MoFuse - Mobalize your blog

David Berube contacted at the weekend regarding MoFuse, the online service which lets Bloggers mobalize their blog. I first came across MoFuse in January though at the time I decided just to announce it rather than look at the service in depth. Last week I showed you ‘The quick and easy way to create a .mobi site for your blog‘ though the sole plugin I recommended was only for WordPress users therefore I was keen to look at an alternative for those who use Blogger or some other blogging platform.

Who uses MoFuse?

The home page of MoFuse promotes the fact that bloggers can make money by mobalizing their content. It also highlights that it can create an iphone version of your blog and that large blogs like Mashable and ReadWriteWeb use the service. I believe the latter is perhaps a case of the truth being stretched a little.

Both sites did create MoFuse versions of their blogs in order to review the service earlier this year however neither site seems to be using it with no promotion of the service on their sites. Infact, Mashable actually promotes a different mobile service to view their blog. I don’t think this is something which anyone can blame MoFuse owner David Berube for doing. It’s quite common for sites to use a service like this after reviewing it and then change to something different later on. Also, it’s obviously good to promote the fact that large blogs have been using your service. Which is why I wasn’t surprised to see a site I reviewed a year ago, FeedM8, also promote the fact that Mashable uses them (the irony being that Mashable isn’t using either service!!).

Mobalize your blog

Signing up to MoFuse is incredibly easy. All you need to do is enter your email and a password and you’re good to go.

The dashboard is very easy to navigate and the FAQ is pretty good. The first thing you need to do is add your blog feed. All you need to do is add your blog URL and decide what mofuse domain you want (for example I chose http://bloggingtips.mofuse.mobi/). It’s possible to change this name at a later date as long as the keyword hasn’t been taken.

Thankfully you can change your mobile domain to something a lot nicer. To do this you need to add a CNAME entry to your DNS (ie. set up a domain redirect). For example, I could create a subdomain mobile.bloggingtips.com and point it to my MoFuse area or even use my newly registered bloggingtips.mobi domain. This is good for branding purposes.

Once you have added your blog you will see a host of new options on how to edit and promote your new mobile blog including some cool badges which you can add to your sidebar.

When MoFuse was first launched, there was a free service and a premium one. The premium service was $3 per month and let you create your own domain and also let you moneterize your blog. Thankfully, last month the premium service was removed and a free account now includes all features.

Making Money

The ability to make money from this service is something I’m sure a lot of you will be interested in though as it stands I’m not sure how much you make. On July 10th the following announcement was made :

As of July 10th 2008, all MoFuse accounts will start to receive all of the features previously only available to Professional accounts. Current Professional users will not be billed after July 9th and you will still be able to keep 100% of your revenue generated from AdSense or AdMob.

We’re also giving you more! All accounts will now be able to:

• Use a custom domain name for your mobile site
• Use your logo in your SMS widget
• Create up to 5 mobile sites (increased from 3)*
• Receive 50 free SMS messages a month to promote your mobile site (increased from 10)**

We want to break down barriers for bloggers trying to conquer the mobile web, so we like to call this MoFree!

The key thing to note from the above announcment is the part which states you

keep 100% of your revenue generated from AdSense or AdMob

However, it isn’t clear if this is the case. It may be that you only keep 50% of your ad revenue with MoFuse getting the rest. When you sign up there is a part which asks if you agree to the Revenue Sharing Policy. This policy states that

We use a random function to decide which Google AdSense Publisher ID to show. It is setup so that it will chose your ID 50% of the time, and our ID the other 50% of the time. This is done at random and the percentages may not be exact.

This policy was last updated on June 5th 2008 so are we to assume the newer announcement which states that bloggers keep 100% of the earnings supercedes it? Actually no, I don’t think we can because the monetize area states that

We offer our users the ability to monetize their MoFuse mobile site through our revenue sharing program.

We’ll split the revenue 50/50 with you. All you need to do to enroll is click the box below and choose which mobile advertising program you want to use on your MoFuse mobile site.

This makes me assume that the announcement in July should have said 50% instead of 100%.

Regardless, the ability to make money from this service (using AdMob or AdSense) is a welcome one. As regular readers will know, I think that 50% is a big cut for any ad network to take however in this situation, I’m not as concerned as I’m happy with the service and it’s an area of my site which I wasn’t making money from anyways. Of course, larger blogs with tens of thousands of subscribers may not be happy to lose 50% and perhaps my view will change in the future though at the moment it’s a price I’m willing to pay for using MoFuse.

Features, Features, Features

When you view the BloggingTips MoFuse domain from a regular browser (ie. pc or mac) it displays a picture of a phone to show you what your mobile blog will look like. When I viewed the domain through my phone (N95 8GB) though I saw the mobile version and I have to say I was very impressed with it (you can see a preview of what it’s like through a mobile here). The content was presented in a nicer fashion than the WordPress plugin I reviewed last week.

MoFuse also boasts a lot of nice features that similar services don’t have. Together with the abilty to make money through AdMob or Adsense you can :

• Add a visitor count chicklet - Similar to FeedBurners chicklet, this new tool was announced last month and lets you display how many regular visitors you have to your mobile blog.
• Add a QR Code to your blog - The QR code is a barcade utlity which most new mobile phones can read. When I scanned it with my phone it displayed the URL of my MoFuse domain (All Nokia N series phones currently have this application. Select the bar code reader from your office area and view the image at http://bloggingtips.mofuse.mobi/ to see it in action).
• See lots of Stats - The stats area is fantastic. It shows page views, unique visitors, the posts which were read and a list of the phones which were used to access the site. It also displays a fantastic graph which shows all visitors and page views from the last 10 months (or past 10 days).
• Add a special area for iPhone Users - MoFuse automatically creates a unique iPhone version of your phone.
• Add widgets - MoFuse lets you add a ‘Leave Feedback’ widget as well as a ‘Click 2 Call’ option. A nice way to get feedback from mobile readers. There’s even an SMS widget so that readers can get updates via text.
• Automatically redirect users - You can add PHP code to the header of your blog so that mobile users are automatically redirected to the mobile version of your blog. This will not work with Blogger though it will work with all PHP self hosted blogging scripts (eg. Typepad).

Here are a few screenprints to give you an idea of the stats MoFuse provides :

Overview

When I came across MoFuse at the start of the year I didn’t really take a good look at the service but after learning more about the .mobi domain name recently I have become more interested in the development of a mobile version of my blogs and was keen to learn more.

I was surprised to see that very few of the large blogs noted on the home page of MoFuse were actually using it however, thankfully, this turned out to be no indication of the quality of the website. I still love Alex Kings WordPress Mobile Edition plugin : it’s an incredibly easy way to make your WordPress blog mobile ready. The plugin option is still the easiest and quickest way to mobilize your WordPress powered blog however MoFuse offers so much more.

You can add advertisements to the mobile area of your blog without having to edit anything, you can check who has been viewing your mobile area and with which phone and you even have the option of creating an area specifically for iPhone users. And since you can also redirect users automatically I have decided to switch to MoFuse for the mobile version of Blogging Tips. It’s a great alternative for WordPress users and a fantastic option for Blogger and Typepad users too. Unfortunately, there is not a hack available just now which allows Blogger users to automatically redirect mobile users to the mobile version of their blog so you will have to redirect them manually using a MoFuse badge.

Last week I spoke about the benefits of developing a mobile version of your blog and so far, MoFuse is the best service I have found which lets you do this so I recommend checking it out.

Link : MoFuse

* Disclaimer : This was not a paid review. Remember, any paid review will have a note to readers stating that the review was paid for. Not that paid reviews guarantee a positive review, I reiterate that any review, paid or otherwise, will have it’s strengths and weaknesses covered
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Update

David has clarified some points since I wrote this post.

• Those who used to pay for the premium service retain 100% of earnings. Everyone else gets 50%.
• Although Mashable or ReadWriteWeb do not appear to be actively promoting MoFuse on their sites, they have both recently told readers about their MoFuse powered URL. See here and here.