Kung-fu styles: Making Money With Website

FindTheBest, an information site that lets shoppers compare everything from apartments to dogs to venture capitalists, is unveiling a new design.

The new look, created by design firm KKLD, aims to cut through the sometimes cluttered and text-heavy datasets that are FindTheBest’s bread and butter.

“Like any product, you keep adding new features and new features and it winds up looking like Frankenstein over time,” said founder Kevin O’Connor in an interview at VentureBeat’s offices. The new design is aimed at making comparisons clearer, more iconic, more graphical and easier to understand at a glance.

For example, on smartphone ratings, the comparison grids include colored bars to show how many megapixels the camera has and colored clock circles to show how many hours of talk time the battery is rated for. But on college ratings, the charts show pyramids to indicate how well-rated the college is.

It’s a much more approachable representation of the data than FindTheBest’s previous text-centric tables.

The site is built on a Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP foundation (LAMP) running on Amazon Web Services. The underlying technology took two years and a $2 million investment to build. It is aimed at making it easy to create new comparisons and fill them with relevant data, and O’Connor boasts that his company can now add a new topic in about a week at a cost of $1,000 to $2,000.

The site now includes over 700 different comparisons in nine major categories. Each comparison has its own unique data structure, to facilitate comparisons and filtering that’s relevant to that particular class of products, and the data comes from public sources, researched by FindTheBest’s staff.

FindTheBest’s website now gets 3 million visitors per month, a figure that is growing by about 15 percent each month, the company says. It also syndicates subsets of its data to about 50 partner sites. The company has begun to make money from Google AdSense advertisements and from “Buy Now” buttons connected to Amazon.com and Nextag.

O’Connor claims that 15 percent of the site’s visitors go on to visit, call or e-mail one of the vendors listed in the database, a remarkable click-through rate that bodes well for the company’s future revenue prospects.

FindTheBest has raised $6.76 million to date, including a $6 million first institutional round from Kleiner Perkins in July, 2011. The company is based in Santa Barbara, Calif. and New York.

O’Connor sold his previous startup, ad network DoubleClick, to Google in 2007 for $3.1 billion.

Let’s face it: These days, most of us have more than enough stuff.

Instead of buying more gadgets and do-dads for your loved ones and friends, have you considered making a charitable donation in their names instead? Or handing out charitable gift cards?

Since the best, feel-goodiest part of gift-giving is knowing you brightened someone else’s day, it makes sense to give your gifts to those who are truly in need — and your recipients might agree with that sentiment, too.

If you’d like to buck the consumerist tradition while still keeping the joy of seasonal gift-giving, there are more than a few alternatives. Best of all, they’re available online and are great choices if your gift-selection deliberations have left you with little time on your hands.

Here’s our list of easy online charitable gift-giving options, including charitable gift cards. We at VentureBeat hope you’ll consider making charitable causes part of your gift-giving plans now and throughout the year.

Donors Choose gift cards

Donors Choose is a project aimed at the needs of underprivileged classrooms and students. These gift cards can be loaded up with the amount of your choosing, then sent to the recipient who can decide where the funds should go. For example, they can choose a classroom to donate to based on location or subject material. The cards can be mailed, emailed or printed at home.

Unicef inspired gifts

Unicef’s mission is to save children’s lives through simple improvements such as vaccinations, proper nutrition and clean water. The United Nation’s organization has created gift categories on its site ranging from emergency help to immunizations to education. When you select a gift, you can dedicate it to a friend or loved one, who will then receive a card. Winter Child Survival Packs and Child Survival Food Packs are particularly appreciated around the winter holidays.

American Cancer Society donations

Through the Cancer.org website, you can make a charitable donation to honor or remember a friend, family member or loved one. You can choose for your donation to be used to benefit cancer research, a number of specific cancer types (such as breast cancer) or just send it to wherever the funds are most needed.

charity: water gifts

If clean water is something you’re passionate about, check into the gifts available from charity: water. The organization offers print-at-home cards, a pack of 10 cards to send in the mail or deliver in person, and personalized cards with DVDs and wristbands. All of the proceeds from the purchases are used to fund clean water projects.

World Vision gift for children

World Vision will help you select a gift, mostly focused on the needs of children, for people in needy or underdeveloped communities. This could be as simple as $22 for school supplies or as much as $100 for a woman’s small business or a well to provide clean water. When you select your gifts, you will be sent special cards including a picture and information about the impact that gift will have on those receiving it.

Salvation Army tributes

The ubiquitous Salvation Army bell ringers are going high tech this year, taking donations with Square credit card readers and smartphones. Bell-ringers outside the grocery store are only one way Salvation Army raises money for its many projects during the holidays. Salvation Army, which focuses on helping the homeless and destitute, allows you to honor a loved one when making a donation through its website. If you so choose, Salvation Army can send a special letter to your honoree.

Doctors Without Borders tribute gifts

Medical emergencies happen everywhere, all the time — especially during natural disasters and political unrest. Doctors Without Borders attempts to respond to those in greatest need with fewest resources. Through the organization’s tribute gifts, you can choose to send an e-card or a mailed letter to let your loved one know about the gift.

Oxfam America Unwrapped

For gift-giving, Oxfam will allow you to choose items such as mosquito nets, a dozen chicks or a school meal to be donated to those who suffer from poverty and hunger. The friend or loved on on your shopping list will get a card (via mail or email, or you can print it out yourself) with details about the gift.

Razoo giving cards

For these flexible gift cards, you choose the amount of the total donation, then print or email a card to the recipient. He or she can then choose a nonprofit organization to receive the funds. Another Razoo tool is the Holiday Wish, which allows you to raise funds for your favorite cause through a simple page that can be shared via email and social sites.

Habitat for Humanity Gifts from the heart

Habitat for Humanity is an organization that focuses on building safe, affordable housing for the homeless and at-risk. Through its website, the group lets you make a donation in someone’s name. When making your donation, just choose to have a card mailed or emailed to your gift recipient and choose the occasion of the gift.

Kung-fu styles

Monday, December 26, 2011

Making Money With Website

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