Make money through dating sites
April 30, 2008
Even though there are some good free dating sites now available, there is still money to be made in dating. I am making over $2000 a year through a partnership I have on my Tokyo website, without spending any time dealing with the site or any money marketing it. My Tokyo site is a travel website, but the audience seems to also like the dating part of the website. It is totally managed by a company I have partnered with and revenue seems to be growing nicely. The partner is World Friends Networks and they are looking to expand their business.
I am offering $100 to anyone who would like to also become a partner with World Friends. I am willing to pay anyone $100 who is accepted into the network. You will need to have an established website with some traffic. WorldFriends sets up a dating site on a subdomain on your site. They try to integrate the design, so it looks like it is running on your own website, so it can also help get return visitors.
They pay quarterly and are prompt with their payments.
Update: I just realized that it now costs $500 to join the program. They have changed the policy since I joined. If you do have the traffic, I do believe it is a good revenue source, but I personally don’t believe in having to pay to join up to a program, even if it does take some time to get set up. I will leave up to people to decide if they want to go through.
Fun and games in China
April 27, 2008
I was surprised last year when I came to China how easy it had become to rent an apartment and live in the country (aside from the crowds and the pollution). With the run up to the Olympics, China has become more like it was ten years ago - controlling the movement of people in the country.
I had a bit of a panic last week when I started reading about the visa clampdowns and how China was basically trying to do what it could to make it difficult to both enter and stay in the country. I have applied for a six month visa and will know next week if my application has been successful.
This of course has made it a huge headache for anyone wanting to travel to the country either for business or pleasure. Tibet is totally off limits for now. Many festivals and events have been postponed until after the Olympics. So there is not a lot of Olympic stuff happening now.
The new design for my Beijing site is now up. There is still a bit of work to do on it, but it’s a big improvement on the old design.
Don’t expect too much here for a while
April 13, 2008
I am spending more and more time on my Beijing Olympics blog, I just haven’t had the time to put into this site for now. I am also trying keep an offline diary of the different things I have been doing to promote the site.
I am going to release the diary as an ebook. I think it could become a good blueprint for someone attempting to create a website around a particular event. If the site does actually to go on to become a success, I will probably charge a nominal fee for it. If it doesn’t, well I suppose I will just have to give it away for free and let other people analyze what went wrong.
The weather is starting to warm-up in Beijing now and the apartment I have rented for the Olympics is starting to feel a little more like my home for now.
No feedburner in China
April 2, 2008
If you are wondering why you get traffic from China but don’t have any RSS readers and you use feedburner for your feed, well the reason is that feedburner is generally blocked in China by the great Chinese firewall.
Most blogs hosted on their own domain are fine, Google Reader and Bloglines work fine too. The problem lies when you try to subscribe to a blog which uses feedburner and you click on the RSS icon.
There are many ways around this of course and net savy users will know what to do, but there are times when you just can’t be bothered jumping hurdles.
I just thought I would mention this if you are targetting users in China with your blog.
