Get paid for reading emails

I don't know if this is new for you guys, but it is certainly a new concept for me. An Indian company, rupeemail, pays you for each email you read! (rupee is Indian currency: 1 rupee = 2.5 cents).

You sign up for the service, set some preferences and you are ready to go. Rupee mail will send you emails containing relevant advertisements in an envelope. The envelope has a seal similar to Yahoo! sign in seal that ensures that you are receiving a legitimate email. Then it pays you for each email that you read.

The claim is that this avoids advertisers' email getting into spam because you trust rupeemail and ads come via rupeemail. The advertisers are verified by rupeemail so you don't get ads by random people.

I liked the clever model behind this business. These guys will never lose money. They will collect say 1000 rupees from advertisers and send emails to say 300 people. They are surely gaining 700 rupees from this if all readers read these emails. So they have a way to control their profits.

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YouTube is watching...

Google has implemented a new monitoring program called YouTube Insight in an effort to give content providers the ability to gather information on where and by whom their videos are being watched. Information is broken down by day and tracks information such as what state or country is viewing a given video, how many times its been played amongst other data.

Google hopes to use this program to bolster its advertising revenue coming from YouTube. This program helps keep away pesky embedded commercials, a growing source of ad revenue for large media corporations, and instead incentivizes companies to purchase ads that are shaped for a specific audience, much like television commercials.

While similar tools have always been available to paying marketers, this new program will be available to anyone who submits a video. In addition, paid advertisers will also have access to additional tools that keep track of statistics such as how many users stopped the video at a given interval.

I'm glad to see such tracking mechanisms in place, and I hope this pays off for Google. I for one HATE commercials before watching content I request and if Google can make money a different way, go for it.