@dvocable

Spotplex is a new social bookmarking site with a difference. Blog posts are rated and listed on its homepage just like in Digg. However, the difference here is that the rating is done not by user votes but according the number of page views that post receives.

All you need to do is register your blog and install the Spotplex script on your blog and you are done with it. The more number of times your posts are viewed, the higher are their chances of getting into the Spotplex front page.

I’m quite excited with this new model.  Posts can actually be rated by how popular they are on the Web and not by a select number of voters on a particular site. Soon, many bloggers will have this on their blogs and we can see some good results soon. Sometimes I wonder if this model has a chance of becoming as popular as the big league sites of today like Digg.

However there is one concern. I wonder if it will only be the posts of big blogs with the largest number of readers that will always make it to the front page. This way, it becomes very obvious which posts will be rated higher than another, and it becomes just another plain news aggregator.

Check out Spotplex here.

Chacha has been around for almost a year now and it is already a Webware 100 winner. For those who are new to Chacha, it is a search engine where you can chat live with human guides who will help you get relevant search results. The Chacha guides are supposed to be those who are skilled at searching online information and who are knowledgeable on the subject that you search for. Chacha describes itself as ’the ultimate fusion of computer technology and human intelligence’.

Now over my recent chats with Chacha guides and some blogosphere searches, I came to realise many interesting facts. Much has been discussed about this service already. While some praise the service, others are full of brickbats.There have been testimonials of someone recollecting how helpful a Chacha guide was in helping him get proper medical help when he was having a back pain.  Chacha guides also recollect how they have help certain users in getting their searches right for over 15 minutes when they are paid to search for only 6 minutes per query/user. Then there have been counterpoints saying that one Chacha guide didn’t even know what Digg was.

The Guides system – how it works

According to the guides, there are around 40,000 Chacha guides in the US who are paid around USD 10-15 per search hour. Anybody who is skilled at online search with good knowledge about particular subjects can apply to become Chacha guides. Upon admission, they are given a software that they can install on their home computers. This software helps them access the Chacha database of sites that they can use to search for information to answer queries of Chacha users.  The amount of time they spend searching through the Chacha database is monitored and counted and they get paid according to that. They can also refer their friends to become guides and can get referral commission out of that, just like the Amway chain.

User searches – how relevant are the search results

I did a couple of searches like ‘best chicken tikka masala in New York’ and the guides showed me a site which lists the top 10 Indian restaurants in New York. Not bad. Then I did a search for the ‘Best PR agency in India’ and it showed me the link to some PR agency that I didn’t think was the best answer.

I searched for terms like blogging hacks, which the guide asked me to define what is a hack. When I did and requested for a peekaboo post hack, he couldn’t find one. My friend did a search on my name and she got transferred to a page that said ‘ you are shown this page because you have used abusive content’ or something like that. Since when has my name become an abusive term?!

One guide told me that search queries are transferred to agents randomly. Ow! That is bad. I was hoping that Chacha would have some intelligent software solution like an intelligent call center ACD that can transfer specific queries to specific guides based on search terms and skills sets of the guides.

So if I get hooked to a smart guide, I’m lucky. Otherwise I can get frustrated explaining to the guide what I am trying to search for.

Another concern is local relevancy. Since all the guides are in US, how familiar will they be with certain searches and keywords of other countries? Say what if I want to know something like the best Manipuri resources or dishes on the Net? Not every best sites come out top of Google, but I might know of certain regional sites that has tons of information on that topic.  

Why would I search in Chacha

One question I often wonder is why should I search in Chacha – the Chacha guides takes times to search for results on their end. Why cant I just Google it? Maybe those who use Chacha are those who don’t know much about Internet searches or who are plain lazy.  Other than that, why would somebody search on Chacha? Maybe someone who has searched what he could on Google and still has not found what he was looking for.

Looking from this angle, maybe then most of the searches that comes to Chacha will be advanced searches – not ones that can be done easily on Google. So we might need specialised guides – who are skilled in certain areas. So if I want to search for something on blogging, may I should be given the option to choose or get connected to a guide who knows pretty much on blogging and knows various sites about blogging. For instance, if I become a Chacha guide, I might be able to search quickly and provide information on social media or PR related queries.

Now when users are looking for advanced answers, they might not necessarily be looking for answers rightaway. Maybe they can wait for sometime- say a day. So instead of just searching through the data base that moment, Chacha can give an additional option wherein users can send questions to Chacha on the email. This question can be circulated among Chacha guides who are good in that particular subject and their answers can be sent back to the searcher.

Chacha also need to internationalise its system. By this , I mean hire guides from out side the US. Maybe a chacha.co.in for India. This will help search more relevant local information rather than searching everything from US. Also, employment opportunities for many.

Overall, it is a good service – and many people like it apparently. Nice and unique idea. Only that I need to ask myself now – can I rely on Chacha everytime I need an answer that Google cant provide?

By the way, Chacha also has a offshoot called ChaCha Results – directory of quality results of searches done on Chacha. This is one site where webmasters would like to get their sites added to.

If you are new to the social media, there are a couple of great sites that list and reviews lots of new web 2.0 startups, provides lists of such sites categorised in groups. One of them is Mashable.

And recently it has come out with some good lists of web 2.0 sites and applications that you simply cannot afford to miss. Check them out.

1. Blogging Toolbox: 120+ Resources for Bloggers – A wonderful list of tools, advice, forums, and other resources for Blogger, Wordpress, Movable, or independent bloggers.

2. No Download Required: 30+ Apps That Are Killing Microsoft – List of web alternatives for MS Office

3. The Ultimate RSS Toolbox – 120+ RSS Resources – A detailed list of everything about RSS – readers, RSS to email convertors, plugins, directories, pingers, tips and hacks.

4. 90+ Online Photography Tools and Resources – Don’t have Adobe Photoshop? No worries. Here is a list of services you can use to edit your pictures online.

Also, Mashable allows you to create your profile page wherein you can link to your blogs, and other social networking sites, acting as a sort of social network aggregator. For example, here is my page. Further, you can have your own personalised Mashable page that will list the pages at Mashable you have been to, your profile, picture, links,and Mashable friends.

There are hundreds of social networking sites today and hundreds more are coming up. Often we find ourselves registering for a couple of these. Some of our friends are in places like Orkut, while some are in other places like Linkedin or Facebook. Over time, we keep on getting invites from friends at new social networking sites and finally we find that we are everywhere. Often in such situations, we lose track of which login ID we have created for a specific site or which friends are where.  

There are more to handle. I am talking about the social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. Add to this the picture and video sharing sites like Flickr and Youtube.

Almost every web 2.0 sites today requires you to create a login ID to use its services. How do you manage your identities in the midst of all these? We can simply jot down our login IDs on a MS word file or use a service like Roboform. But what if we want our friends to know where all places are we? What if we want to access and manage all these identities and sites from a central place?  

In come the social networking aggregators. These sites basically lists all your social networks in one page. Some of them offer advance services such as getting content from all these sites like your list of friends or all your friends’ scraps in that page, so that you don’t have to visit each site individually.

Below is a list of such social network aggregators. Check them out: 

8Hands – This is a desktop application that allows you to offer you to send IM your social network friends, share your online content like YouTube videos, Flickr Pictures, etc. with them by a drag & drop feature. It can also show a summary of all your online social networking activities with statistics like the number of friends in each network, activity meter, etc. 8hands will notify you upon receiving any comment, message, friend request, new video or any other event on your and your friends profiles.

Ex.plode.us – Explode is a social search tool that lets you find others online irrespective of which network they are on, as well as those running their own sites and blogs. You can also create your profile on Explode where other users can leave comments.

HypeIt – You can create a HypeIt profile page where you can display a mash up of all your sites and share it among your HypeIt friends. You can vote on their stories on their profile pages, just like in Digg. The most hyped stories get on to the HypeIt homepage. 

Minggl – Minggl is a browser toolbar that lets you organise your social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook allowing you to decide what to show in these sites by password-protecting sections of your profile. You can maintain a single friends list from various sites and email them directly, without the need to navigate to their profile pages.

With Minggl, you can put your profile information in little portable suitcases called Minggl Notes. When you edit these notes, Minggl can push all those changes to other sites/profiles automatically. It is currently available by invitation only.You can request for an invitation.

Naymz – Naymz allow you to create a personal profile page where you can include a brief about yourself like profession and location, and have the links to all your profiles at various social networking sites, blogs, and other sites. Naymz will promote your profile page at the top of Google and monitor it through its ‘Reputation Monitor’ that will let you know everytime your name appears in a new blog, online news article, or Web page.

There is a Naymz Premuim Service that will provide detailed reports of visitors to your profile, top search engine placement in Yahoo and MSN search, and customization of your search engine listing description. There is also a Premium Plus service that will provide SEO service to your profile page.

OtherEgo – This lets you create a Otherego profile page on which you can import all your social network pages, blogs, and sites that you like. You can browse your sites through tabs just like in iGoogle or Netvibes. You can choose which parts of your profile is shown to the public.

Profilactic – Allows you to create a profile page and a mashup of your sites and share it among your friends at Profilactic.

Profileomat – Formerly known as LinkMyBox, Profileomat allows you to list all your personal websites, social networks, blogs, contact info, photo albums and other profiles in one profile page.

Profilefly – Allows you to create a profile page where you can stream all your links and contents from your social networks, blogs, photo sites, emails and IMs, social bookmark sites, personal websites, etc. and share it among your friends at Profilefly.

Profilelinker – This allows you to link your social network profiles in one central location. You can also get message alerts from your favorite social networks, get updates on your friends, search for users across several networks, get your horoscope, weather, sports news and more.

Snag – Snag aggregates information from your accounts at various social networks. Instead of having to visit each of your networks separately, you can find friends, read messages, and get updates from all of your networks in one place by using Snag.

Socialnetwork.in – With this, you can aggregate links to all of your profiles into one page and widget (coming soon), including social networks, chat, VOIP, and other communities. You can aggregate links to social sites you wish to monitor or your friends on various social and chat networks. You can also rate social and chat networks using a 1-10 scales and comments.

Socialurl – This allows you to create an online profile through which you can search for old classmates and love matches, share photo albums online, and control who sees them, or keep them private. You can also organise to-do lists and bookmark favorite sites, and add additional profiles including EBay, Facebook, Myspace, LiveJournal, Yahoo360, YouTube and more. You can also upload your YouTube videos to one profile.

Tabber - This is an online address book on which you can import your contacts from your web email accounts, IM, Outlook, MySpace, Digg, etc. If you ever need a friend’s address, phone number, need to remember their birthday, etc, you can go on Tabber and look it up. It also allows you to get Google map directions to your friends’ houses, organize them through the use of tags, keep up to date on what your friends are doing online, and be alerted of any changes your friends make to their personal data provided they are members of Tabber.

Upscoop – With Upscoop, you can find out which of your contacts from your Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and AOL contacts are on which social networks. You can also add the Upscoop Social Networks application to your Facebook profile to show off what social networking sites you use.

Surfing the Internet today involves a lot of visits to Web 2.0 sites. You want to read blogs, submit interesting items to your social bookmarking sites, check out the latest videos, and pictures uploaded by users at photo sharing sites. To remember all these site urls, either we use our browser favorites, a social bookmarking site, or use a feed reader. We also install select individual bookmarklets of social booking sites in our browsers to do the job.

Then we conduct tons of searches on the Internet – not only on Google, but dozens of blog aggregators, and other social bookmarking sites – as we want to search for not only news items or simple Internet searches, but among blog posts, forum comments, uploaded videos, and pictures. To do all these, we go to the individual search sites or use the search box in our browsers, or use a browser toolbar such as the Google toolbar or a Yahoo toolbar.

How about we use a single toolbar to do all these mentioned above? Enter Web 2.0 toolbar – a browser bar that lets you do dozens of things including:

What I liked about the toolbar is that it offers me the option to access all these Web 2.0 daily essential visits at one place in my browser, so that I don’t have to type any individual urls or log on to my feeds reader. The toolbar has versions for Inter Explorer and well as Firefox.

1. Submit interesting items to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Spurl, Blink, Yahoo MyWeb, Reddit, Newsvine, Mag.nolia, and many others.

2. Read feeds of popular blogs such as BoingBoing, Techcrunch, Digg, Netscape, and many more.

3. Search on 32 search sites such Google, Wikipedia, ebay, Youtube, Dictionary, Blogger, etc. and also on the site you are on.

4. View job boards like CrunchBoard, GigaOM Jobs, etc.

5. Links to popular videos pages like Youtube Most Viewed, Google’s Most Viewed videos, etc.

6. Links to popular pictures pages like Flickr Most Interesting, Today’s New Webshots Album, etc.

7. Interesting items on the PRWeb site

8. Gadgets like weather, email notifications, etc. There are more widgets available.

9. It can also place a MS Office shortcut menu on the toolbar itself, so that you can access your favorite Notepad or MS Word from the browser itself.

Just one recommendation I have is that it should allow users to add their own specific feeds, search sites, and links to the list already there on the toolbar by default. This way, users can customise it to suit their taste.

Custom make your own browser toolbar

Now having written this, I did some more searches and realised that this toolbar has been created with a service from Conduit that lets webmasters and bloggers create their own toolbar. You can in fact create your own toolbar for your blog with this free service from Conduit.

The Web 2.0 toolbar is fine as it has got most of the sites covered. But just in case you are one of those who are keen to experiment, head on to Conduit.

Mobile service provider Airtel has tied up with UK-based Affle to provide SMS 2.0 – a new generation SMS service in which SMS messages will have colour fonts and lots of better looking emoticons. The ads are supposedly going to be shown on the mobile phone after someone sends a SMS, in those few seconds when you see the ’sending message’ icon.

Tolerable so far! But if this becomes like you have to listen to an ad jingle before sending a SMS message, I have serious doubts how many users would opt for it.

Before this, we have seen two new start ups based on a similar consensual SMS ad marketing model – mGinger and mGarlic. These services allow their users to receive ads of their mobile phones and pay them in return. The ads served are based on the user’s specifications.

How does this work? You get 20 paise for each SMS you receive on your mobile phone. You can get around 10 SMS ads in a day. Then, you can refer your friends to the service. For every ad that your friend receives, you get 10 paise. Further, for every advert that your friend’s friend receives, you get 5 paise. The chain stops here – not like the Amway chain that you can extend endlessly :-) You can also specify what time of the day you can receive ads.

These services are new and so you might not start receiving ad messages instantly though.

Now I wonder how many users would like to participate in such schemes. The people at mGinger and mGarlic insist that it is more for the information that users should sign up and not entirely for the money. After all, how much can you earn accumulating Rs.2 per for 10 ad messages a day. But where is the lack of information? Today, if I need anything, I just need to search on the Net. In addition to that, we are anyway bombarded with ads on TV, newspapers, magazines, billboards, etc. However, this is just one way of looking at it.

On the other hand, there might be mobile phone users willing to receive such SMS messages in the hope that they can at least recover their mobile phone expenses.

Recently there was another news that talked about Cellebrum planning to pay its consumers royalty fees for ringtones and pictures composed by them if they are downloaded by others users. 

The story quoted the Cellebrum spokesperson saying that they are piloting user-generated content in Punjab and Karnataka. Users can generate their own content and upload it to their data centre. Each such content will be protected through a username and password. On any content that is downloaded the user who generated that content will be paid a royalty.

Seems like interesting times for the mobile phone users. More interesting times for the advertiser. 

Online link exchange schemes are viral and addictive. Too much indulgence can be a bad SEO tactic, but for a start up, doing so in moderation once in while can be good. It helps you connect with other bloggers and get links.

I participated in some of these earlier and benefited from it. I wanted to participate in one for this blog. So here it goes.

All you have to do is copy the text below, follow the rules, and post it on your blog taking the chain forward. While I will continue to look out for backlinks, I would appreciate if you can leave a comment. That way, it is faster for me to know you have link me and I can add you here.

========= Copy and Paste below this line ==========

Instructions:

1.) Copy and paste the matrix of ‘ViralTags’ below courtesy of Founders Cafe

2.) Substitute the Host Tag and one of the ‘Viral Tags’ in the matrix with your anchor text of choice with your blog’s URL. Please keep anchor text to a max of 3 words to keep the matrix size manageable.

3.) When you get a ping back from someone that has your link in one of their ‘Viral Tags’, practice good karma by copying his/her Host Tag’s anchor text (automatically the associated link will also be copied) and paste it over one of your ‘Viral Tags’ below.

4.) Encourage and invite your readers to do the same and soon this can grow virally.

Host Tag: Social Media Munching

International City Travel | Asian Celebrity News | One Million Shirts | Tech at Hand | Rich Minx | Internet Marketing Austria | Ageless Beauty | Web 2.0 Tutorials | Technology Music Life | infokarir jobs | Manila Mom | Link Love | Blogging Money Secret | Internet Startup Blog | Web Design Blog | Daily Life Technology | Make Money Blogging | Steve’s Tech Blog | Agloco Internet Marketing | Daily Bulls Investing | Tech Gadgets Stocks | Affiliate Program | Computer Seventy-Five | Learn about e-Learning | Tech Hack Ramblings | Jack Book | Screen Writer Guy | Overseas Filipino Worker | ViralTags | Startup Entrepreneur Money | ViralTags | ViralTags | Earn Money Online | Really Smart Guy | Earn Income Online | Day Mind Xpression | Entrepreneurship Internet Web | Make Money Blogging | Create a Blog | Pie Hole | start a blog | Make Money Blogging | Marketing Made Simple | Tech Startups Web2.0 | Music Videos | ViralTags | Build Rankings Fast | Mrs Sparrow | Hot Buzz | Weight Loss | Really Funny Jokes | Best of Blogs | Heroin Addiction Codependence | Internet Marketing German | German – USA | Domain Development Blogs | Sundhed og Helbred | Giving Link Love | Business Blog Web | Photoshop Tutorials | Anitokid Chronikos | Klapkids Chronikos | esofthub’s web finds| Everything iPod | Jason’s Random Thoughts | Fun Web Development | Monetize Your Blog | Yung Silent Whisper | Stratz’s Blog | My Journey | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Blogging for Money | Wealth Blog | ViralTags | Gadgets & Technology | Make Money Home | ViralTags | The Broken Bow | ViralTags | ViralTags | Fanatic Space | Cheezmizan with Chuva | Catepol | Wolly’s Weblog | Profitable Productive Blogging | Cat on my Head | Bloggointestinale | 2012 Movies | iMod | Lorad Zarcon | Instruzioni | Sid05 Weblog | Bayle | Random Access Life | Mario’s Weblog | Acchiappasogni | Dietro e a Casa | Make Money Online | Anchor Text | Alex 2000 | My Life | Personal Finance | Hanneng.net Tech Blog | Business Twins | Pixie Tail | Gold Rushing’s Blog | Trade CDs | Business Chats | Paid to Blog | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Huma B | Social Media Munching | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Mariuca’s Perfume Gallery | Make Money Online | JLS Cisco Networking | Humor Jokes | Mik3 | Web2.0 Founder Interviews | Political Social Media | Master Engrafter | Making Money Online | GoldyWorld Fun | Static Thinkbox | Mariuca | Investing Women Online | ViralTags | My Life is Murphy’s Law | MSU Spartan Sports | ViralTags | ViralTags | All About Life| ViralTags | ViralTags | Affordable Graphic Design | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Mariuca’s Perfume | CrispNetworks | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Caribbean Travel Blog | Jehzlau Concepts | Nonsense & Tears | Time Clock Software | SEO Blog | Anything and Everything | Father of One | Web Comic Artist | Justice Investmets | Terrible Horrible Evil | Russian Jokes Videos | Personal Development Blog |Good Jokes | Webtools | The Third Eye | Earn Money on Internet | EMOI | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags |

Important: Once I get a ping back from you (I promise to do the best I can), I will add your anchor text and the associated link you designate as ‘Host Tag’ here, replacing one of the ‘ViralTags’ from the matrix above. As more and more bloggers copy and paste this matrix, the more backlinks you will have with your anchor text. If everybody who copy and paste from your blog does the same, pretty soon this will spread and go viral. So, the sooner you participate, the more links with anchor text you will receive.

======== Copy and Paste from Above this line ========

All the best and let’s hope we all get some link love.

We have done all the social networking on the Net. Now we can do it on the mobile phone. The people at Webaroo has started a new service called SMS Gupshup through which we can forward SMS messages to a group of friends.   

This is how it works. You send a SMS to GupShup, it gets forwarded to everyone who is subscribed to your group. The messages are also saved on the website and can be viewed on your group’s page. You can join and subscribe to other groups and get SMS alerts whenever messages are posted by the author. There are already many groups on SMS Gupshup.

The service is free and users have to only pay the cost of SMS to their mobile service providers.

Cool service. Just that I had one concern – and that was the expenditure involved. Online social networking works well because, among other reasons, people do it on their PCs at their offices. If people use cyber cafes, the Rs. 20 per hour rate is still okay. For home users, the Internet charges starts at a mere Rs. 400 per month. No matter how many messages you exchanges with your friends, you wouldn’t normally say you have burn a hole in your pocket because of your online social networking.   

Now here, a SMS costs around 50 paise to Rs. 2 per message. For youngsters and even for many of those who are on prepaid, this amount can a big deal.

I shared this concern with SMS Gupshup. They responded:

• Our take is that for 50 paise – Rs. 3, a person reaches out to 10-20 people depending on the amount of people they want to keep in touch with.

• Another way you can look at it is that people can subscribe to certain groups and that tends to be a one time cost for that person.

Valid points.

Now I am wondering if we can leverage this service in our work/professional life? Suppose we are working in a team on a particular project and need to update all the team members on the field about the status of the project frequently, maybe we can use this service to SMS developments to the team. A cheaper alternative and a time-saver to SMSing everyone individually.

This reminds me of Twitter. We can do the same with it. However, the benefit here is that you will save on the cost of sending a SMS message through an Indian mobile service provider instead of sending your updates to Twitter’s UK number.

Two weird ideas:

1. A blogger, or an online group moderator,  can send updates to his/her readers/members through SMS. 

2. A PR professional send updates on developments to his/her set of journalists.

Can we think of some more?

Affiliate marketing programs are the first lot that website owners and bloggers start looking at when they want to monetise their sites or blogs. Google Adsense is the obvious name that comes to our mind when we talk of affiliate marketing. So recently when I went through that stage for another online venture of mine, I signed up for Adsense plus a host of other affiliate programs. 

What I didn’t realise that time was that the affiliate programs that work for the blogs or websites in the US might not necessarily work for a website with an Indian audience. The reasons can be many. The primary reason is that there are more Americans today who are buying stuff online than Indians. I recently read about somebody from Futurebaazar, supposedly one of India’s best online shopping portals, mentioning in a news story that out of the total number of visits the site gets in a day, the percentage of people who actually end up buying is so far minuscule. Online shopping is apparently a phenomenon not yet accepted fully by the Internet goers in India. I suppose the touch and feel at Ansal Plaza is what people want :-)

So, people here are more likely to click on ads that link to another service or another online site, rather than a product link. Maybe that is the reason why some people think Google Adsense works best among many affiliate marketing networks.

Secondly, there is the question of relevancy. There is no use advertising a New York service in your website targeted at the Indian audience. This led me to an online quest for Indian affiliate networks.

Below is the list.  This is a work in progress list of all the major affiliate marketing programs in India. You might have run in to many of these already. The basic idea is to share what I have collected so far and maybe provide a resource to somebody looking to monetise his/her site.  And of course, please link to this blog. Leave me a comment in case you know/have any other affiliate network sites or programs.

Affiliate network sites -

Affiliate Curry  -  Supposedly India’s first affiliate network offering a small range of Indian affiliate programs.

Affiliate Network – Offers affiliate network and provides commission to affiliates on a click basis

Cine Chance- At the Starting you will get Rs. 5 for every confirmed registered member of Cine Chance who comes from a banner/text link on your site. If they get satisfied with your conversion rate, they can increase your commission upto Rs 10 per free registration.

ClixGalore India – Offers five scaled levels of affiliate recruitment and promotional services to their merchants with a small but growing position in the India Affiliate Marketing industry. Network access to the USA, Japan, Australia, India and the UK.

dgm India - A wholly own subsidiary of Deal Group, part of dgm Holdings Plc. The Company’s principal activity is the delivery of ROI through affiliate marketing, search engine marketing, display inventory and email, either as individual channels, or as a complete solution.

Media Marketing Online – Provider of Online Marketing services and Sales Solutions with various services like Search Engine Optimization , website optimization services, Search Engine Marketing solutions, PPC Management Services etc based in India with host of services for Advertisers, Publishers and Agencies.

Tyroo – Offers pay per click ads. Generate tags for various categories on your website after identifying the size and type of ads that you want us to serve.

Webshree – Network of web sites and representatives selling your product on a commission-only basis.

Individual websites providing affiliate programs -

Bazaar of India – You can earning 20% commission when your reference buy its herbal products.

Bharatmatrimony.com – India’s leading matrimony site offering banner ads, text ads, and email marketing. Earn commissions of upto 50% of the paid subscriptions fee. You earn when visitors reach BharatMatrimony from your website and becomes a paid subscriber.

Career khazana – Whenever any employer visits the site through your link and becomes a premium member, you earn 25% of a net membership fee.

ChennaiBazaar – Earn 8% commissions on sale value on every successful sale generated.

ClickAunty – 25% of each order placed by a referral. 15% of each renewal order.

Crafts in India – Craftsinindia invites queries from the organizations interested in being its affiliates.

ebay – You can refer ebay to friends and earn USD 3 per active confirmed registered user. You can also sell ebay products on your site. There is now a ebay India, so people can trade in INR as well. ebay also has partnerships with other global affiliate networks like Commission Junction and Auction Ads.

Ferns n petals – Earn up to 15% commission on referred merchandise sales with a 10 day cookie for return visitors. You get commission on all sales that take place up to 10 days after you send someone to Fernsnpetals. For example, if a customer visits your site and clicks on its banner ad and doesn’t buy anything right away, but purchases something at Fernsnpetals a few days later, you still get credited for the sale.

Fropper – Add a link on your site to Fropper. Whenever someone visits Fropper.com through this link and becomes a premium member, you can earn up to 50% of the fee.

India club – Online shopping site. You can sell Indian Books, Music, Paintings and Multimedia on your site and earn up to 10% in referral fees.

India Herbs – Paying you 40% commission on sales generated from your referrals. Paying you 10% commission on all sales generated on the websites of your referrals.

Indiatimes – You get paid 10% of sale by simply referring a visitor to this online shopping portal.

IndianFriendfinder – It pays you USD 1.00 for each woman and USD 0.50 for each man that signs up for a free membership. The more traffic you send, the more you earn with its percentage program. You earn an extra 10% when other affiliates sign up under your broker ID.

IndianKarma – Pays you 40% commission for each member who signs up for a paid membership.

IndianMatromonialNetwork – Based on a set performance. The higher the performance, the more you will earn! The base commission is 40%.

IndianMatrimonials – With its affiliates program, you earn 30% on all sales referred by your site. That means if someone signs up for one of its Deluxe accounts, you earn up to USD 17.70 per sale without doing anything. Once a month all affiliates with referral revenues of at least USD 25.00 are paid.

Indianplaza – Link your site to products on Indianplaza and and it will pay you a fee for every item sold through a referral coming from your site.

IndianOnNet – As soon as your referral pay its fees, it sends you 40% of the fees as your commission. Your referrals might in turn ask their friends to subscribe to the paid services of IndiansOnNet. If these friends of theirs join, then you receive 15% of the fees. 

India travel – Opportunity to earn rewards for sending customers who register with Indiatravel and who book trips.

JeevanSathi- All you need to do is to provide a Banner link on your website that fetches free and paid registrations to JeevanSathi. For every Free as well as Paid Registration you will be entitled to a commission.

Lifepartner India – You can place its links on your site. When users registered at Lifepartners India and becomes a premium member, you earn 50% commission.

Makemytrip – MakeMyTrip.com is an online travel company and among the most successful Internet companies in the country. It provides an affiliate service for which you have to write to the site explaining your business details.

Matri-Money The Matri-Money Affiliate Network offers multiple Indian Affiliate Programs across 14 Matrimony sites, offering up to 50% commission on paid registrations.

Money cosmos – It pays you up to USD 1.00 for each user who registers for free. It also pays you a whopping 20% extra for transactions generated by members referred by you.

Organic India – Its affiliate program allows you to sell tea and other natural products. You can receive 10% commission for every item sold through your site.

rishte hi rishte – You will earn Rs 15.00 for each member referred by you who signs up for free in its matrimonial section.You will earn Rs. 3.00 for each member who signs up for free in its matrimonial section referred by affiliates under you.

Salwar Kameez – All Affiliates, Super-Affiliates, SEO’s, Asssociates, Distributors, Dealers, Representatives, Agents are welcome to join its International team and share the profits.

Shaadi.com – Earn upto USD 0.55 on every free profile and upto 40% revenue share – USD 44 for every paid membership.

TajOnline – 5% revenue share on every purchase made on Tajonline through your website. Advance Program: 5% revenue share + recurring commission on purchases made by an individual for 1 year.

Techtribe frontFoot – With frontFoot, companies post high-paying job opportunities that they are looking to fill, and techTribe members refer people in their network for those opportunities. If the company hires a candidate that was referred, the person who made the referral is rewarded financially.

Disclaimer: The above list is simply to provide a directory listing and a brief initial intro to services provided by independent affiliate marketers, for research purposes. This blog cannot take responsibility for the links and descriptions provided above, and offers that these affiliate marketers provide. You are advised to consult and read the terms and conditions provided on their individual websites.

The mass media have an element of being ’social’ today. While the traditional media – read newspapers, TV, online news portals – are increasingly trying to add ’social’ elements in their makeup, there is also a rush of new media startups that swears by the content generated by their readers or users. The prime constituents of this new media or web 2.0 as called otherwise are blogs, wikis, memes, social networking, online forums and so on.

More and more consumers, audiences, and readers are using these new social media to participate to the making of the news or discussion. The ramifications are felt not only in the Internet space but also in other forms of media say the mobile phone.

Maybe I’m too late in starting this discussion that has been written about numerous times on the blogosphere. That said, the social media is growing and there are new sites coming up by the dozens everyday. Is this going to be like the dotcom bust? Is this going to result in an overwhelming plethora of information overload? Nobody knows for sure. But what will be exciting is diving in the whirlpoool trying to make sense and use of this churn.

Through the Social Media Munching blog, I’m trying to decipher these new social media outlets from an user’s point of view, and in general, how they affect our daily lives, how we can benefit from these new forms of media, and how they are affecting the traditional media and related activities, businesses, and professions.

Now how about this? Blog, blog, blogs, orkut, facebook, myspace, linkin, ryze, yaari, this cafe, that cafe, earn monet this way, earn money that way, desktop tools, PC tools, enhancements, hacks, web 2.0 sites, web 2.0 sites, web 2.0 sites …..so many of them. Are they really all worthwhile? Or are they just adding to the confusion? Do we need to install another Firefox add-on because it is the latest? Another social networking site? Why should I want to create an online avatar and dress it up and down again? Is second life a necessity?

There are zillions of blog tools available and coming up. Does a blogger really use all of them? Are 90% of the site and blog directories pure crap adding no value at all?

While there are valuable services and products out there today, I supposed we should remember that a whole industry has sprung up riding on the web 2.0 bubble and offering us noting more than making our lives more and more complicated every day.

So now there….we have two opposing viewpoints. And I’m as confused as everybody or surfing the web 2.0 in glee. Time could never have been better. We will learn more as we follow the rabbit and munch together one at a time the wonders or the perils of the being in the web 2.0 land.

Technorati tag: social media, web 2.0, blogging, media, PR, public relations, marketing