Twitter is rubbish; discuss.

It's a Bank Holiday today. At the moment though, it seems as though every day is a Bank Holiday. In more ways than one! Sounds like Heaven yeah!? (Not the gay nightclub.) But when you're looking for work the Bank Holiday just means yet one more day you can't spend looking for work. The things is, I want to work, I really do, but there are so many obstacles standing in my way.

After my disasterous date with Gill I decided that I'd be the bigger man and text her first to see what was up. I didn't get a response within the hour so I texted again, then again, in the end I practically begged her to respond. 'U all rite? Everythin OK,' I said, 'Positive' came the one word response. Guess that means she's OK and just needs a bit of space. So I've decided not to call or text her for a week or so, just to let the dust settle. Women are a slave to their hormones.

With that in mind, I guess it's time to put the focus back on me. I don't like to just talk about me all the time, I'm just not that vain, but if you don't look after yourself, who will?

I've decided that I need to go on a recruitment drive for the blog. Because if I can demonstrate that I have lots of regular readers than I really can take up some genuine sponsorship opportunitties or possibly, as Mr Coleman says, I can turn my blog into an award winning sitcom like the utterly hilarious Two Pints of Lager. However, there are some strange anomolies in Webland, as also pointed by Mr C.

"It is indeed hard to explain why such a gripping blog seems to be the exclusive pleasure of a Frenchman and a semi-retired schoolteacher. You have almost 1,600 followers on Twitter yet only 11 for your vastly more entertaining life-drama blog. I just can’t understand it – just what is wrong with people these days?"

I'm not sure Mr Coleman, really, it's a mystery to me. My blog posts are rich and enlivening, I'm bearing my sole to the world, there are nice pictures, genuinely informative and entertaining comments, a poll and links to other sites, whereas on Twitter all I really do is post a link trying to bring people to the blog and I occaissionally send a quick reply to Jim (my most recent blog follower) or Mess. Still people seem to be signing up in droves to receive adverts driving them to my website. ODDLY, the people who follow me on Twitter all seem to have mini-pitches of their own attempting to bring me to their website. I'm starting to think Twitter has been highjacked my self-promotionists and is full of nothing but spam.

The thing is, when someone comes and follows me on Twitter I usually follow them straight back again, so while nearly 1600 are following me, I too am following over 1500. It's a bit like when people follow this blog, I always follow them back. It's just that not many people have the time, talent or ability to create blogs, while creating Tweets is as easy as coughing up phlegm. Perhaps, if I'm trying to get people to follow this blog, I need to follow a few other more likeminded intellectual Blogists. Maybe when I follow them, they'll check me out and follow back! I've got nothing to lose. If they don't follow me back, I'll just ditch them like a used lover.

This sounds like a disingenuous method of upping my numbers, I know, but that's advertising for you isn't it?!

Gotta go, meeting Dave the roofer for a few pints in the Imperial.

l8ers
Newsdesk

Oh Mr Wu, what should I do?

Last Monday I announced that Brand Newsdesk had been approached by a potential sponsor. None other than WuTravel.com.

I seem to be getting absolutely nowhere with my idea of free porn for London's commuters, The Oyster, and none of the pieces that I have submitted to The Metro have made it into print. While the money that I make at Blockbusters bearly makes ends meet to be honest and so if I want to keep producing lively copy that is enjoyed, for FREE (hint, hint!), by my army of readers, then sadly I think I'm going to have to start taking advertising.

I wrote back to Alyssa at Wu Travel asking for more information. She wrote back, here's what she had to say:

Hi,

Here are our company current marketing packages.

1) For sites PR >= 4, and Alexa in top 100,000, and site is travel topic related, we are willing to buy ads space from SGD 100 /month, and invite them to join our affiliate program

2) For other sites, we can only offer them to join our affiliate program.

You have one good site, but your site traffic is really low. Here is our offer, we are willing to invite you join our affiliate program, and send you USD 50.00 as signup reward.

Here are main features of our affiliate program.

1) Earn 70% of recurring commission, averagely every hotel partner's ads click you will earn USD 0.30 - 0.50

2) Earn passive commission FOREVER. Every visitors, you brought to our site, generate any revenue in the future, you will ALWAYS earn 70% of them.

3) 2 Level Referral Program. Affiliates are encouraged to invite other sites to join our affiliat program, and affiliates will get 10% commission generated by other affiliates.

4) Payment sent out every month through PayPal, with minimun USD 100.

Let's say that you refer 2 visitors to our site a day, and both of them click once on our hotel partners ads. Within 1 year, you will make USD 292 (one click USD 0.40, 0.40 * 2 * 365 = 292).

But wait. For those visitors from your site, they come to our site and generate revenue in the future (1 year, 5 years, 10 years ...), you will still earn commission, even though your site maybe not exist any more. :)

If you can redirect more visitors to our site, you can calculate how much $$$ you will earn!!!!!

You can view our affiliate program details from http://www.wutravel.com/affiliate.html

Please reply me If you are willing to accept our offer, then I will open an affiliate account for you right now, after you put on our banner on your site, I will deposit the money for you.:)

Regards,

I'm not sure about this one readers. For starters, Alyssa didn't even bother to address the message 'Hi Barry' and then she just signed off with 'Regards,'

Also, Alyssa suggests (and I quote) that: "your (my) site traffic is really low." Well ,that's clearly nonesense, you'd only have to read through the last few posts to see that I smashed the 1000 hit mark only four months after launching the site!!!

Something makes me think that this might be one of those Internet scams that you sometimes read about in The Metro. You read about old ladies sending all their savings to Nigerian Princes under the false promise of a share in their fortunes or people being sent an email from their bank asking for all their sign-on information, only to find out a couple of days later that someone has emptied their bank accounts.

The fact is, though, the people who fall for such blatant rip-offs are kind of asking for it. They're being motivated by GREED! There's no such thing as a free lunch. When a deal looks to good to be true, it usually isn't true, that's what my Mum used to tell me as we walked around Lincoln market at the weekends. Still, I've read and re-read Alyssa's message and I can't see where the catch is. By this time next year I could be a millionnaire.

What should I do? Mess? Mr Coleman?

How to get ahead in advertising

Both my Mum, whom I love dearly despite her recent behaviour, and Gill told me that Citizen Journalism would amount to nothing more than a waste of time.

WRONG!!!

Not only have I made some very intereting discoveries and not only have I made some excellent acquaintanses (my good friend Mess tracked me down on Facebook!! SO he joins Jennifer Shannon Walker as a Facebook and blogspot friend - Mess is also following me on Twitter, which makes him, quite possibly, my number one fan...!).

Still, both Mum and Gill might well point to these benefits as merely ornamental. Like the people who invented Twitter, I have yet to find a way of 'monetising' Barry Newsdesk. Monetise is an ugly word readers, but it's just the sort of word that Web 2.0 gurus bandy about in board rooms up and down the country. It means, to make money from.

But that was then, and this is now. Barry Newsdesk is now so popular that it has attracted the attention of a potential advertiser. That's right, someone wants to place their brand name on my site in return for hard cash.

It's a time honoured business model. ITV has been doing it for years.

I received this email just three days ago:

alyssa@wutravel.com to me show details Apr 17 (3 days ago) Hi, We are interested to place our ads on your site. If interested, please email me. We, WuTravel.com, are a start up travel site in Singapore. Best Regards, Alyssa

This presents me with a dilemma readers. Part of my conscience says I should remain pure to my Citizen Journalism, like the BBC, and refuse to take sponsorship. While another part of my conscience, the part that pays the utilitiy bills and the part that wants to be able to afford a BMW and take Amber on exotic holidays, says I should bite the bullet and accept and sell out!!!

I figured I'd better ask Alyssa for more information regarding the potential sponsorship deal....

Here's what I said:

Dear Alyssa

Thank you for your email showing an interest in the Barry Newsdesk brand. I would love to find out more about the sort of sponsorship deal you had in mind. How much are you willing to give me, and what would you expect in return.

Yours fairthfully Barry