I will write about this again when testing for the new instruments will start, around May this year. We will gather a pool of journals willing to participate.
Don't change the channel. And be careful with your social capital - as I've already said, you will be able to use it yet.
Important addition from this thread:
leotsarev has asked if paid users will see those ads as well.
igrick replied that of course they will see it as those ads are journal owner's choice, not something LJ has put there.
To this leotsarev has quoted part of help section on ads, which says: "Paid and Permanent Accounts: You will never see ads on LiveJournal, even when viewing a Plus account's journal, as long as you're logged in." and igrick has confirmed that there will be ToS changes in regards to the new SelfPromo block.
In the other branch of the same thread igrick has pointed out in reply to the initial comment by leotsarev that currently they can see posts that have been paid for in other people's journals.
leotsarev replies that this is a private decisions not involving LJ. By the contrast this promo system will generate revenue for LJ.
igrick says that LJ will not get revenue off this, the user will.
Other people have asked how Paid and Permanent account owners can get their money back. None of the comments with this question were answered.