We're in the process of bringing advertising to Moblog UK. Just simple Google AdSense ads for the moment, but it's a turning point for a site started as a hobby. It's becoming a business. I got involved in the Moblog Technology side of things, which seeks to find applications for the underlying mobile content capture technology. However, since talking to Technokitten and others we're now re-evaluating the value of the site, of the community. Having just got into web dev as the dotcom crash arrived, I wasn't hugely taken by a advertising-lead business plan. But look at the average acquisition price per monthly unique visitor from some of the big deals, some old, some bang up to date (data from Business 2.0):

• Broadcast.com $710
• Excite $394
• Lycos $385
• GeoCities $187
• MarketWatch $80
• BlueMountain.com $71
• About.com $58
• Ask Jeeves $44
• MySpace $36
• AltaVista $26
• About.com $22
• iWon $18
• Weblogs Inc. $10
• Launch Media $6.60
• BlueMountain.com $3.23
• Lycos $2.57
• MP3.com $1.84
• Excite $0.73
• DrKoop.com $0.47

The average is $38, by that kind of logic, Moblog is worth $4.1m! The newer deals price the average punter at a significantly lower level, but even a $1 user value is a very interesting proposition. Our plan is to increase return visitors by a factor of ten this year and to create revenue with advertising on the site and by maintaining the proportion of those people that want to become subscribers. If we can do that in 2006, we might have a good 2007 as well.

We've been lucky enough recently to find ourselves someone who's been successful in a dotcom business and who has taken a shine to our plight. I hesitate to use the word mentor as it's still early days, but she's helping us to focus on planning and delivering. These are two things which need to be regarded with the utmost respect, it's easy to pledge, hard to do. We've made a lot of plans in the last few years, and I hope we'll have a 2006 of Getting Things Done.

Google is a fickle beast. I just noticed that my composite image of the Tour Eiffel (3mb JPEG) is the first result on a google.co.uk image search for that phrase.

Ran. Dom.

Met Technokitten today. As a mobile marketer and moblogger I was interested to find out her take on what we're up to with Moblog Technology. My broad business model is to sell the software, SMEs will use it in the same kinds of ways they're starting to use blogging. Larger organisations will use it to power marketing campaigns and capture frontline stuff, like the 7/7 and Buncefield images we've had recently. Technokitten didn't particularly go for this, not seeing the market, which is what JC has been saying all along kind of. I was really forced to eat humble pie when TK totally went for the community being the valuable thing.

The business plan that dare not speak it's name recently has been the "Why don't we just monetise the site?" plan. I've been against this for a while. I was not convinced that the effort we put it will generate a proportional return. We've got to build the community size quite dramatically and make subscription a much more attractive deal. I just didn't see that turning that much revenue, but I'm starting to wonder if we could do it. We'd have to focus right down on growing the userbase, that and only that would be the criteria. But if we could grow it by a factor of ten - to 50,000 people - then we might have something.

There are about a million ways we could increase the likelihood of the site generating some money, and we could spend that money in turn on marketing to promote the site further. I think the site needs to have it's version of passing through the eye of the needle to some extent. It's just not a business at the moment, every corner of the site oozes hobbyishness. If it wants to make money it has to shape up and fast. But linking to JC on Blogger just reminded me that it's not impossible for a site to rebrand big time :-).

To: Afternoon
From: Google Resume Thanks
Subject: Thank you from Google!

Dear Applicant,
We recently received your resume and would like to thank you for your interest in working at Google. After reviewing your resume, a member of our staffing team will be in touch if we find you may be a fit for the role for which you've applied. Thanks again!

Sincerely,
Google Jobs

Note: This potentially life-changing decision is totally unrelated to yesterday's. Just thought my CV could do with a bit of a spruce-up. :-)

I just made a potentially life changing decision. I don't want to let the cat out of the bag at this point, but look for more information on "Project O" in the coming weeks. Yikes!

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Last updated at 11:32, Wednesday June 18th, 2008. All times are shown in 24-hour clock format and are BST.

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