But would anyone pay?

I've been promoting this idea of actually paying for content, like a really good news article, after you read it, as only then do you know that it's worth paying for, and I think a natural issue with the idea is, would the average person pay?

And I think the simple answer is, no. But this idea is not for average people.

I call it Pay Back Value, and it's simply acting on the web like one would at a high end restaurant--you consume first, then you pay.

However, there are two types of people in the world: those who would pay without threat of punishment, and those who would run out of restaurants without paying all the time if there were no such threat.

The ease of distribution on the Internet means that you can market to the first set, and not worry as much about the second as unlike with a restaurant where the food has a higher reproduction cost, on the Internet, there is little cost in reproduction (production costs remain high!!!) so limited loss from the theft!

Electronic distribution and reproduction is cheap--buying, preparing and cooking food is not.

Still you can get a herd problem where even people who want to pay, feel stupid about paying if there is a perception that no one else is paying or that most are not, so the idea actually gives you the ability to identify people who deliberately steal value, and credit cards can help explain how it works.

You get a credit card, right? But what if you have no intention of ever paying?

When will the credit card company know?

Ans. When they send that first bill and you don't pay it.

What if you pay part of it, or pay for a while just to build up credit and then quit paying?

Isn't that reason for credit card companies to never issue credit cards?

What are they thinking!!!

Similarly to credit cards, you let people sign up for something that gives them content without them incurring upfront cost, on the expectation that they will pay for what they value, and if they don't pay, you find out after some time, like a couple of months.

Then you can stop giving them the content.

I like using the New York Times as an example, as last time I checked they have people sign up now to see articles on the Web, but you can see them for free with no ability to pay later.

Say they institute this concept. People can PBV--pay back value. Like there's a PBV button on the bottom of the page after the news article or column, you can hit that button and pay a dime or something, or if it didn't seem worth it to you, move on.

No payment, no penalty.

Hypothetically as I have no idea what the numbers would be (but psychologists should be interested!!!) they find that 20% of their users pay back more value than if they bought the physical paper and do this month after month, 40% pay back regularly--I know I said above the average would not pay but these are Times readers!!! I'm assuming a higher class of people--and 10% pay intermittently, while 30% do not pay at all.

At their discretion they can block members of the 30% who do not pay from their site, for instance, if someone is reading article after article, day after day, and giving nothing in return, they might simply cut that user off.

Also they can look at the content people across the board are clicking on and buying or not buying, and using regularly paying users as a benchmark for the real value of the paper--kind of a mark to market with content--get an accounting of their losses from theft of content without paying.

For the first time, they can get a real monetary number compiling losses, and have the ability to weed out people who will not pay, and they can reward that top 20% who regularly pay, so most importantly, they regain the ability to reward their best customers.

Quite simply, only then does the Times become a business again.

Free is not a business model.

I have no doubt that paying later will eventually dominate the Web as it's how we do most of our buying in the real world. We rarely if ever pay upfront without being able to thoroughly check for quality.

So the remarkable thing is that the Internet is backwards!!! It's not that the Internet was so advanced that money doesn't work any more.

It's that it's a laggard to how people actually do most of their buying in the real world.


James Harris

Understanding Pay Back Value concept

Last Tuesday I introduced an idea that is meant to be a solution to a surprising problem that has emerged with the Internet, which is the extreme difficulty some people, like me, have had finding remuneration, or compensation for efforts that seem to generate value based on interest.

In order to come to my solution I went all the way back to the very definition of money itself and worked outwards from there using The New York Times as an example company for how the Pay Back Value concept works.

Now with several days to think about it, I'm more impressed with how natural a solution it is, and with how it brings back what you might call traditional values to Internet interactions, so I'd like to talk about how that occurs.

For instance I noted that with Pay Back Value or PBV for short, a reader gets to PBV after reading, say, a column by Gail Collins, and doing so would eventually charge, say 25 cents to their PBV account.

The reader gets to pay back value for an article where they recognized value after reading, or simply go on their way, giving nothing, but the Times would record when they DO pay back value and after a year, you might get a report and be surprised to find what your interests are based on what you paid for, showing what you truly valued!

Columns could have their own box office in a sense, which is the total PBV given to them, providing a real-time measure of a columnist's appeal. Newspapers could get important feedback on topics that readers are actually interested in, and the approach in a way is simply a la carte buying of the newspaper, which is the way things must work on the Internet as people have already shown they will not just blanket buy contents of an entire paper on the Web, which is why newspapers are giving away valuable information for free now.

But that is against the concept of money--giving away value for free--and it's breaking the newspapers, endangering the very value that people seek, so innovation here is driven by necessity. Advertising is not enough. That old system worked with the more captive audiences of television and radio, but the Internet is an active audience.

People routinely go past ads barely noticing them. (I know I do.)

But another value emerges with this system--people would have to sign up for the PBV, and don't have to pay if they do not see value, and they get the information for free still.

So what if they don't pay?

Not ever giving PBV says you don't see value.

If you never see value, then why are you reading day after day?

If in 6 months time a person never sees value but is clicking on article after article, and reading daily then they are stealing value.

You can now, suddenly and wonderfully, identify theft, like you can in the real world.

The action of reading does not show value in what is read, but coming back again and again to gain content, is a clear indication of seeing value!!!

Rarely or never paying is a contradiction, showing--theft.

I have little doubt that the PBV concept will eventually take over because of the value it gives companies and creative producers like myself, and the reality that it restores proper balance by giving value back to creative producers for value they have given, while giving information consumers, freedom of choice to pick value as they see it.

If that is true then PBV may be as big for the Internet as the invention of money itself was with past technologies, like shoemaking.

Of course the test of any innovation is whether it gets picked up in the real world, so now with the idea pushed forward, the question is, will it grab hold?


James Harris

Arrival of the new ad?

Source: Mashable

YouTube’s “Sell Your Own Ads” Strategy: Desperation or the Future of Advertising?

June 9, 2008 — 08:48 AM PDT — by Adam Ostrow —

Google has added an interesting twist to their monetization strategy for YouTube: allow content producers to sell their own advertising....

Nice to know Google is still working on the problem of making money from YouTube, as I think the issue really has to do with the need for the arrival of choice and I came up with my own suggestion for a new type of ad, back in May.

Thinking more on it as I flesh out the idea it just seems so natural as a way to do advertising with video where you have a tab on the video, say in the upper left corner, like the tab on a browser that says something like "Advertiser supported" and to see the ad, the viewer has to, yup, click on the tab!

So if you don't want to see the ad, you just ignore the tab, watch the video and go on your merry way.

The viewer makes the choice.

Seem dumb?

Well, television advertising models I think still dominate the web where you push things on people which is the way television works as it's so passively experienced. In contrast the web is interactive and choice rules, so pushed ads work to some extent, but to me they're annoying, and I know I can just ignore pushed ads, and still get the content!

In contrast, newspapers traditionally are more like this idea as you get a lot of content until you turn the page and see an ad, or go all the way to the back to get classifieds, because, people have more choice with the paper in their hands.

So I'm not really asking for something completely new, but something closer to the newspaper ad model with a web twist as you can get a full video commercial--which had better be good!!!

Pairing a really good commercial with videos that get downloaded a lot is also just a good idea as that can help it go viral in a way that involves viewer choice.

As my belief is that people do not hate ads: they hate bad ads and ads being pushed on them which is what television and radio do.

So because of television and radio there is this notion that people hate advertising.

But I think they just dislike pushy sales tactics that are traditional in certain media, but unnecessary on the web, where choice rules.

Stealthier advertising

I was pondering once again the issue of advertising with YouTube, which is for some reason one of my favorite subjects it seems, when I realized something while looking at a website that had YouTube with AdSense which was that you could see who the advertiser was immediately.

It was right there in the form of this little ad. Plain to see.

But, what if for some ad campaigns--not saying all--advertisers could have a stealthier approach where instead you just saw something that said "Advertiser Supported" where you had to click to see who the advertiser was?

Sound dumb? Well, curiosity is a known thing, you know? And premium, or at least different, content on such pages might draw people to click to see who was advertising which would give them a full video commercial, and links back to the advertiser's sites of interest as they choose to look at it!

Free idea. Maybe I should quit giving away ideas for free, but I have them all the time. What else would I do with them? Sit on them? It's not like anyone's buying my ideas, you know?

It's referral, stupid

I find at times I wake up early in the morning which is when I seem to have these insights. Like I was thinking to myself that the easiest way to completely define Google is to say that it is a referral company. They refer people to interesting content where that you can say is what all media companies do, which is why we, the consumers, allow them to exist.

That is what media companies do, they refer us.

Now Yahoo! is having some troubles so I'm going to help them out with a business idea, as I go to their main website often to see if I'm going to get referred to anything interesting and I do at times and it's always news, nothing else.

But they have so much stuff there that I know they want to refer me, but clearly they want to refer me only to stuff they or their various business partners want. But what about what I want?

I can tell what they want as they are painfully transparent in their needs and I know it's about money and they need money. They need my time so they can make money, I got that part.

But if they can't refer me to what I want then what good are they to me? And why should I help them continue to exist? (Yes, they have search too but Google is a great referrer so I can get more with its search.)

Oh yeah, so the business idea for Yahoo is a personalized page that builds based on your searches (with your permission of course) which kind of acts like a friend, in that, say, you do a lot of porn searches it kind of nicely ignores that (unless you ask it not to) and slowly builds a profile by suggesting at times a site or two but no more than three that you might want to add to your page.

And every once in a while it refers you to some interesting content, which, wow, can include advertising! Where instead of being another beggar on the streets of the Web, Yahoo! can actually be a referrer you appreciate.

I am tired of pushy companies either forcing ads at me--still begging people, no matter how flashy or snazzy the ads are--or never figuring out ways to refer me to interesting content.

While Google keeps doing this better it will clobber everyone else.

Ok, that is my sleepy idea of the day. May as well get up now and later I'll come back to see how this one sounds after the passage of time.

It's referral, stupid. IRS. Hey, that's kind of ironic. Go figure.