The Earning Pool
The earning pool is an amount of money that varies by month, it is divided and split between the top 100 creators of BuzzFuse. There are also special monthly bonuses of about $500 to the best blog, the best photos, the best artist, etc. The only drawback to this is that these features are only available if you have an upgraded account at the prices of $15 a month.
The Difference
The main and most alluring difference between a premium and a free account is the ability to earn from the earning pool. Aside from that there is little difference between a free and premium account. Currently there is a special offer to upgrade to a premium account for a year at no cost for the first 1000 subscribers who meet certain qualifications.
The difference only difference between BuzzFuse and StumbleUpon is the chance to earn money with a membership, which doesn’t seem worth it unless you already have a large fan base and believe you can rival a “global audience” for a chance to be in the top 100. Stick with StumbleUpon for now.
BuzzFuse or StumbleUpon?
Aside from the ability to earn money for your original content after purchasing a membership with BuzzFuse, it bears little difference from StumbleUpon. BuzzFuse is a relatively new social networking engine with a low, but quickly growing, membership base. Currently I’d suggest you stick with StumbleUpon, as it has a larger fan base. If you have the time, and like to be a part of things from the beginning, or like to gamble at the chance of making money from your content, then sign up for BuzzFuse and give it a test run.
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I like the ease with which an article can be stumbled, right from a toolbar in the browser!
Differences-
Stumbleupon’s toolbar is a nice, non-intrusive feature. However, the Buzzfuse score may provide some indication of quality of a post, song or photograph. The Buzzfuse score doesn’t simply represent page views or unique visitors, it attempts to represent a quality of a thing by some complex formula which includes page views, unique visitors, visitor scoring, number of comments, etc. It will take time to see whether their formula produces meaningful results- but it does represent a potentially unique aspect.
I agree that there may need to be some rethink about what is free and what is premium… some of the premium services are obvious things that could make the free account more attractive… such as (1) unlimited fans (you can have all the fans you want in digg, stumble, etc) , (2) selling music and photos (maybe under five bucks per item because currently you can only give photos or music away if you have a free account), (3) pictures, bios, and personal things (favorite links, favorite you tube video, and favorites lists)- none of which is offered to free or premium accounts…
Premium accounts should retain the opportunity to make lots of money by the (1) existing Buzzfuse popularity contest, (2) sales-licensing of a wider array of online sellables: photography, graphics, your own videos, and music, and even professional documents…
Perhaps, premium services could be expanded to include being featured in (3) an interviews section (search friendly page- of course), (4) press releases, and (5) monthly newsletter…
I imagine they are working on things, we just need to exercise a little encouragement…
Stan Faryna
http://stanfaryna.wordpress.com
hi Douglas, Stan, et al.
Thanks for the post and the reviews/comments. It’s most appreciated. We’re trying to build something great and I feel we’re on the right track, but there’s a long way to go…this feedback really helps.
Internally, we like and use Stumbleupon. It’s a great product, although it’s quite different to how we work and that’s NB. Buzzfuse comes from my (and other’s) attempts to look at how one can make money from content, without the consumer having to pay anything other than attention. As a creator (cartoons, photographs) it was quickly clear to me that I couldn’t tell which piece of art would ‘touch’ people when I released it. So we built a system that tries to allow a creator to release anything, but quickly identify the good from the mediocre.
In brief, what is most unique about Buzzfuse is that we try to identify and rapidly promote high quality content: we identify ‘quality’ by the degree of interaction around it (so a small release that touches people and they all interact i.e. rate, share, review, recommend, etc. will beat a large commercial release that has many page_views but little interaction). This is what the ‘buzzfuse’ score attempts to portray in one value.
We promote content by push. So each item is released to a creators circle (all opt-in, of course) who act as ‘trusted reviewers’ to give an item its’ initial score. Thereafter, friends of friends see the item in their daily mail. If any item is really good, it can make it to the Top10 which is distributed to all subscribers. So a potential leap across the chasm for anyone right here.
Some things on the free v premium side of things:
- firstly we no longer have limits on fan accounts for free users (but need to update copy on our site - thanks).
- the premium side is really aimed at people who want to access (a) the ability to earn money, (b) the questionnaire tool, and (c) distribution to closed groups. While the latter 2 are self-explanatory (and our value is tested against what is offered elsewhere), our aim with requiring people to transact with us before others will transact with them is both market segmentation, and fraud reduction. You see Buzzfuse relies on human interaction around original content. We’d like to prevent the common cases of fraud and plagiarism we see on other systems where the cost of entry (to making money) are zero, and with some luck prevent a flood of quick-buck-seekers uploading someone else’s art…
So that’s about it. I could go on - there is lots coming after all. However in the meantime thanks again, and feel free to contact me: garethochse at gmail dot com…
later,
g
OK I heard about Buzzfuse from one of my friends.I do feel it is good.I may give a try to it.Thanks for making me recall.