Monday, November 26, 2012

The First Mizozo Prizes Have Been Purchased


This has been a long year with lots of twists and turns. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of twists and turns before the year's up, but at least one thing is settled ... the first Mizozo prizes have been purchased. For the month of January, the first prize will be a Nexus 10 tablet, and the runner up will be a Nexus 7 tablet.

As discussed many many months back, next year we will be promoting Mizozo by means of monthly contests, each with its own prizes. Most contests will be simple, based on traffic, but some may become a bit more involved.

For the month of January, the contest will be very simple. The article with the most traffic, as far as Google Analytics is concerned, will receive a Nexus 10 tablet. The runner up, a Nexus 7 tablet. Two great prizes!

In order to win a prize, you will need to sign up and post something. As long as your article follows our publishing rules you will be fine. Then, the question is can you get enough traffic to the article. Facebook is your friend (assuming you have many friends there) and so is any other social media. How you get traffic is your call, so long as it's legitimate traffic.

Note: if we even think that the winner is cheating in any way (bots and such), they will be disqualified. We will publicly call them out, explain why we think they should be disqualified, and then let the people decide. If we are proved wrong, we will admit it, but just keep in mind that it isn't too difficult to tell when an article is being inflated through nefarious means.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Mizozos October Finances

It was considerably more difficult to put together something tangible for the public with regards to Mizozo Finances than originally thought. While it seems like you can simply make public the spreadsheet we use to keep track of things, its a bit more complicated. Several items need explanation, and many of the items can be simplified so that not as much explanation is needed.

For our first financial report, I will give a brief explanation of how we got to where we are. I will not go into a great deal of detail, but it should be enough. If there are any questions, please feel free to post a comment. As has been said many times in the past, we aim to be completely transparent so there are absolutely no secrets.

For the financial report, simply click here.

Now, the explanation:

For starters, the report is broken into three sections. Money Spent, Money Received and a summary of whats going on. Money spent should be self explanatory. Money received is pretty obvious, but just in case I would like to point out that most advertisers give us an Estimated Earnings. The date by Estimated is the date we send the invoice, then the following two columns are what we receive and when.

The last section is the tricky bit. Remember, the site has been operational for 4 years now, and has been in development for longer. The first section is how much money was spent before 2012. You can see that there are 2 players, myself and a partner. The partner is looking to get out, so this number will be going away soon, leaving only myself. However, I need to first come up with the money.

The second section were loans taken by me this year in order to get Mizozo fully operational. While we were operational before this year, many changes were put into place at the beginning of the year to get it working correctly. These loans also need to be paid back by me, but I intend to do it via the earnings Mizozo generates in the years to come. Thankfully, the loans are non interest loans with a pseudo-indefinite timescale. The first item, Partner of $5000, was the initial payment for paying off the partners stake in Mizozo.

The third section is pretty obvious, just adding up the first two sections for simplicity. The last section is just a glance at our current bank balance. This balance takes into account all money earned plus the loans minus the money spent. The difference is made up by my personal contribution.

I hope this clarifies things a bit. From here on out, no more explanations on the sheet will be given, unless some change is made to its structure.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Another DMCA Takedown Notice Received, more content removed

We just received another DMCA Takedown Notice. Once again from a photography studio, but this time the letter was very polite. Coincidentally I happen to be checking email at that moment, so we responded within 5 minutes of receiving it. I quickly removed the article in question and all relevant images.

For reference, this is how to properly ask for stuff to be removed from websites. No threats, nothing foul, they just made things clear and concise making my job much easier. Here's what they sent:

DMCA Takedown Notice

I need some posts taken down which are my copyrighted material according ot DMCA rules

1- Photos taken by Davis Factor, my client, are being used online against
copyright. both taken from davisfactor.com and from private sources
2-here are links to several of the jpgs containing them (please
remove all sizes of images)

- i am the IT Administrator for Davis Factor Photography, i am contacting
you on behalf of davis factor, the copyright owner and creator of these
photos. this material has in no
way been given permission to be used for any way to any of the
aforementioned parties or any parties on mizozo.com
How can we stop any further reposting of this content? Please advise.
Notifying Party
Davis Factor Photography
3303 Scadlock Lane
Sherman Oaks, CA 91403
310-892-1934
admin@davisfactor.com

this statement is true and correct, under penalty of perjury, that this
copyrighted material has not been authorized to be used and should be taken
off imeediately in accordance with DMCA Coyright Policy, and that this
statement is authorized on behalf of davis factor, the copyright owner

my name will act as my signature for this

Its unfortunate that we removed those pictures, they were actually really good. Cameron Diaz could use as much exposure as possible, it seems, but I definitely understand the photographers need to earn money. I don't, however, really understand how an image can be copyrighted once it hits the Net. In cases like these, it seems everyone looses, but what do I know?

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Detailed Report for Mizozos October Traffic


As we did last month, and will be doing every subsequent month, Mizozo is providing a detailed look at our traffic and our sources. The report is so far identical to last months, primarily due to the fact that no requests for additional information were made, but it should provide a decent amount of insight into our current online standings.

For the detailed report, click here. Again, we are using Google Drive to store the spreadsheet.

Our next post should theoretically be our financial disclosure. This is a bit more complicated, primarily because nobody has been keeping very good records of money coming in vs the invoices we sent out. This requires a good deal of sleuthing, but it is coming along nicely.

Friday, November 2, 2012

Mizozo's October Report, Part 1 - Summary

As we are getting closer and closer to the year's end, we will be ever refining our reporting process.

We will be seeing two changes to this months report. For starters, we will no longer be providing a breakdown of earnings for our advertisers. After some discussion and a great deal of thought, we have come to the conclusion that it serves little purpose and does a poor job at representing the actual advertisers. Since we don't have nearly enough time to explain why some advertisers are earning more than others, we will simply give a single number and leave it at that. Maybe in the distant future we will provide a different report with a more detailed breakdown, but this will have to happen only when we can do a better job at explaining things.

Secondly, our goal of being a transparent company will be more or less achieved this month because for the first time will be providing a breakdown of our current financial situation. It will also be a summary, and it hasn't been put together yet, but hopefully within the next week we will be providing a snapshot of our current finances.

Summary

Earnings/Views 

Number of visitors: 235,210
Number of Pageviews: 488,584
Pages Per Visit: 2.08
Total Advertising Revenue: $362.75

Top 5 August

#1 - Kelly Brook Returns to Nuts Magazine [3,800]
#2 - Laura Vandervoort goes nude for PETA! (Video, Pictures) [3,559]
#3 - Miranda Kerr Loves Being Naked, This Time Miranda Strips for Vogue [3,516]
#4 - Kristen Stewart Nude Photos From 'On the Road' Leak Online! (NSFW) [3,409]
#5 - John Russo Turns Amber Heard Into A Goddess [2,611]

Top 5 All Time

#1 - Kelly Brook goes completely nude for Exhibition Magazine (NSFW) [28,295]
#2 - Sila Sahin Nude Playboy Pictures (NSFW) [22,271]
#3 - Mizozo Homepage [13,194]
#3 - Category: Entertainment  [11,229]
#4 - Lindsay Lohan Playboy Photos (NSFW) [10,048]


Notes:

This month has seen a decent revenue increase and a substantial Pages Per Visit increase. While I can't speak for the latter, the former is due to some advertisement reshuffling. We will be doing a bit more reshuffling this month, so hopefully we will see a bit more next month.

There is only one more month before our profit sharing goes into effect. We will be making a formal announcement about our plans in December, but I expect that at some point in November we may also give a bit of information.

Lastly, these past few months have seen a significant increase in interested publishers. While most aren't writing anything yet, and those that are seem to be doing so for personal reasons, this is still a good sign as far as we're concerned. If you want to write articles on Mizozo, just let us know, we'll create an account for you and you will have free reign.