Buzzfuse what?
Ok, in the last few days, I have gotten not 1, not 2, but 5 emails requesting I join my blogging friends on Buzzfuse.
Someone want to explain what it is and why I should join it?
I know it was a paid blogging thing for a company, I saw the paid for by Buzzfuse banners on a few posts this past week. (Hey, look at that. A free link!)
But did those of you who got paid to promote it, actually join because it's good, or because they paid you to join and invite your friends, and my email was in the list?
So tell me what it is, and if you really love it, and why I should join.
You sent me the invite, is it worth my time or no?
Comments
I didn't think to much of it so I didn't even do the opp. I'm sure many people did it for the money but here lately, I have become much more picky on what I blog about.
Posted by: Lori | February 2, 2008 1:22 AM
That's how it should be. Only take the opps you love or can be passionate about. The money should be the last thing that makes you take it.
I have a feeling that all the people who sent me invites, only did so because it was part of the opp requirement, which I will truly be pissed about if that's true.
I do not enjoy being spammed so others can get paid for their opps.
Posted by: Kat | February 2, 2008 1:25 AM
Hi Kat,
We'd like to think we're doing something different and very useful and that we have a sound approach. We've got some great feedback (and a lot of suggestions as to how to improve) from our recent campaign. So we'll be improving things in our next release...
However, to answer your question Buzzfuse is in Beta, but it works well.
It's designed, by myself and some others to market one's work. We built it because we are content creators ourselves (bloggers, photographers, cartoonists, etc.) and because we needed a system to help us get the word out and ultimately, to pay us for performance. 20 months and 6500 revisions to our code base later, you have what people were emailing you about.
Buzzfuse works (briefly) as follows: you register with us, you register a blog post (not the template, not the whole blog, but each post), and you choose who you want to market it to from your friends. We then release that post/photo/song to your friends (and fans) immediately. A day later, anyone one degree further away from you on Buzzfuse will also get told about it in their daily mail. Furthermore, if your post is really good, it will appear in the top10 which is included in the daily mail we send out to all subscribers. So we work on an item by item basis (because some poor bloggers have excellent posts, and because some great bloggers produce poor posts from time to time).
Our system require release of each new item to at least 10 people (if you have 10 in your circle then that's enough), because this is a marketing tool. So you choose your message and send it to your market. Nothing sinister here :) (and our mail is opt-in with very easy unsubscribe procedures - we are not spammers).
We also pay for content. This is a premium feature only (only $14.99 per month) and here what we are trialling is to split a monthly pool across the top 100 (more in future) posts/items in the system. So if 10 of your posts make it to the top 100, you earn the money associated with each post. If only 1 does, then so be it. The top 100 is determined by our algorithm, which tries to identify quality by looking at what 'touches' people, causing them to interact with the content, rather than just downloads or pageviews.
Does it work? Yes - results so far suggest that once a person has built about 20 active circle members, the marketing becomes very cost effective. For example, one blog got 3500 unique visitors delivered to it by Buzzfuse in the last month. All for $14.99 - try that with Adwords...
There is lots more too Buzzfuse. Its a service with depth (and there is lots more coming). We think its worth a try. Yes its Viral, but that's how things are marketed. It's not a digg or social bookmarking system, its a serious marketing platform.
Lastly, in terms of payperpost, we've been amazed at the response and also at the serious, generous feedback we've gotten. We're trying to build something here that will help everyone market their art. Yes its about passion, yes it's about marketing. As we say in our logo, "you create, we spread the word"
You have my email address -feel free to contact me directly if you want more info.
-Gareth
Posted by: Gareth | February 3, 2008 3:55 AM