Blog News Watch

Amazon Associate program had announced some major changes in payment schedule and others. Beginning January 1, 2007, Amazon Associates payments will be monthly instead of quarterly (15 days), paid approximately 60 days after the end of each month. A lot more like Google’s adsense, you get paid current month’s payment two months later. For example- January’s payment will be paid on end of March. A bit too long if you say 60 days, but off course those guys needs to collect the money first before they pay you.

Amazon also will be extending the 6% referral fees on Amazon.com Gift Certificates through March 31, 2007.

And the last changes will be in check fees (for US only). Effective January 1, 2007, Amazon will increasing the Check Processing Fee for US-based Associates from $8 to $15. The minimum check amount is still $100. Non-US associates won’t be effected by this last change.

Source: Amazon Associates Central

Amazon Associates program, Payment Structure

This year quite a few Social networking sites bagged huge amount of venture funding. The biggest valuation of social networking site was I guess Facebook with half-a-billion dollar valuation earlier this year. The popular business network LinkedIn didn’t get near to that valuation of Facebook but manages to get post-financing valuation of $250 million. Which is in fact remarkable, considering the age of LinkedIn. Without any doubt LinkedIn is the most popular business network on the west side of Atlantic, while on the otherside of Atlantic Xing(former Open BC) rule.

LinkedIn set to receive from a undisclosed financier a $13 million funding round at a $250 million valuation. expects to generate $45 million to $60 million in sales in 2007 and $100 million in 2008. This network has been generating profits since last March(2006), and now it got around 70 employees. They are right behind Facebook in terms of generating sales. So, how does LinkedIn make money? LinkedIn has three revenue streams today — sponsorships, subscriptions to scour and contact LinkedIn’s 8.5 million membership base, and job listings. About 45% of the revenue comes from subscriptions. Different corporations, pay between $10,000 and $100,000 annually to let their internal recruiting staff use LinkedIn’s database for potential hires.

They had already overcome lots of odds, but now that they are in a set position expect LinkedIn to be bigger and better in coming year. Congratulation LinkedIn.

Source: MarketWach 

LinkedIn, Venture Funding, Business Social networking 

Tech Kills, owned by Laze Media Network of Laze, Inc. which is a technology news blog now up for sale at Sitepoint marketplace. I have seen this blog growing, which usually focused on critique technology rather then just a news.

Tech Kills is currently PR5 in Google and has over 10,000 unique visitors/month. Though the revenue earnings are bellow US$100. Advertisements are either TLA(text link ads) or YPN (note YPN only shows to US visitors). The blog is built on WordPress 2.0.2. The sale includes all rights for all the articles, and the ownership of the domain. There are currently 395 posts and 127 comments, contained within 18 categories (so far).

Current bid for this blog is US$1,300, there was no Buy it now price declared. The traffics of this blog are mostly organic, as mentioned by blog owner.

Sitepoint, Tech Kills, Marketplace, Blog for sale

Well looks like November and December is the month of sales and purchase. Blog networks are also in serious Holiday purchase mood. what now?

b5Media is adding Linked Intelligence is a Blog focusing on the social networking site LinkedIn, which helps businesses and professionals to network each other, in their network. Recently b5Media was expanding its business blogging wing and this is part of it. Scott Alan’s comment down bellow will clarify you that it was more of a merger(Linked intelligence joining b5) rather then acquire. There was no official announcement from b5Media but the owner of Linked Intelligence already put some words on it-

I’m pleased to announce that Linked Intelligence will soon be joining the b5media network. With more than 150 blogs and two million unique visitors a month, b5media is one of the largest professional blogging networks, including some well-known business and technology blogs:

This blog have just 613,18 Alexa ranking, Technorati ranking- 131,614 and Google page rank 0/10. But Linked Intelligence attracted b5Media for number of reason and Scott explained it in his comment.

Looks like Blogmedia  inc. decided to unload yet another wonderful blog in the process of narrowing down their targated subjects. The blog which is up for bid at sitepoint is a established PR6 sports blog: “Sporty Blog”. The blog was launched nearly a year ago on December,2005.

The details of “Sporty blog”:

• Alexa traffic rank 1,904,034 as of today. There has been 29% drop in visit and 38% drop in page views in last three months. Most probably as usual flactuation nothing serious.
•  Unique hit 9,415/month, pageviews 24,971/month. Not bad at all for a site not yet one year old.
• Site is built on Movable Type v3.1. Sale include existing content, domain and the platform. 
• Total monthly revenueu US$563; TLA-US$163, Adsense-US$2, Private ad sale-US$398.
• One blogger currently blogging, whos contract is non-transferable but can be hired with similar arrangement. Presently he is paid 100% of the first $150 in monthly earnings and 50% of any additional earnings.
• At sitepoint current bid on this blog is US$1,400 and buy it now price is US$5,000

Looks like the top bidder is very fimilier to me:D.