So you have tried all possible ways to make money out of blogging and still wondering what’s the right strategy? Here is some good news.
ibibo– the blogging platform from MIH is trying the best possible way (known to mankind) to attract bloggers – i.e. throw money!
And its not just some paltry sum – but a whopping 1.5 crore!!!
slurp slurp..
Given the fact that Indians will do anything (i.e. play around with the system) to maximize their gain, I strongly suspect that the system will end up in corruption; if not handled well.
A quick glance at the parameters to shortlist the top bloggers will tell you that the whole hunt is dependent on 1 factor i.e. Quality score. And how is it calculated?
So every time a blogger makes a new post it adds to his/her Activity Score. Then, the number of people visiting that post, the number of comments it gets and the number of people who become fans of that blogger contribute to his/her Popularity Score The Rating that the viewers give to a post determines the Quality Score of the blogger.
So in short, if I open up 100 accounts and use the rest of 99 accounts to improve activity on my main blog, I have a strong chance to win? [feels like deja vu from Nach Baliye episode where one of the teams bought 100s of sim cards and voted for themselves!]
A look at the top blogger (currently) shows that most of the posts are just copy/paste from standard news sites, majority of the activities are just comments with two letters – “Hi”.
100s of comments with just Hi? Wow! Have people stopped being verbose while commenting?
And do you say that it’s legitimate? Go Fish.
While the 1.5 crore offer is a great way to increase adoption, the major challenge for ibibo team would be to solve the classic chicken-and-egg problem:
- Corrupted individuals will do all sorts of cheap tricks (create 1000s of fake profiles etc..) and in any given time (if not for smart algorithm) – 50/100 blogs will be corrupted ones.
- Eventually the genuine bloggers will ditch the system – After seeing the corrupted blogs making it to the top 100, genuine bloggers obviosly will get pissed off and look for some other tool/platform.
Remember, money can take you to some point – but you need a lot more substance to be successful. Case in point – Four game shows started after the success of KBC and joined the deadpool within few weeks. And the reason? They lacked the basic substance.
Guys – throwing money can never be a differentiator. Build some nifty feature, ease the process of blogging. Let India Blog without any 24*7 Internet connection – Think of those who want to blog, but are too scared to try out advanced apps like Blogger/Wordpress.
So ibibo guys – build more substance in your blogging tool and make the whole experience so easy that even my mom can start blogging [she learnt SMSing while watching KBC – she was so engaged with the show that she wanted to be a part of it!].
And also, add richness & originality of content as a parameter to your Quality score – without that, you will not get top bloggers to blog @ ibibo. [even if you don’t know how to incorporate that in the ranking, atleast mention that in the contest rules – that will serve as a good enough deterrent for the ones who are looking for quick bucks!].
Only time will tell how ibibo fares in the Indian market, meanwhile read the reality check of ByIndia’s $5 million offer
