If you watch Gabrielle Blair’s every move as intently as I do, then you’ll have noticed that she recently launched a new project, CliqueShop that launched earlier this week. Cliqueshop is a kind of group buying, coupon clearinghouse that is the kind of thing you might get if you merged a sample sale membership discount site like Gilt Group or Daily Candy’s Swirl and confined it to coupon-specific deals from vendors that appeal to the Design Mom audience.
Does it sound complicated?
Here’s how it works for the consumers: a deal is posted each week — this past week it was a deal where you could pay $10 to get a $25 gift certificate toward some organic cleaning products. Now, assuming the deal goes through, you are guaranteed a $15 profit on this purchase. But, the deal only goes through if there are 75 buyers. So the buyer has to go get some friends to join them in the purchase if they really want to get the deal. If it’s something you really want, it makes sense why you’d want to do it — you’re guaranteed a return.
For the vendors, it’s appealing because there’s a guaranteed number of people who are going to have an investment in seeing the deal going through. And if the deal doesn’t go through to a certain number of people, they don’t have to give any discounts. So there’s a good chance that they’ll get a bunch of click-throughs to their e-commerce site without actually having to extend any kind of discount to anybody. They are also likely to be on the end of a social media grassroots word-of-mouth effort if a product is particularly popular. Their return is pretty easy to see, in terms of advertising, though it does depend on how much they are paying to get this kind of placement (I tried to get Gabrielle to tell me this, to no avail — I’m guessing that, in addition to the cut she’s taking of each sale (e.g. on the coupon example above, she’s getting $10 and the coupon is costing the vendor $25), I think there’s probably a decent amount being paid to her just to get featured, but I didn’t get a chance to confirm with her so I cannot say for sure.)
For Gabrielle, the benefits are clear: she gets the price of each coupon, assuming the sale goes through. If the sale doesn’t go through because there aren’t enough buyers, then all the money is refunded to the buyers and she is out merchant fees, etc., but otherwise she gets those commissions, plus whatever she is getting from the advertiser for the placement. Smart cookie! No wonder Time just named Design Mom one of the Top 50 websites of 2010!
Update: It looks like Cliqueshop is actually some kind of affiliate program version of Groupon (though it’s unclear if it’s affiliated with Groupon or not at this point). If I were actually thorough in my reporting, I would have realized this, but luckily, my readership is smarter than I am, and they figured it out for me. So, anyway, carry on.
If you’re not familiar with Dooce’s new(ish) assistant, Tyrant, and his Verizon-sponsored Flickr feed, Uploads from TyrantCam, it’s time to subscribe. Here’s why: after all of these years, TyrantCam is the closest we have ever gotten, and probably the closest we will ever get, to an unvarnished, third-party look inside the Blurbodoocery.
Dooce and Jon put together a slick video about the remodeling of their office that Verizon is sponsoring for them. It’s professionally done, and there are some interesting things about it; for example, they didn’t embed it with a third party video hosting site — it is hosted directly from a site for which they are paying. I assume this has to do with the commercial aspects of the video and its relationship with Verizon, though I think they do a good job of making it not feel like one, in part by making the relationship so explicit (via graphics, etc.) that you cannot take issue with it without feeling like a douchebag. Also, there are impressive technical things about it, e.g. they use graphics, text, and a dooce logo on the bottom right corner of the screen, and that makes me think that they had to buy new software to make the video.
But way more interesting for me than the actual video made for Verizon is the TyrantCam behind the scenes look at it (video posted below) because:
What the FUCK camera is Jon using? Did they BUY that thing? Is Verizon paying them THAT much for this? Holy HELL are they making a lot of money, in that case, because that is a full on TV rig that dude is using;
Even if they didn’t buy that thing, how much do you think it costs to rent that thing? Plus all the sound equipment? Wow! Man! This must be a big gig! Did Verizon demand this? My mind is racing! All the questions! Because maybe Verizon did not request it but Heather and Jon thought they should make this a really professional looking product because they wanted to get more gigs in the future;
Yeah, that might be it, more gigs in the future, more TV gigs in the future! They want more TV gigs in the future! But wait, my secret tip that I got was that the reason she’s not doing Momversation videos anymore was because even though she told me, twice now, that she was going to have a TV show with HGTV at some point, she’s not actually going to have a show with them, but was only hired to drive web traffic, but still has an exclusive deal, and cannot appear on other TV stuff. So wait, if that’s true, who is she trying to convince that she should be on TV? Maybe she’s trying to convince HGTV? IS THAT IT? OMG!
Do you see?
Now don’t get me wrong: there’s no such thing as unmediated discourse that comes out of the Blurbodoocery. But the more meta-content that is produced looking at Il Duce from the outside, the more difficult it is going to be to run it through the Gaussian Blur, and the more we can find out about what is really going on. Now, maybe that’s not what they want, but that IS what their fans want, so I think that TyrantCam might end up with more exposure than their interested in, but it will also end up in more loyalty from their fanbase.
A few weeks ago we were talking about Heather Armstrong and how her blog has changed over time.
Some changes happen over the course of a career, particularly as over the course of a career of a blogger, because people change as they age and the way they see the world changes. Also, when you write every day, your writing changes. It’s inevitable.
But usually those kinds of things are positive changes and are not likely to have a negative effect on your readership. What we were discussing a few weeks back was how to retain your readership in the face of major life changes that might land you in totally different circumstances from the ones in which you found yourself when you originally charmed your readership. And if your readers can no longer relate to you, how are you going to keep them?
Success for Heather Armstrong is kind of a trap in this way. Her fans say they want her to succeed but in a way they don’t, because the more that she does, the less they can relate to her. The more that she shows them the trappings of her success, the more they begin to resent her and the less they feel she can relate to her. But the thing is, why shouldn’t she share with them how she has been able to turn her blogging into a successful venture? And also, if her business is to make her life into a blog, then how is she going to possibly continue without showing what her life looks like now, new houses, Twitter parties, HGTV sponsored events and all?
I suggested a few weeks ago that what I thought she needed to do was to start posting the things that she didn’t think she should put on the internet on the internet. Like she did in the old days, before she was famous. Maybe those things don’t have to do with postpartum depression anymore, or maybe she cannot say them about her family anymore, but maybe there are still some things that she can say or do that are vintage Dooce that still have that vintage Dooce flavor, that remind us why she became who she is. And I wanted to post this today, because she’s done just that a few times lately and it’s really made me feel like there is a way out, or to transform, even once you reach that level. That even if you feel like you’ve painted yourself into a corner, if you are still willing to take chances, you can still do things that are new, if you want, and I think that Dooce is thinking about doing just that, based on a few things she’s done lately, and that I’m hoping she’ll expand into her blog as well. For example, this tweet, which infuriated several of her followers, but was also retweeted by 67 people:
Why am I applauding this? Particularly when it led to an inevitable unfollow threat and subsequent pile-on by Dooce fans of the unfollow-threatener? Because 1) it’s funny, and 2) it’s vintage Dooce. It’s not safe funny. It’s not all-caps, hyperbole funny. And it’s not a crazy threat against a corporation or throwing Twitter weight around. It’s just Dooce making a politically incorrect joke. It’s a side of her she has not let us see for a while, and I think it would be nice for us to get reacquainted.
Another example, from the recent flare up of the sparklecorn controversy, Dooce made an appearance on behalf of Mike Monteiro (from his Flickr Photostream:
This is Dooce having fun and being funny. Not worrying about corporations, or being Dooce the brand. Just being funny.
I like it. And I think it’s good for her brand, too.
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Just Like The Number Where 2+2=Six. A blog about life in the family Six, party of four.
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