Google now pays $5,000 or $100,000 to create Google Gadgets for them.

[Ohene]

http://www.google.com/gadgetventures/

How do you help encourage the growth of a widgets or gadgets ecosystem? Being big is a good, natural start. It has helped people flock to develop Facebook applications or Yahoo Widgets or Google Gadgets, just for exposure to the traffic at these places. But Google wants to encourage with more than traffic. Now it's offering cold hard cash.

Google Gadget Ventures (site to go live at 6:30pm Pacific) is a new pilot program that will pay developers either $5,000 or $100,000 to create Google Gadgets that prove popular with users.

"We've seen lots of people develop great applications for gadgets that we wouldn't have thought of or developed ourselves," said Sep Kamvar, who leads personalization engineering at Google. "We wanted to incent developers, and one of the things we had been thinking about was to create an ecosystem so people would invest in their gadgets because it was profitable."

Explaining further, Kamvar said:

"AdSense allowed lots of people to quit their jobs and make money from it. We want to make the same economic ecosystem for gadget developers. Our main goal here is to bootstrap an ecosystem where lots of gadget developers can spend time doing what they love, doing great things with their gadgets and make money from them."

Grants of $5,000 are the first level of support available to developers. Those that have built gadgets listed in the Google Gadget directory which get at least 250,000 weekly pageviews are eligible to apply. The process involves a one-page proposal explaining how they would use the grant to improve their gadget.

Those who successfully earn the first level of support can then go on to the higher level of funding -- $100,000 in seed investment. This is designed for the gadget developer with a business plan on how a gadget can actually earn money. The $100,000 investment from Google is meant to help kickstart the development. As explained, it is only available to those developers that have first proven their worth by winning an initial grant.

At first, the pilot program is not open for general applications. Instead, Google will be contacting selected developers asking for proposals. But then the program should open to public applications in the future.

Though the larger grant is billed as an investment, Google said the intent was to structure the funding in a way to encourage product development, rather than to be a way for Google itself to earn money off investing in potentially lucrative gadgets.

"The payoff for us is in more pageviews and users. By getting more users, we get more searches," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience.

via SEL

[sslshopper]

Wow! I need to learn how to program Gadgets! That would be amazing if a lot of people were able to live off of projects for Google. It seems like the skill set is a lot narrower than working with Adsense but there are still probably quite a few people who could do it.

[odin93]

Wow awesome, that is great now another way to make money from teh big G.

[luckyNumber]

Hmm, never even heard of Google Gadgets. Best check them out!

[yaffiliate]

Is it just me or does $5K seam like a very little amount for 250K weekly impressions?

Don't get me wrong money is money, however, if you annualize it, the CPM on 13 million impressions (52 x 250K) it is less than 39 cents.

With billions of free cash can't Google afford a little more?

[Ohene]

Originally Posted by luckyNumber

Hmm, never even heard of Google Gadgets. Best check them out!

They are part of the iGoogle page

[EGS]

That's pretty awesome. I wish I was a developer.

[w3bmaster]

Hmm some guys will make nice money from this

[juanthedj]

Wow! Now, it calls for a study on programming or so! Anyone to join me enroll? lol

[PioneerGold]

Originally Posted by yaffiliate

Is it just me or does $5K seam like a very little amount for 250K weekly impressions?

Don't get me wrong money is money, however, if you annualize it, the CPM on 13 million impressions (52 x 250K) it is less than 39 cents.

With billions of free cash can't Google afford a little more?

I was thinking the same thing.

Wonder why Google is being such a cheapskate about it.

The traffic has got to be worth more than .39 CPM.

[smalldog]

http://www.google.com/gadgetventures/faq.html#21

5. Do I need to be a US citizen?
No. Anyone who's developed a gadget in our gadgets directory that generates 250,000 weekly page views is eligible to apply for funding. However, to be eligible for a $100K seed investment, you do need to be able to start a company in the U.S.

Ideal for non U.S citizens..

[trocobob]

I didnt understund , please can someone explain well to me ..
what is a gadget ?? exemple ?? and how this can work
sorry for my stupid question

[Ohene]

Originally Posted by trocobob

I didnt understund , please can someone explain well to me ..
what is a gadget ?? exemple ?? and how this can work
sorry for my stupid question

Did you bother to click the link? It's embeddable html code, like a utube video

[coldfire7]

wow.....where to start ?

[DarkX]

Originally Posted by coldfire7

wow.....where to start ?

You will need to be a developer.
Pretty good amount

Originally Posted by trocobob

I didnt understund , please can someone explain well to me ..
what is a gadget ?? exemple ?? and how this can work
sorry for my stupid question

These are gadgets http://www.google.com/ig/directory
if i'm not wrong.

Any good developer here who's gonna email them ?

DarkX

[webhuge]

i'll start using google web toolkit to create something, who knows perhaps i'll get this 5000$

[Redleg]

Sorry for bumping up an old thread here, but I didn't want to start a new one for this question..

Anyone here who have applied for the grant, and have you received any answers yet??

[Tiffany Hua]

LOL, another new topic to study.

[lowboman]

I got a great idea for a sweet email widget that would revolutionize email but i have no clue how to code it or make it. if any body is interested in helping me make it pm or email me at lillowboman24@yahoo.com

[Traffic Master]

Hi,

I am never heard about google gadget, Can you give some information about google? Expecting your words..