Jason Calacanis made a recent blog posting about the Mozilla Foundation mading $72 million last year from Firefox. How is that possible? Well, the Firefox browser comes with a little Google search box on the top right. If you use that box to make a search and click on one of the Google ads from the results page, Firefox gets about 80% of the money, according to Calacanis. $72 million is a nice chunk of change but Jason Calacanis recently updated his posting saying he has no idea if this is true or not.
In the end it doesn’t really matter if Firefox is making $72 million or not for Mozilla. The Google search box adds value and income to Firefox and that is the key to making big money on the net. Users of Firefox don’t see the Google search box as advertising. Instead they see is as a value added service and they don’t mind that Mozilla makes money from the sponsored links.
This is how the TTZ Media Network is set up. Most users don’t see our price links as advertising. Instead they view it as a value added service. If you’re reading a review of a Logitech G15 keyboard and we show a list of vendors that sells the keyboard cheap, would you take that as an ad or a service? If you’re reading the review you must be interested in the product so it stands to reason that you may want to know where you can buy it. TTZ Media Network sites tell you where to buy the products being reviewed. Other sites don’t. This adds value to our content. I have received emails from readers thanking me for pointing them out to the stores, because I saved them money.
Another example of this is the TTZ Hot Deals Page. In a nutshell, this page is nothing but a page full of affiliate marketing ads. However, we present it in such a way that the reader doesn’t view this page as advertising at all. We are showing them where and how to get the best deals on the net. The reader is thinking “Cool! I can get 30% off a Dell laptop by using this coupon!” They’re not thinking “That bastard John Chow will make a cut off everything sold on this page!” The TTZ Hot Deals page moves over $200,000 of products each month.
You always have to keep in mind that net users (esp. tech ones) hate advertising. They tune them out mentally or with ad blockers so you have to be more creative if you wish to reach your readers. If you can present you ads in a way that the readers perceives it to be a service instead of advertising, they’re reward you handsomely.