TechWag

Google Gadgets, and getting cash for your work, well only if you hit up a large number of page views that is way beyond the standard page views that most sites get. Yes, you can get cash for your Google gadget, but you have to have in excess of 250,000 page views on the gadget alone a week to get the cash.

We’ve been hearing from a lot of gadget developers that they’d like to spend more time developing if they could, and we’ve been thinking about ways to help them do that. To that end, we’re happy to announce Google Gadget Ventures, a new pilot program that will help fund third-party gadget development and gadget-related businesses. We plan to offer two types of funding: $5,000 grants for gadget developers who want to invest time making their already successful gadget even better, and $100,000 seed investments for new gadget-related businesses. For now, applications are restricted to gadget developers who have more than 250,000 pageviews per week on their gadget. Source: Google Blog

Lets run some quick numbers, 250,000 page views a week works out to roughly 35,616 hits on the gadget a day, for most web sites that is a decent years worth of traffic. With so much stuff out there, (over 2000 mashups, and 457 API’s out there according to programmable web) you are going to really have to hustle to get the goods. Not that this is not a worthy goal, but unless you go viral, not much of a really good chance to make this happen in reality.

Or, cleverly, hit up the service of the day, Digg, Facebook, reddit, what ever that allows an open architecture that also has the appeal of many of the other API’s. Something that is mapping, music, shared tunes list, or other stuff that seems to be hugely popular lately. Or maybe make a Bittorrent Google widget? It is going to have to be something that when you get to the 5,000-dollar grant from Google you might not even need or want the money.

It sounds a lot like venture capital, you cannot get it when you need it or want it, and they are fighting all over you when you no longer need it or want it. Good idea, but we are putting in the date late, dollar short category of help.

Tags: web 2.0, business //