Blog your way to your bank

What would you call somebody who is only 23 and quit the job the very next day after getting a 30 per cent rise? At a time when jobs are being slashed all around the world?

Not that Dushyant Bhatia was unhappy with what he was getting: His annual paycheck summed up to Rs 6.25 lakh including the fixed and bonus components when he quit J P Morgan's debt market division. He always wanted to start on his own and was waiting to complete two years of work experience before hanging up his boots.

Why? "So that if my venture fails I can get admitted to any of the management schools or find a good job in the same sector later," he says candidly.

In October 2008 Dushyant converted his idea into reality. His Web site blogertize.in became functional.

Dushyant is confident that by the end of October he will have revenues of Rs 50 lakh.

"In a span of two months we got 150 members and 600 posts which is really an achievement," claims Dushyant. Today, he has bloggers -- who have to buy pixel buttons on blogertize.in -- from the US, UK, Singapore, Dubai and Malaysia.

Prasanna D Zore spoke to Dushyant about his plans.

The idea behind blogertize.in...

There was this site called million dollar home page (milliondollarhomepage.com) which was launched in England by a guy called Alex Tew. The whole concept of pixel advertising was introduced by him. He made a million bucks in five months by selling ad space to corporate companies. This led to a ballooning of me-too sites which failed miserably.

I wanted to use the concept of pixel advertising again, but tweak it in a way that it works. I did my research since March 2008 as to how I can integrate the concept of pixel advertising with a good business model.

What's pixel advertising?

Every Web page essentially consists of one million pixels, which if marketed properly can bring money.

I have divided these million pixels into 260 buttons of various sizes per segment and the whole page consists of 11 such segments (this allows as many as 2,860 buttons on blogertize's home page). The size of these buttons vary from 2,000, 4,000, 6,000 to 8,000 pixels. Those who want to reserve a button pay as per the pixel size.

A 2,000 pixel button for three years costs $15, a 4,000 pixel button costs $40, a 6,000 pixel button costs $ 60 and 8,000 pixel button costs $80.

What's in it for me?

If you are a good and regular blogger you could make thousands of dollars from blogertize.in.

We would re-invest a chunk of proceeds that we receive and will ensure there is constant flow of quality traffic on our Web site. More the traffic on our site, more the chance of traffic getting diverted to a blog. You (any blogger having a button) can earn more ad revenue this way.

In addition, we will start a monthly newsletter where we will send the best blogs, stories posted by our bloggers to subscribers with the link to the URL from where the post has been taken. This will help in creating a loyal readership for any blogger.
We will soon launch an online shopping portal where buyers and sellers could come together. The bloggers on our site will be asked to place a link to this shopping portal on their blogs. In case of a successful sale convert through any blogger s/he would share 50 to 75 per cent of the profits earned (depending on volume) through that sale.

We will have promotional quizzing models to attract more traffic with attractive and expensive prices like laptops, vacation trips etc to make sure a constant flow of traffic.

We would share our profits annually with bloggers advertising with us. The concept is similar to that of a dividend (in proportion to the profits made through bloggers) that a public listed company doles out. The only difference is bloggers won't own any equity stake in our company.
We have to make sure that our bloggers are happy and make money so that three years later we can have the same bloggers associate with us and when we resale the ad space they come and buy again.
We want our bloggers to break even in the first two years of their association with us and then make profits in the third year. Our bloggers will make 150 per cent profits on their investments in three years.

Of the total proceeds that we receive a small portion will be invested in other avenues like equity markets. The returns we get less tax will again be distributed amongst our bloggers.

150 per cent returns? Sounds like a Ponzi scheme.

Actually it does. But we have a robust business model unlike a Ponzi scheme. If a blogger has compelling content on her/his blog the money is for the making. Plus whatever ad space they have on their blogs they can sell it to who ever and make money which can be transferred to their bank accounts through Paypal.

How would you make money?

We would make money from ad revenues via forums, subscribers, sponsors and commissions that we will make from our shopping portal and will be major revenue contributors for blogertize.in.

What's your inventory now?

Combining all buttons together there is space for 2,860 buttons of various denominations on my web site. Though 1,500 bloggers have already registered I have not received payments from all.

Initially, when I started this site there were no takers. The first month I had no visitors coming in; had no buyers; only friends and ex-colleagues. Then I came up with this flexi-payment option where bloggers could first buy pixel buttons but make payments before November 10. The condition was reserve your button now and pay after five months with a condition that failure to do so would result in their buttons being deregistered by us.

I have got confirmed bookings worth Rs 40 lakh but have received hard cash of only Rs 4 lakh yet. If we are able to sell all the 2,860 buttons -- and I am sure this will happen by October 2009 -- we will make roughly Rs 50 lakh.

Now that the site is catching up we have stopped this offer.

Your parents must be pretty annoyed with you...

Of course. They were not really happy. It was tough for me to convince them, but they still don't understand the business model.

Three years down the line...

I have no idea. I started this company as an experiment and did not expect such kind of a response in the first few months. But I have no idea how things will be in the future.

What if you fail?

I can start some other ventures as I have some ideas in mind.