RedGage has launched in public beta after 18 months in development. It's one of those Web services you are either going to love or absolutely hate.
RedGage is positioning itself as a centralized hub for users to earn money for the content they create and publish on sites like Flickr, Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This means that photographers can important their Flickr feed, videographers can import their YouTube feed, and bloggers can import their weblog's RSS feed. Users are then compensated for this online content essentially leveraging their social graph to monetize "social activity."
The inherent flaw in the model of RedGage is it requires content publishers to send their Web users to the RedGage property instead of their own. That ultimately might be too significant a hurdle for many publishers to get over.
RedGage has essentially partnered with advertising networks (15 in total according to Daniel Redlich, CEO of RedGage) in order to compensate its users. The service pays its users roughly $1.00 US/per thousand impressions. There are actually a few factors (considered dynamically) in determining the actual payout including the quality of content, the users level of activity, and their level of influence.
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From a high-level there is seemingly some genuine value in a service like this. "Most people don't realize that there is inherent economic value in what they're creating online. It's no secret that someone is making money; but, people like me, who spend time producing content, don't usually share in any of the revenue from the companies who own the platforms," said Redlich. "That's why we built a system that gives money back to the creators. Web 2.0 democratized the distribution of content; RedGage is democratizing the monetization of content."
Will you consider RedGage or avoid it entirely?
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