Webyantra

Blogertize is like old wine in a new bottle. Remember MillionDollarHomepage, the British website that shot into limelight in 2005. Blogertize is a controlled version of that same story with a few additional hooks that attempt to create a network out of its participating blogs.

How does it work? If you are a blogger, you can buy pixels (almost like adspace) under one of the 12 available categories for a fixed period of 3years. The pixel blocks are available in four different sizes of 2000, 4000, 6000 & 8000 pixels. The larger the button, the higher it is placed attracting more visitors. In each catgeory, 2860 slots are avalaible and they are priced at 150$, 80$, 40$, 15$ depending on the position salience.

To see what this might like, check out this page for socially oriented blogs.

Blogertize’s creator Dushyant Bhatia (an ex JP Morgan research analyst) insists that this is a legitimate advertising model for blogs. In fact he plans to spawn a community out of all the partcipating blogs and build features like a marketplace, online shopping portals etc. As of March, Blogertize has raked in a cool 43000$, having sold inventory to about 1500+ bloggers with space remaining for another 1360. The site was launched primarily for the Indian blogosphere, but more than 40% of the partcipating blogs are non-Indian. That’s one of the reasons why they had to move the site from blogertize.in to blogertizeworld.com.

So is this a legit business? Well to me it looks like a wacky idea, though not a sustainable model. It banks on its novelty value to lure users, much like the milliondollarhomepage idea. And wacky ideas like this have instant appeal for mainstream media. No surprise that Blogertize has managed to get written about in Mid-Day, Rediff, HT, CNBC, Entrepreneur.com et al. See the comments on this forum for bouquets and brickbats that come flying Blogertize’s way. And check out the video for Mid-Day’s interview with Dushyant.

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