RedGage is a content archive where you can upload all of your photographs, bookmarked links, blogs, documents, videos, etc. and make money from your material. RedGage allows users to upload all of their content in one convenient place. With an element of social networking, RedGage allows users to showcase their material and generate more traffic. This is how Redgage.com describes their website and what it offers.
In an unnofficial tongue it means the photos you upload to Flickr, the posts you write on your blog, the videos you add to YouTube and the likes be shared on this site which in return will share its revenue with you. The revenue is as one can guess generated from advertising from various ad networks which then revolve around the content. There are no expectations on quantity or timing of putting up content with regards to the creators thereforee and the copyrights always remain ours.
The easiest point against Redgage obviously would come from us bloggers who would wonder the point of sharing revenue with someone else when they can use the ad networks on their blogs itself. However, from Redgage’s perspective they do have a couple of advantages. One obviously being better exposure than a blogger could get. Majority of the revenue is on the basis of CPM, so redgage sort of expects its users to get their friends on board to see their content and thus increase traffic. Now if all users begin to do this, the traffic on the site is bound to increase and every content creator benefits from this addition. Moreover, besides blog content Redgage is also looking to include Flickr photos and videos as content which do not have monetisation options currently.
According to Venturebeat, the earnings are nothing to really get excited about. During a quick tour through the “featured” pages of the site’s six sections — All Content, Blogs, Photos, Videos, Documents, Links — I was hard-pressed to find any content that earned more than $1 from advertising, and 1-cent earnings were common.
A couple of signed up users said the same thing as well, with one Flickr user earning around $1.34 after she signed up to the beta invitation (this was 3 months back). Redgage was explaining its users that these numbers will improve once the site gets more traffic which will essentially be driven by more users and content coming on board. In their own words -” Don’t get discouraged by the low rates right now, as soon as the user base goes up this week so will the pay.” Of course now it is out of beta and available for the larger public to use.
Now our Indian friends, which means most of you need not get excited as I think this site is not available to people outside USA. I don’t have a confirmation on this, but my presumption is based on the fact that I had to access the site through proxy after numerous attempts at directly going to the URL failed. Which is sort of a shame especially when their profit lies in getting as many users as possible. I think the problem (if there is one at all) lies in the fact that they are using multiple ad networks that they use, most ad networks like YPN for instance don’t allow publishers outside USA in their network.
Personally I am not very convinced about the veracity of such a business, which therefore surprises me that it is already funded to the tune of $10 million. At the same time, initially people would get curious, and nobody would mind free money coming in for content that they continue to own. If this model picks up I am sure we will find a lot of clones coming on board as well.
