What would you do with £40,000?

The lovely people at Paypal are planning to make someone's dream come true. They have just launched a brilliant prize draw promotion that give everyone who enters the chance to win a year’s salary of £40,000.

And this go me thinking, just what would I use the prize money for if I won it?

Do I succumb to a 'recession mentality', invest it wisely, and watch the interest grow or would I use this windfall to fulfill a life fantasy?

Travelling the Silk Road from China and a trip on the Trans Siberian would do me nicely.  The romanticism of early traveller tales no doubt brought back to reality by the hard seats of second class travel.

Then again a world cruise aboard Cunard's new Queen Elizabeth ship has its attractions.  The closest I have go to this vessel so far is a peek at its live cam. A Britannia Club Balcony stateroom would be much more enticing.

Or perhaps a shopping spree beckons and what, I ask myself, could my shopping list include?

• A new laptop from Dabs.com
• Expensive Xmas gifts from IWantOneOfThose.com  seeing the festive season is almost upon us
• A larger flatscreen TV from richersounds.com to view next year's Rugby World Cup
• One of the Flip Video Mino HDII camcorders from misco.co.uk
• or it might just be best to purchase a new sat nav system from maplin knowing that after all of my travel I could at least find my way home!

Well that's my list, what about yours?  As a reader of TheDigitalConsultant what do you need to do to be in the weekly draw?

Simply buy anything using PayPal, and the more times you do, the more chances you have to win the prize.

Details of the competition can be found at www.paypal.co.uk/win and good luck!

Win £40000

Find out more

Enter now for your chance to win







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News and Views

Move over Mr Murdoch, now everyone can produce a daily newspaper based on a topic of their choice.

The millions of twitter topics are easily collated around a central theme using the paper.li platform.  In the newspaper creation above a populist topic of "Organic Food" was used.

paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or hashtag.

The archive functionality is a welcome addition and a platform such as this could be used as an adjunct to a twitter-based marketing campaign.

Schools can use this media approach this classroom projects and blog publishers can do likewise, as demonstrated in these three topic "dailys".

• The Digital Consultant - Marketing
• The Digital Consultant - Media
• TheDigitalConsultant - Social Media

And if you do not want your topics to be mentioned in a third party paper.li newspaper simply click here and follow the instructions.

Alternatives

There are other options.  Twitter Times is similar to paper.li but presents content in a two column format, in the order of how many followers and followers of followers have re-tweeted a story.

Flipboard is available for iPAD users so if you don't own one you have a problem!

Related articles

• How to make your Paper.li newspaper rock #paper.li (holykaw.alltop.com)
• Connect your community with a Twitter daily newspaper (nevillehobson.com)

Should be Sceptical?

News International is claiming 105,000 paying customers for The Times and Sunday Times. 

This is five months after the introduction of their paywall, touted at the time as being the way things would be for all online publications moving forward.

According to a UK journalism site, "the sites charge £1 for a day's access and £2 for a week's subscription, though an introductory offer allows 30 days of access to both sites for £1. Access to the sites is also bundled with a seven-day print subscription to either title."

However there is much debate as to what the figures really mean and how successful the paywall model actually is?

Average traffic for May has actually halved compared to the previous year according to Hitwise and the BBC goes further claims there has been an 87% drop off in site visitation.

They also question how many of that 105,000 paying cystomers are currently in the introductory £1 for thirty day trial period?

Colin Greenslade, the Guardian's media commentator says the figures simply don't stack up as a new business model.

As he puts it:

"Most importantly, there is no clear breakdown of the 105,000 total figure to show how many people have subscribed monthly, weekly or daily. "
 
If you compare the reach of The Times with that of a more traditional online model, the Guardian, the decline is very noticeable.
 

Rob Brown of PRMedia Blog believs that the paywalll could well tumble.  He makes the point that where this really doesn’t add up is when you look at ad revenue.
 
"The Guardian is pulling in £40 million a year in online revenues more than double that of the Times and bear in mind that doesn’t account for the fact we are not looking at a full year position for The Times.
 
It looks like online ads at the Guardian represent serious value in comparison. From their pre-paywall high point the audience for the TimesOnline has dropped almost 90%."

"These figures very clearly show that large numbers of people are willing to pay for quality journalism in digital formats." says Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of Rupert Murdoch's News International. 
 
This to us looks like an attempt to put a postive spin on a less than positive result, albeit after just five months of moving to the paywall model.
 
While we love an optimist, Rebekah Brooks's conclusion could well be premature.  There is not yet conclusive evidence that such a business model is viable in the medium or long term.

Related articles

• Why the Times paywall numbers are meaningless. (malcolmcoles.co.uk)
• Times's paywall figures don't add up to a new business model (guardian.co.uk)
• The successes and failures of the Times's paywall (newstatesman.com)
• Is The Times Paywall Ready to Tumble? (pr-media-blog.co.uk)

Colour My World

Ever thought about the importance of colour choice for your online presence?

Apart from the purely aesthetic reasons, top online brands tend to gravitate towards the same colour palette as this infographic demonstrates.

Source: colourlovers.com blog

And if you really wish to tie your media promotions together, you might also consider using the most popular colours of 2010.  By linking key words to the top three hues you stand a better chance of making the visual impression you had hoped for.

Source: colourlovers.com blog

The breakdown by social media is even more interesting.  Using colour preferences made by twitter users, who make use of a tool called 'themelon', it is possible to demonstrate demographic data analysis.

Related articles

• Make Your #NewTwitter Background Pretty With Themeleon (techcrunch.com)
• Revealed: the colour of the social web is the colour of Twitter (guardian.co.uk)