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GURNEE, IL

By A.B. Dada
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The Global Unanimocracy Network was accepted into a new advertising/review co-op called ReviewMe.com today, and I’m looking into it as a way to combine realistic reviews (of sites and products) as an additional income source for the network.

I’ve battled the debate as to how to produce an income that is equitable for the time I spend, but not be annoying to the visitors and regular readers. While I’ve been happy with Google’s AdSense and Text-Link-Ads’s system, I’ve always considered that the best profit is the information I get from people who share their opinions on the blog posts over at the Unanimocracy forums. Your views (agreements and disagreements) help format future opinions and help me challenge debates better — this is the best form of profit for the network. Yet every site also needs a financial income just to stay afloat, and I’ve looked at various ways to reduce the “spamminess” of our network. Things will be changing a lot in the coming year as the network ventures into the second year of writing.

Over the years, I have been paid often to review products and campaigns for various large and medium-sized corporations. My reviews have not always been positive, but it has helped manufacturers rewrite campaigns or redesign certain aspects of their products. The difficult task of being paid for reviews is one that has hounded the print media for years — can a paid reviewer be neutral? More often than not, the answer is no. Reviewers who give positive reviews often get rehired for future reviews: in the history of the printed tech journal, more than one journal has collapsed after it was found to be biased towards those who buy advertising.

This isn’t the case at the Global Unanimocracy Network. I prefer to give reviews as unbiased as possible — even if it means giving negative reviews and possibly losing the ability to get paid for future work from the same advertiser group. Yet I also feel that this gives the advertisers or manufacturers better insight into how their product or campaign will fair with the tech/nerd entrepreneur, a group that is growing in the States as people switch from hardware-oriented businesses to more service-oriented ones. My history has always revolved around community building online — my first venture was in building a large multi-node BBS back in the late 80s when I was a teenager. That was a huge success, and I was able to sell off the business for a good profit just before the Internet boom. My only mistake was not venturing into the ISP arena (mostly due to my parents talking me out of it).

In my late teens and early 20s, I spent a lot of time in various review groups helping to determine if a product or advertising campaign is worthy of the market it was penetrating. More often than not I reviewed products that were edgy or new to the industry (the Apple Newton, the first portable inkjet printer, the first line of inexpensive switching hubs, early LCD monitors, car stereos that went beyond the knob and the tape cassette, and portable business projectors, to list just a few). I know that some of my negative reviews were concerning enough that changes were made, and the cash that I was paid for reviewing these products often times didn’t cease because I made a negative review.

That being said, I also gave many positive reviews from the perspective of the self-employed entrepreneur. Many times a product may not get good penetration into the market for people who were “just” employees of a big machine, but I found ways to use the product or service within my own businesses. This usually gave the manufacturer a more vertical channel to sell or advertise in, and I know it made a difference as my reviewing income grew when my name was associated with that growing new market.

I’ll be trying ReviewMe.com in coming months to see if i can challenge the average boring review with one that gives some notably differences of opinion — both good and bad. I will definitely mention if a review I am doing is one procured through ReviewMe.com’s website, and I hope that other bloggers who read the Global Unanimocracy Network blogs regularly signs up their own blogs for the service (it only took 5 minutes) at ReviewMe.com. I’d also appreciate your own opinion on the reviews, and even the idea of ReviewMe.com, over at our discussion forum. This will give me better insight into whether or not I am being unbiased, as well as what you think of the product.

The idea behind ReviewMe.com is that advertisers can take advantage of the blogging community by offering their website or product for paid review by different blogs that cover their subject. Bloggers review the product on their blogs, and get paid from the advertiser for doing so. Of course this may seem to lead to biased posts, but since bloggers are required to tell their readers that it is a sponsored post, we will see how blog readers challenge biased posts in the comments sections in the future.

I’m excited to try something new — especially something that can expand the power of the blogosphere and balance the power of the mainstream media and talking heads. Maybe this will drive more readers here to start their own blogs!

Discuss this over at the enterpreneurship forum.

MILWAUKEE, WI

By A.B. Dada
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I’m really amazed with Skype — the quality tends to be terrible, the software is buggy, the delay over their VoIP to POTS network is significant. Yet the upside is that it not only works, but it tends to make me more productive — as well as my staff and my volunteers. I’m amazed that more small offices haven’t embraced Skype for their “on the go” consultants or sales staff.

My favorite thing about Skype is SkypeIn: the ability to receive phone calls from the POTS network. Not only can you get a phone number for around $2 a month, but you can get multiple phone numbers. Since I do business in various states AND countries, I can get a local number in every market I’m in for less than $20 a month — that’s 10 numbers. I can also pick the numbers I want so I can get something vanity and memorable. I snagged 312-HAT-HEAD for $2 a month (I’m known as the guy who always wears hats and beanies). All the numbers can point to the same Skype accounts.

The other thing I love about Skype is ability to forward all phone calls to a variety of other numbers. I can put my cell phone on that list, as well as the cell phones of employees that can take calls. If no one is at the main Skype PC, the call automatically rings all the other phones as well. Very cool feature.

I run Skype on my PDA at home — Skype’s PDA support is actually pretty decent, and it works great over WiFi. The latency isn’t terrible. It really makes life easier for me since I don’t have to keep my laptop near me all the time, I can just toss my PDA on the nightstand if I’m reading in bed (I get a lot of late night phone calls) or on the lamp stable in the reading room. With Skype logged in on my PDA, I can answer the calls just as quickly as if I was at a PC or if they were transfered to my cell phone.

I even have some customers who we transitioned to Skype at their desktop, so the ability to communicate quickly this way is really impressive. We skip the POTS system entirely, and our calls come through fairly clearly. If a customer of mine decides to go with Skype as a backup system, I usually supply them with a $10 USB phone (basically a speaker and a microphone shaped like a phone that plugs into the USB port) for free. That $10 invested is a huge return over the long-haul.

There are a lot of downsides to using Skype — it really isn’t perfect, and the lack of caller-ID when a call is forwarded to cell phones is a bit of a pain (we do some billing based on call logs in the cell phones). We also can’t use Skype to dial out (they’re offering free calls within the US and Canada) because they don’t pass caller ID information to who we call — no one answers “Caller Unknown” calls anymore, it seems.

Skype says it works over 3G/EDGE internet connections, but the latency is terrible (250 ms sometimes). They’re working on it, but since I can find open WiFi routers about 30% of the places I work, I don’t really care much for it. The fact that I can whip out my PDA, find a WiFi router, and receive calls without a phone line amazes me — and must frighten the telephony companies who still want to charge a flat rate or a per-minute rate.

If you run a small business, consider testing out Skype — especially for your most important customers and inter-employee communications. Give it a try and I’m sure you’ll be amazed at how much time (and money!) you save.

Discuss this article at the Be The Boss forum.