It’s always fun to get the monthly Feedburner check for advertising they insert into the RSS feed. The actual dollar amount is still next to nothing, but I love the fact that, even with nearly 800,000 publishers, 1.4 million managed feeds, and a $100 million payday from Google, they still haven’t automated the check writing process. Someone hand writes all of these checks every month.
By the way, there’s been a bit of a stir caused by reports yesterday that Feedburner turned off historical stats. CEO Dick Costolo said via email that it was just a bug caused by a code update, and it will be fixed shortly.
Love it. Old school business in an online world. Beautiful.
wow this is hard to belive!!
Michael, if you really don’t want anyone to know what the dollar amount of the check was, take another shot at blurring (or blacking) out the numbers.
really? what do you think the amount is? looks pretty blurry to me.
6000.75 I think
I think it is 10,074.73?
well, there you go.
Michael, why don’t you interview them about this? Maybe they sent only you this check handwritten, for some purpose
6274.73
As far as the whole check processing, I sure wish there was a service that would automate the process.
Offer an API. Then just print new checks with all the info plugged in(business address, account #, address/phone/name/amount) and then mail it in the mail. Figure can charge a buck for processing(to cover printing/ink/postage), and you have instant millions.
And if something like this exists already, feel free to let me know, since I’m looking for a service like this.
Andrew – quickbooks. or 15,000 other applications.
feedburners ad network earnings are pathetic. Such a crappy cpm. I was hoping google might help that
Who’s writing the checks and who’s signing it?
those just print on checks(unless I’m missing something), I’d like something where I send the company the info, and they do all the processing(print new checks, put a stamp on it, drive it to the post office).
Michael, maybe you should work on your photoshop blurring skills a little more
I’ll know i’ve made it when a monthly cheque for six grand is “next to nothing”
we agonized the whole day long how to pay raised funds to our ventures. now i know;)
i love these antique checks, like paying a private investigator.
try more like 674.73….TC isn’t getting $10k for this kind of rev share. Feedburner themself proly isn’t getting $10k from ads in the TC feed.
They aren’t paying out or writing too many checks….#2116
Why not use paypal? Fees too high?
@Alaska, looks like a woman wrote, man signed (sigh)
Weeeeee!!!!
You know Michael, that the number from the check is the most interesting part in this article. We all know the power of Techcrunch and that you have many visitors and page views. But this thing with the check is quite intriguing.
So how much money can a RSS feed bring. That is the question
Are going to tell us ?
)) Kiddin’
taking payments from an ad network through paypal is the dumbest thing ever. Why cut your earnings by 2%, or whatever it is, because you dont want to wait for a check
6874.73
lol. thanks for sharing. #19 beat me to it.
over 800,000 publishers and only check nr. 2116? either they just switched banks (SVB) or there aren’t too many payouts to the 800K publishers!
Yeah, but TC is the biggest there is. If you’re getting only a few grand, then the folks at feedburner aren’t writing many checks at all. They only write a check when revenue hits a certain amount, right?
I’d guess it’s in the dozens per month.
This check that says a lot more about the feedvertising business than it says about feedburner’s internal processes.
I’m in for the ‘guess the check figure’ game.
Look like $1124 to me. Can’t make out the cents.
What do I win, Mike?
Make that $1174.00
you guys don’t understand – this is Web4.0 – a huge leap over Web2.0 (not even going into 3.0) – which is about adding a human touch to technology. This puts Feedburner on the cutting edge of the tech pogress and leaves all of us behind in the dust.
Hats off to Feedburner – the standard we all have to follow…
It’s more fun to play guess the routing number and account number.
Michael, what was last months check #?
6674.73??
Mike – why aren’t you getting it electronically? I have never received a check from them – always a nice deposit monthly.
Of course you got a post out of it and all I get is a line item.
ok knowing what FB pays and their fill rate …. and playing with Photoshop, here is my bet on the check:
$1,274.73
This comes from two things:
1. the numbers in the upper box clearly shows four digits before the cents and this is easy to follow if you take the digits in the date and move them down.
2. In the writing of the amount, the first number has to be 3 letters leaving us only one, two, three, six.
3. Then assuming, I am right that it’s four digits, we would need a “thousand” next followed by a number and a hundred
4. The number before the hundred is also very short so I went with a two.
5. If you notice, none of the numbers in the blurred out part cut below the line as well.
Who knows if I am right but there is my guess. The other thing it could be is $10,xxx but that would be a very tight 10 before the comma in the number box.
Columbo has left the house.
allen – didn’t know that was an option.
Andrew,
Looks like almost any kind of data export will be able to be converted by almost any serious accountancy agency in to an automated process.
Here’s an offer to you: minimum 50k clients/month and I’ll do it for you at $1/client. 12 Months contract, minimum 300k cheques to be ordered.
Hey, it’s gotta be worth it, I’m not US based, so I would have to outsource the whole darn thing again for the posting. Still I’d make a lovely cut on your Excel Spreadsheets. Checks will be shipped within 4 working days, so I have time to go show off my new hardware, paid by your company, at $tarbuck$.
The other option? QuickBooks or 15k other apps and maybe you could invest some bucks for someone to write you the export/conversion batch to import the data in QB.
I hope your startup/company has a more solid concept and the team more knowledge than what you just showed here. Just saying.
Just go to the TC forums and you’ll surely find someone there who can automate the import in QB for you.
oops – actually it’s paypal but there is no fee so its all good
Michael, as someone who has been defrauded once after having had an order of cheques stolen, I’d be more concerned about the bad blurring job on the transit and account numbers on the bottom of the cheque. (I wouldn’t want any cheque I wrote to be posted on TechCrunch with only a blurring filter on my account number…)
How many others see seventy four written and 73 in numbers not blurred?
My bad, I come from else where ok!
Definitely $6,674.73
lol @34
“In the writing of the amount, the first number has to be 3 letters leaving us only one, two, three, six.”
three??
Allen (or Columbo),
So if the fist word has to be 3 letters, how the hell is “three” a possibility? And you might be retarded or blind if you can’t read both the word “Six” and the number “6″ as the first digit.
Nice try, but don’t call yourself Columbo.
lol – I bet everybody became bright-eyed when they saw that check photo.
Just show the amount, for the love of god – you have to grey it out
Maybe it is not such a good idea to publish this check. If you have +650K readers, times approx 200 posts/month, that’s a virtual 130 million feed impression.
So I don’t know how much publishers get paid in the FB network, but FB charges $4 CPM average, a total $520 000/month of potential revenue on Techcrunch subscribers alone.
So if you get only $1 000 or $6 000/month, that means the FB network is a rip-off, or their advertising executives are really ineffective (something I refuse to think). Or your feeds do not reach 650K readers, but merely 6500.
I’m sure there’s an explanation for this.
#43 – three has three in it so it counts – damn i need something cold
actually i still stand firm with my guess because i didn’t include 3 in my guess.
I thought Google hires PhDs who can at least write properly.
hey what ads? I read techcrunch on google reader, I don’t see any rss ads!
we know
Hey Micheal ,
I think the amount isnt less than 1 USD and isnt more than 10000
Am I right
i used to write checks by hand, but now every bank offers electronic check payment for free, i wonder why they are still handwriting checks….they are not saving money, instead wasting money and time!!