Items Tagged With kiva

Well, the first donation from A Dent In The Universe has been made. It hasn't offically come through the the Dent, as I don't have any links or ads up yet. But the money did come via an affiliate link for an internet marketing product, and I thought it was important to get the ball rolling. It's for a grand sum of $75 but hey, it's a start.

Kiva is quite incredible and I'm really glad it's the direction I've decided to go in. The thing that really struck me though, as I was reading through each possibility, was that I was quite simply overwhelmed by them. It was SO hard to actually decide to pick out one loan and go with that. There are just so many that seem so worthy.

But I guess that's what's great about what I'm hoping this site will end up achieving. The money will slowly build up, get paid back, and just get bigger and bigger. I love the idea of being able to fund entire projects at a time, no matter what the figure.

I haven't adjusted the 'About the Site' page above yet, but I've decided to ramp things up a little. My original idea was to have 10% of all income generated through the site go towards Kiva projects. But after spending quite a bit of time looking through Kiva I've decided that's just not enough. So... 20% is going to go to Kiva instead.

Very soon I'll start to add an ad banner or 2, do some product reviews of stuff I actually like, and also create a mailing list optin. All with the view of providing 3 services: good quality product for sale, generating money for Kiva, and sharing stories behind some of the entrepreuers.

Total transparency is name of the game, and total transparency is what you'll get. I haven't figured out the process yet, but the Dent will have a full disclosure policy on what money goes where.

Expect some more information in the next day or so. Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated too.

Update: I just thought I explain better how I'm going to do the 20%:

Product: For example, a $1000 product, regardless of the affiliate commission, 20% ie. $200 would go to Kiva. Any product sold through the Dent will have that flat rate of 20%. It won't matter what the affiliate commission % is, no exceptions.

Obviously A Dent In The Universe will be paying the 20% out of whatever commission they receive, this doesn't effect the owners of the products in any way.

All Other Revenue: This is simple. 20% of any ad revenue or any other revenue the site generates goes to Kiva.

I hope that makes sense.

When first formulating what I planned to do, I started to really look around at what would be a good fit. I'm a part of quite a few charities, but I wanted to pick something for A Dent In The Universe that really felt like a custom made fit. And I've found it.

Actually, when I say found it, I already knew it existed but I guess I didn't really quite appreciate what it fully was. It took Oprah to bring it to my attention. I'm not a regular Oprah viewer, but I was interested in a show recently as it featured ex-president Bill Clinton. The focus of the program was on giving (as that's the name of Bill's book) and it featured a range of people all giving in extraordinary ways. Two of those people were Matt and Jessica Flannery who founded Kiva.

In case you haven't heard of it before, what Kiva does is provide a framework for people to lend money, termed microloans due to the general size of the loans, to entrepreneurs in the developing world. It's a brilliant concept and one that I think is a perfect fit. Here's a graph of the loan cycle borrowed from the Kiva website:

What I love about this is the concept of having the money repaid by the borrower, and that's where the clincher is in this for me. I don't want to take the money back out of my Kiva account ever. I want this to snowball. Every time I make a sale or generate some form of revenue from this site, 10% goes straight into my Kiva account, and it never comes back to me. I want it to grow exponentially. Think of it as a reverse compound interest. The money I put in gets used, put back, then used again. Perfect!

Find out more about Kiva by clicking on the banner ad above. Kiva is an incredible organisation, and one that I'm proudly supporting.

I've probably missed the boat on this due to being so damn busy, but there's no time like the present. I've already gone ahead and bought my Platinum Membership for Butterfly Reports , so know that I believe in this product. In fact, there will never be a product I'm talking about on A Dent In The Universe that I don't believe in.

Anyway, back on task. In case you haven't heard about this yet, Butterfly Reports is Mike Filsaime's brand new service. I'm a huge fan of Mike's, having bought and thoroughly enjoyed The 7 Figure Code last year. That product just blew me away. What Butterfly Reports delivers though, is something far different.

What Butterfly Reports essentially is, is a database of reports and PDF files, from a wide range topics (not just internet marketing) where at least 25% of the links in the PDFs you use are branded with your affiliate ID. That's pretty cool don't you think? When I initially joined up, it was just as a free member. But once there, the offer I couldn't refuse reared its head. I've now joined as a platinum member for the simple fact that 100% of all links in the PDFs I send out will have my affiliate link in there. That's money well spent as far as I can tell.

It's still early days on the site, but this thing is going to grow very quickly. Members submit reports as well, so it's going to get full failry quick. I think that the lack of reports right now may be one of the reasons for the early bird discount. No, I'm not trying to hype that up either, Mike sent me an email not an hour ago saying the early bird offer was finishing in 24 hours. Given the huge numbers that Butterfly Reports will get, simply because there's a paid version and a free one, it's a no brainer for you to head over there and at the very least sign up a free account.

And remember folks, if you do eventually think this is something you'd like to pay for, 20% of your membership paid through this site's link goes to charity.