James Siminoff RSS

I am currently the CEO and Co-Founder of Unsubscribe.com the former CSO of Ditech Networks Nasdaq (DITC) the founder and former CEO of PhoneTag, founder/principal in NobelBiz and founder of GRID.com. This blog is about my life as a serial entrepreneur, husband, traveler, inventor and father.

jsiminoff@PhoneTag.com













Archive

Nov
6th
Thu
permalink

I saw this when Jason Calacanis twittered it.  I have had a long time interest in crowd sourcing payments of content.  Seems that the guys at Mobuzz are trying to turn to their community to continue operations.

I appreciate their efforts as they seem genuine but I believe they have made a critical mistake in execution, especially in a down economy.  If you want something from someone you need to give them value back.  What they should be doing is closing there feed to only be available from people that donate the minimum 5 euros, this would create a incentive for someone who appreciates the content to actually donate.  If they are able to then build a larger base and have advertising support the model they could always then additionally offer to everyone who donated a lifetime ad free feed (or something like that).

I believe that crowd sourcing payment for content will become a very big business in the future, especially as the advertising model looks less attractive.  I am always willing to pay for content that I like (proof is my monthly iTunes bill) but like with iTunes there needs to be a value given to me which is why I part with my money.

The idea of a company being supported by donations is cute, giving your customers value in return for financial compensation is a business.

Comments (View)