Website Testing and Feedback
Web Content
Digital Music
Stock Recommendations
Services Marketplaces

Website Testing and Feedback

Web sites often have bugs and potential enhancements. Often it is a site's visitor who discovers the bug or thinks of an enhancement. But currently that visitor has virtually no incentive to report the information to the site. PostPricing can be used in a site testing and feedback network, in which site users act as sellers of bug information and feedback to sites that act as buyers who optionally pay for the information and feedback provided. The goal would be to enable sites to receive all the high-quality feedback they need at a discount of its value to them, and to enable individuals to make money by providing feedback. The organizer/operator of the network of sites and users would take a share of the unlocked value.

Web Content

Most online publishers have yet to find success in monetizing their audience, and advertising rates are not as strong as they used to be. These publishers often try to attract users with free content mixed in with pay-per-view content, hoping that users of the free content will eventually begin purchasing the premium content. Also, some pay sites offer limited time free trials and hope that when the free period expires the user will transition from “free-to-fee”. Most online publishers will tell you that these strategies have proven to be inadequate. People do not make the leap from free to fee because they are not confident that they will get their money’s worth. People think they will probably not use the site enough to pay for it and that similar content is probably available elsewhere for free. PostPricing is a better solution. Buyers have no need to fear because they will never pay more than the item's true value to them. Online publishers could stop giving their material away for free but also not charge unattractive flat fees. PostPricing bridges the gap between free and fee by falling somewhere in between, allowing the buyer to set a price. The volume of paying customers will rise dramatically - publishers and customers alike will benefit from this breakthrough in pricing strategy.

Digital Music

How to sell digital music is certainly a hot topic these days, with free downloads through P2P software eating away at the music industry’s profits. Through legal prosecution combined with the rise of fee-based substitutes, downloaders of free music are being redirected into paying channels. But this movement is happening inefficiently because the gap between free and $.79 per song is so wide. Free downloads transformed a huge number of people, especially college students, into rabid music fans downloading hundreds and even thousands of songs - since online music stores face no marginal cost, they should aim to maintain this volume. But the stodgy price-per-song approach of online music stores forces music fans to change their freewheeling download habits. Buyers must be certain they like each song before they download it, instead of just downloading lots of songs they’d like to check out. PostPricing provides a smoother transition from free to fee. Let downloaders continue with the habits they have learned through P2P software. Maintain volume and let them set the price they will pay after they listen to the songs. The reputation system will protect vendors against downloaders who have no intention to pay (limiting these people to the price-per-song payment structure) and maximize profits from buyers that use the system responsibly. Even more, PostPricing transaction histories will provide amazingly insightful and effective marketing data. In all, the addition of a PostPricing payment option to online music stores will provide a smooth transition from free-to-fee where a higher volume of purchases result in increased profits.

Stock Recommendations

There are currently a variety of resources for stock recommendations: analysts, columnists, mutual fund managers, newsletter writers, and web sites, to name a few. But it's often difficult to determine which recommendations are valuable and which are worthless. PostPricing would enable sellers to offer stock recommendations to buyers without a fixed price. The buyers would optionally act on those recommendations and pay only if they found them to be of value. Since the system stores information about previous transactions, buyers would be able to see which sellers have stock recommendations that other buyers have found to be of value. Through the use of the cutoff percentile feature, sellers who provided worthless recommendations would quickly find themselves at the bottom of the average payment list and would be unable to find buyers for their subsequent recommendations.

Services Marketplaces

Lots of marketplaces that connect companies with freelancers are springing up on the web. These generally work on a bid or reverse auction system and provide no assurance to the companies that the work they pay for will be well done. The marketplace is filled with freelancers without established reputations. This is discouraging to potential job posters because they might not be confident that they will find a qualified/talented freelancer for the job. The addition of PostPricing as a payment option will help the market grow by lessening risk to job posters and allowing for a detailed reputation system to emerge. The system will naturally reward quality freelancers and weed out those who do poor work - since they won’t be paid well, they won’t have an incentive to remain in the system.

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