The world is already consuming more streaming than television. Today there are about 10 ways and means to monetize products, content or services.
Eduardo Arango*
Auxiliooo! we have a serious problem: We need to monetize live events and services online. What can we do? Please help us. This is a new question for those of us who are linked to the field of means of payment or electronic monetization. The reason for this question is the new mega trend of the internet: live. We will expand on this later.
The quick answer of many is that there are no widely known means or ways to this end; a response that obviously leaves disillusioned thousands of entities and people who are already doing live-streaming, around the world, but who still fail to monetize it efficiently.
No one knows all about monetization of events and live services online; in this we include ourselves. However, here we will try to help those who have this problem.
The following five issues will help us understand the context of e-monetization:
The first thing we must understand is that there are many differences between monetizing online: products, content and online services for a fixed price; versus monetizing online services by variable consumption; versus monetizing live online events/services.
The second thing we must understand is that today there are about 10 ways and means to monetize the products or services previously identified:
1. Pre/Post payments (collections) of products or services. This can already be done, via: PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Stripe, Google Wallet, I-Pay, etc.
2. Collection by Clicks / Hits. This can be done, via: Google Adsense, Chitika, Kadabra, etc.
3. Collection for the sale of advertising space. This can be done, via: brands / advertising entities on each website or app.
4. Collection by sale of big-data.
5. Collection by donations.
6. Barter / Peer to Peer exchanges.
7. Collection by Licensing.
8. Collection by Lease.
9. Collection by sale of consumption time in specific services. Here's what they do: Skype, ooVoo, Viber, etc.
10. Collection by sale of real time consumption of any live event online, on any website / app.
The third thing we must understand is the mega trend of the internet: LIVE-streaming. Among many others, these are three facts that give the reason to this statement:
1. Among other technology companies, Ericsson-Lab recently published a market study on the top 10 consumer trends. The study was conducted on about 85 million people around the world, and concluded, among others:
The world is already consuming more streaming than television; and ensures that 2015 will be historic for streaming, with projections of exponential growth.
2. In the past Tomorrow Land 2014 (dual electronic music concert: face-to-face and online, simultaneously), about 3.7 million people attended the live-estreaming version.
3. This is a typical conversation with young people born since 1985:
― You. Ask any young person, "Do you watch cable TV every day?"
― Young man answers: NOOO, there is never anything to watch on TV!
― You. But how so that there is never anything to see? if you have more than 100 TV channels on your cable service.
― Young man answers: It doesn't matter, on television they never show what really interests me. And also, I like to see what I like, live, online. Be it about music, sports, video games, conferences, educational classes, entertainment, health, teleworking, etc.
The fourth issue that we must understand is that young people are consuming live-streaming, with four practices in its usability:
1. Zapping: This is changing in a few minutes: from one live online event, to another, to another and to another.
2. Interactivity: This is interacting between the different participants of live online events.
3. Depth of consumption: This is to consume events on the issues that really interest us, in the own web / app of each author or primary issuer of the live content (read: without / few intermediaries).
4. No subscriptions: This means that young people are not willing to make recurring payments for subscriptions.
The fifth and final issue that we must understand, is that: On the one hand: the buyer, is not willing to prepay 100% of the live event to the seller, so that he delivers it later, because he does not know if the event will be good regular or bad, or if he will consume it completely.
And on the other side: the seller is not willing to deliver 100% of his live event to the consumer, so that he pays for it later, because he can make many traps to not pay for the event after having consumed it. We understand this as: 'extemporaneity between supply and demand'.
With the above, we managed to fully understand the problem of monetization of live events over the internet.
And then, how can we monetize live-streaming?
In our concept, the best way to monetize live-streaming is via the user or sponsors paying or investing for what customers actually consume.
For our part, today we only know a new means of monetization that manages to comprehensively solve the difficulties identified above, to receive payments, pay or sponsor live events online, it is called: PayLive (.com)
This system allows you to monetize any live event online, on any website or application, allowing customers or sponsors to pay only for the real time of consumption.
PayLive patented its monetization system and method, including a payment switch, with which, for example:
If the event is monetized by minutes (it can be by hours/days/months/years), PayLive monetizes recurrently every minute; thus, both the seller and the buyer resolve their conflict.
The seller gives the buyer one minute of their live event, and the buyer pays the seller, the same minute, in advance.
If the buyer wants to keep consuming the event, simply keep the switch on for as long as they want, but if they want or need to stop consuming the live event, just turn off the switch, and voila, stop paying for the real time consumed, at any time.
In any case, many of us consider that we should forget about monetizing live events online, via: pre/post payments, paid subscriptions, because they generate huge payment barriers for customers, and we must also forget about monetizing via clicks or hits, because the income received tends to be very, very low.
Innovation is the key!
The mission of all online live event marketers is to implement or develop media, systems or methods that allow us to monetize, based on what customers actually consume.
Eduardo Arango is the founder of PayLive. You can contact him through [email protected]
