Quick Update: I’m half asleep.
Dec 19, 2008 Lookatme, I'm Web 2.0!
I’m half asleep. It’s true. It took me four minutes to finish this sentence. Now six!
This has been one of those days weeks where I’ve worked myself to the bone. Busy before work, working my ass off at work, the keeping busy after work with going to the gym, parenting, taking care of the house, and other projects I throw at myself.
Busy.
Ridiculous. That’s a better word. I should tell the world. If I felt like it, here’s how I’d do it:
I injured my knee while running. Can’t run for 2-3 days. 
Sounds like a Facebook update. Gotta tell people I attempted to work out but now have a lame excuse for why I’m not. Maybe get some sympathy lovin from all the females I’m “friends” with.
Ready for the weekend! Sounds like a twitter update. Bye peeps. Signing off because I think I might have a life this weekend.
Looking forward to finishing this project on Monday. Definitely a LinkedIn update. Workaholic whore.
OMG I’m so sore! I lifted way to much at the gym! MySpace udpate. No further explanation needed. Would be posted with photoshopped picture.
(nothing) – That’s a Yammer update. Don’t want office peeps to know you’re M-I-A.
(nothing) – That’s a pownce update, because they are M-I-A.
RELAX! OMW! – An update via txt to my wife today, who [not so] graciously asked when I was going to be home.
OFFLINE – Meebo update that I’m setting right now. g’nite!
Tags: facebook, linkedin, meebo, myspace, twitter, updates, yammer
Tips I Never Plan On Cashing
Feb 12, 2008 Lookatme, I'm Web 2.0!
Paul whats-his-face and the Y Combinator team (in my most sincere stalker/admirer voice: “Hiiiiiiii, I’m a huge fan! “) funded the newly launched TipJoy.com. Created by founders Abigail Kirigin and Ivan Kirigin, TipJoy’s concept is basically a tip jar for IOUs.
In the past, I’ve always found the concept of a tip jar for content creators and software developers kind of limited. And as a content creator (who’s also dabbled in software and mod development), everytime I put up a tip jar to collect donations I feel like a bum on the virtual corner of the internet street market. I may need to deal with my own demons, but the collection of such donations never felt guilt free.
As for the limitations of tip jars in the past, there needed to be a middle man to perform the transaction. The person sending and the person receiving the monetary “tip” both needed to have an account to transact the funds. Often through Paypal, and later through Amazon, these micropayments were rarely big enough to justify a transaction fee.
In the past I wrote about Billmonk, an IOU processor as opposed to a payment processor. The beauty of working with IOUs is the requirement for currency to be immediately available is eliminated. It serves as a record, and in many cases, IOUs in both directions of parties involved tend to cancel out past IOUs. (Or they continue to build up until one party needs to redeem his/her IOUs before continuing transactions). This model is very similar to the concept that TipJoy adapts. If you like something enough, you can leave a tip for the person that generated the content. It can be in any amount from 5 cents on up.
You do not need to have a positive balance to leave a tip. You can pay at a later date, or any tips you receive can be used to build up your balance to leave tips for other content creators. If you decide you want to cash you, you can use your positive balance for an Amazon gift card or donate it to charity.
Or you can do what I plan on doing: keep a positive balance to reward creators of great content with generous tips. Yes, this is a company that I really want to see succeed. They have the philosophy model that I can believe in. I’ve added their tip button to my site, and will add it on individual posts in the near future. If you ever come across any content of mine you like, feel free to donate a few cents here or there. My contributions will go to other authors who I feel have provided the net community with something of value. It’s my way of paying back a community I’ve become quite passionate about.
PayItToMe.com Paid It To Me! (Or How I Got Halo 3 For Free!)
Sep 28, 2007 Business & Marketing, Lookatme, I'm Web 2.0!
Yesterday I was browsing through Techcrunch when I came to this story. Michael Arrington discussed a unique concept about how one website was generating buzz by having advertisers buy things for their readers to get displayed on the site.
The site is PayItToMe.com. Basically the concept is that users submit photos of items they wish for to Pay It To Me and advertisers buy it for them. The photos are displayed in a desired items page. Then Reno, the guy running the site, brokers any deals with advertisers who are interested in paying for a readers item. The advertiser pays the reader directly through PayPal and then sends a screenshot as proof of payment to Reno. Reno then takes the picture, and adds it to the homepage as well as a unique page. He then links the picture to the advertisers site. The advertiser then gets to benefit from all the buzz the site is generating.
I told John about PayItToMe and he gave it a try. He submitted a picture of Heroes Season 1 on DVD and someone bought it! (could have gone for Heroes on HD DVD, John. They you could justify a Xbox 360+HD Drive at Christmas!) I was kind of surprised. I didn’t think it would work, but it did.
So, since it worked for him I decided to give it a try. But instead of submitting an item, I wanted to participate as the advertiser. At the time, the lowest priced item on the desired items page was a 30 pack of Bud Light for $22.99. It sounded like a reasonable request to me, so I contacted Reno and told him I’d like to sponsor that reader. He sent me the paypal info, I paid and sent him the details, then he put my link on the homepage. The traffic wasn’t like a Digg or Reddit front page, but it was still pretty substantial. I got 400 visitors in about 10 hours time (as of midnight last night). I’m still getting traffic from it, but Google Analytics has several hours delay so I won’t know until midnight tonight what my 24 hour turnaround was. Still, I’m pretty satisfied with deal as an advertiser.
Then I decided to submit an item as a reader. I didn’t want it too be too luxurious an item like the iMacs and cameras that some people were requesting, but I did want it to be an item I would enjoy and probably wouldn’t buy otherwise. So I added this picture:
I didn’t expect that I’d actually have anyone buy it anytime soon. I was hoping that traffic and buzz would build for the site and eventually someone would purchase it for me. But, when I checked my email this morning, I was VERY SURPRISED to see that a company had sent me a paypal payment so I could buy Halo 3. WOW!
The company that purchased it for me was Kalendra. A big thanks to them, and to show how grateful I am I’ll be providing a review of Kalendra on this site soon.
At first I was a little sceptical about PayItToMe simply because it was just a guy that had a blogger account and was doing all the transactions via email. Then I remembered a little site called One Red Paperclip who was setup almost exactly the same way. Through email and his blogspot blog, some guy traded up from one red paperclip to a house.
These guys are showing that it’s amazing what you can do when you just start something even though you don’t have the programming or design or HTML skills to get it going. If you have an idea, get it up and get it going. This may be a READY-FIRE-AIM approach, but at least something is happening and it’s no longer just a “yet another idea”.
Way to go guys, let’s see where you can innovate from here!