I'm not the best programmer in the world, so this might be something that others are totally fin with, but the prolog course during my computer science classes totally eluded me.
Even PPC assembly was rather easy in comparison. I was bad at it, but at least I intuitively knew how it sort of all came together in one system.
If Blendle continues to be successful this could get very interesting though. As described in the article linked here, it's a great metric. And their publishers will also start to use their metric. So -while they now describe the Blendle-revenue as an extra- this will actually change the way we deal with the 'print' data which is now accessible online, creating a new dynamic. This will surely have an impact on the print version of these magazines as well, I can imagine, making Blendle a content driver(shaper?) and not 'just' a source of 'extra revenue' as they tend to see it now.
If it all takes off impact will, imho, be different than we can probably predict now, even though we can make some estimates of possible directions. Some people will be happier with the results after -say- five years than others.
Time will tell.
I figure the thing is with Blendle, as with most paywallsystems, is that they actually turn 'micropayments' into larger payments. ie: you don't want to do a bank-transaction every time you hit a paywallbutton, so they make you pay a larger sum and give you credits. (Like other paywall might provide you with a subscription.)
The extra smart thing here being, of course being twofold: First of all, they provide you this service for a myriad of outlets. (Thus limiting the actual transactions (such a hassle!) with your bank even more.
And second: they provide a service for newspapers to publicise their print content online.
As far as I'm concerned, the core thing they made is a way of transferring all these 'print' articles to online. A benefit for publishers. This is now slowly shifting towards the 'one stop paywall' core business. One probably couldn't start without the other, but in the end we'll have a completely new thing. (Which I've described in several rants in Dutch.. yadieyada... stuff.)
I tend to pay more for articles these these, although for full disclosure I'd have to say that I work for a media outlet. (And yes' we're in Blendle, and we're not even print! ;) )
They can use Nokia brand only for few years, they don't have rights for it. It was known right from the beginning of this selling story that Nokia brand will disappear from mobile devices industry. Only the remaining parts of Nokia, not sold to Microsoft (part working on localization services etc.), will be able to continue to use this name.
Correct. But IIRC when acquisition was announced, they said that Microsoft would have license for using Nokia name only for Series 30/40 phones, so there would be Microsoft Ashas, Microsoft Lumias and Microsoft Nokias as 3 product lines. Later news media reported rumours about negotiations for additional licenses.
Even though it seems like your setup is not really good, (as others have remarked here) I think the central question you posed here still holds up to some extend: "where do they get their traffic from?".
When getting involved with aff-networks I have noticed that there are quite a lot of 'low quality' (of course depending on your needs) networks around that basically lure people into visiting your site, other than referring truly interesting people to you. That seems like business 1-0-1, but it really amazed me how many large networks use shady landingpages with obscure lotteries and other 'prizes'. (This was a about 2-3 years ago, but still..)
Always do a small run first, track what's happening and why and always be suspicious about people 'selling' you other people's data/attention (data-pushers, is what I used to call them) because that's basically what is is, to some extend.
But I think that's the point - the traffic is effective the merchant's own. They're not driving spammy visitors or buying false visits; they're just redirecting the customers who would have already been browsing the site back to the checkout funnel - they'd just get the benefit of the affiliate tracking code added to the order.
