Wowzio has just released a new "Local Deals" widget ( currently in alpha ) seen on the top-right of this page. The "Local Deals" widget displays current deals to a user near his/her location. Behind the scenes, we gather fresh deals from top local-deals sites/services like LivingSocial, HomeRun, TownHog ( and working to include deals from other top sites/services ). When a user visit's your blog that has the "Local Deals" widget installed, the widget geo-targets deals to the user based on the user's location. To a blogger, this is a win-win, because users to your blog see fresh, useful & compelling content ( fresh local deals from top merchants & establishments ) and when a user ends up purchasing a deal, you (i.e. the blogger) earn affiliate revenue.
The "Local Deals" widget is attractive, we make sure we display high quality images for each deal. We want to maintain & enhance the aesthetics of your blog. When there's more than one deal targeted to a user, the "Local Deals" widget displays them in a slideshow.
Each of the local deal that displays in the widget offers affiliate revenue. Wowzio collects the affiliate revenue, and shares it with bloggers who refer the user. Bloggers keep 75% of the affiliate revenue.
Currently, the local deals are from towns & cities in the United States. If a substantial chunk of your blog traffic comes from the United States, this widget is for you. In the near future, we will roll out deals from other countries.
If you are interested in testing the "Local Deals" widget, or need more info., pl. write to us at manish[@]wowzio[dot]com, or use our feedback form.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Wowzio powers Affiliate Widgets for BloomSpot
Earlier this week, BloomSpot rolled out its Affiliate Widgets ( which can be found at http://widgets.bloomspot.com/widgets/designer?feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bloomspot.com%2Fpublisher%2Fsyndicate%2Feditions%2Fsan-francisco-travel-edition%2Fdeals.rss&affiliateid=12345 )
BloomSpot discovers unique deals that offer steep discounts in your neighbourhood, everyday. These deals are transient by nature, they come & go fast. The Affiliate widgets ensures that the deals are distributed in a timely fashion to the affiliates, thereby providing affiliates with an optimum revenue generating opportunity.
We are happy to announce that Wowzio powers the Affiliate Widget for BloomSpot. Down the road, we will look at integrating 'location based' targeting in the widget.
Some features that are unique to Affiliate Widgets powered by Wowzio are:
If you are a ecommerce business, looking to offer affiliate widgets, we would love to hear from you. You can write to manish[@]wowzio[dot]com, or use our feedback form.
BloomSpot discovers unique deals that offer steep discounts in your neighbourhood, everyday. These deals are transient by nature, they come & go fast. The Affiliate widgets ensures that the deals are distributed in a timely fashion to the affiliates, thereby providing affiliates with an optimum revenue generating opportunity.
We are happy to announce that Wowzio powers the Affiliate Widget for BloomSpot. Down the road, we will look at integrating 'location based' targeting in the widget.
Some features that are unique to Affiliate Widgets powered by Wowzio are:
- The publisher/merchant can update the content of the widget when they like, and as often as they like ( This is done via RSS feed updates ). This is very useful as it helps serve fresh content to users on the affiliate sites, thereby increasing the likelihood that users find the content inside the widget engaging and click on it.
- The widget can be auto-fit to the affiliate site's page-column-layout, i.e. it does not come in a fixed size spec like ADS do.
- As in the 'BloomSpot' Affiliate widget, when there's more than one deal active at a given time, the widget auto-plays a slideshow that rotates between the active deals.
- The widget contains urls that are embedded with the affiliate-id, thereby making tracking that much easier for the publisher/merchant.
- The affiliate widget is integrated inside the affiliate sign-up process, thus making it seamless for the affiliates to install it on their site.
If you are a ecommerce business, looking to offer affiliate widgets, we would love to hear from you. You can write to manish[@]wowzio[dot]com, or use our feedback form.
Wowzio rolls out its White-Label Widgets Platform for Daily-Mail
A couple of months ago, we white-labeled our widgets platform for the 'Daily Mail'. It was launched at http://engage.dailymail.co.uk/ .
What it means is that 'Daily Mail' is now offering a widgets building service to its users, identical to the service that Wowzio offers to its users. Here's a small list of some folks who have build & deployed widgets using the white-labeled platform ( widgets are branded as 'Mail Online', which is a 'Daily Mail' brand ):
http://thegossiper.typepad.com/ ( photo gallery widget )
http://blogs.thisismoney.co.uk/ ( live activity widget )
http://blog.findaproperty.com/ ( panoramic slideshow widget )
The benefits of offering this service is that 'Daily Mail' gets to boost its brand & presence across the web. We host, operate & maintain the service.
For some additional information about this service, check out our Widgets Platform & Services .If you are a publisher looking to offer a widgets service, we would love to hear from you. You can write to manish[@]wowzio[dot]com, or use our feedback form.
Tomorrow, we'll blog about another deployment of our widgets platform.
What it means is that 'Daily Mail' is now offering a widgets building service to its users, identical to the service that Wowzio offers to its users. Here's a small list of some folks who have build & deployed widgets using the white-labeled platform ( widgets are branded as 'Mail Online', which is a 'Daily Mail' brand ):
http://thegossiper.typepad.com/ ( photo gallery widget )
http://blogs.thisismoney.co.uk/ ( live activity widget )
http://blog.findaproperty.com/ ( panoramic slideshow widget )
The benefits of offering this service is that 'Daily Mail' gets to boost its brand & presence across the web. We host, operate & maintain the service.
For some additional information about this service, check out our Widgets Platform & Services .If you are a publisher looking to offer a widgets service, we would love to hear from you. You can write to manish[@]wowzio[dot]com, or use our feedback form.
Tomorrow, we'll blog about another deployment of our widgets platform.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Wowzio crossed the 3 billion mark ...
Wowzio crossed the 3 billion mark this week, i.e. the number of widgets served by the Wowzio platform. In less than 5 months, we went from 2 billion to 3 billion, so that translates to ~210 million/month. We continue to be ranked in the top 200 by Quantcast ( currently at 157 ).
As we continue to serve more widgets, we have been working behind the scenes to streamline our service, and make things more efficient. Sometimes these are small tweaks, and sometimes they are bigger projects, like pruning our database. In some cases, we might also deprecate a feature, like we did with deprecating auto-tags generation.
Please continue to send us your invaluable feedback.
As we continue to serve more widgets, we have been working behind the scenes to streamline our service, and make things more efficient. Sometimes these are small tweaks, and sometimes they are bigger projects, like pruning our database. In some cases, we might also deprecate a feature, like we did with deprecating auto-tags generation.
Please continue to send us your invaluable feedback.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Deprecating Auto Generation of Tags
Effective tomorrow, we will stop auto generating tags for blog posts which have not been tagged by bloggers directly. The biggest factor in this decision was our dependence on Yahoo!'s Term Extraction API, which we used to generate tags.
In the past year, Yahoo has moved away from search, outsourcing it to Microsoft. And they are also pulling out from other areas that they feel are well aligned with their vision for the future. We commend Yahoo! on taking these bold ( and sometimes not-so-popular ) steps, and are also thankful to them for providing this API to us for free all this time.
But we also felt that now was the right time to stop depending on this API, as we are unsure how well the quality will hold up with time.
Needless to say, to bloggers, we suggest that you make sure you put appropriate tags in each of your blog posts.
In the past year, Yahoo has moved away from search, outsourcing it to Microsoft. And they are also pulling out from other areas that they feel are well aligned with their vision for the future. We commend Yahoo! on taking these bold ( and sometimes not-so-popular ) steps, and are also thankful to them for providing this API to us for free all this time.
But we also felt that now was the right time to stop depending on this API, as we are unsure how well the quality will hold up with time.
Needless to say, to bloggers, we suggest that you make sure you put appropriate tags in each of your blog posts.
Friday, October 23, 2009
iPhone App for your Blog
On the Wowzio Widget Designer, you will now notice a new button called 'iPhone', in the 'One-Click Install' section. Your blog readers can now read and consume your blog using any of wowzio's widget on their iPhone. In a simple 2-step process, they can install a wowzio widget on their iPhone as a web app.
Bloggers, you can now install the 'Live Activity' Wowzio App on your iPhone, and watch in real-time from anywhere as users visit your blog.
We are looking to roll out Wowzio widget Apps on other mobile platforms, and would like to hear from you your platform of choice. Email us at feedback@wowzio.com or use our feedback form.
Bloggers, you can now install the 'Live Activity' Wowzio App on your iPhone, and watch in real-time from anywhere as users visit your blog.
We are looking to roll out Wowzio widget Apps on other mobile platforms, and would like to hear from you your platform of choice. Email us at feedback@wowzio.com or use our feedback form.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Ad supported widgets
We've had a great past 12 months. We served out over 2 billion widgets ( thats right ) during this time period, grew our installed base, and rolled out a bunch of tools for bloggers. The Wowzio blog network is now ranked in the top 200 by Quantcast.
Over the next few weeks, we will experiment with supporting our widgets with ads. While we don't know what the final form will be, we do know the goals we've set for ourselves as we go down this path, they are:
As always, we would love to hear from you, so that we can factor your ideas into our rollout. Email us at feedback@wowzio.com or use our feedback form.
Over the next few weeks, we will experiment with supporting our widgets with ads. While we don't know what the final form will be, we do know the goals we've set for ourselves as we go down this path, they are:
- The widgets should continue to serve their primary purpose as well as they currently do, which is to help users discover great content on blogs
- The widgets should continue to enhance the aesthetics of the blog as well as they currently do. ( i.e. look like an integral module of the blog ).
As always, we would love to hear from you, so that we can factor your ideas into our rollout. Email us at feedback@wowzio.com or use our feedback form.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
