Yesterday, I shared Why I still think that users will be paid to use Online Data Storage (like Yahoo Mail), today, to my surprise, Yahoo has launched a web service that enables Developers to build custom applications on top of Yahoo Mail and monetize.
This means that developers that are able to build some new application that connects to Yahoo mail (and it's unlimited data storage) will receive 10 dollars for every new sign up of a pro-account.
"Yahoo! Mail offers an incentive for developers to build applications using the full functionality available for premium Yahoo! Mail accounts. Specifically, Yahoo! Mail provides a commission of $10.00 for every new Yahoo! Mail Plus account referred by developers." says Yahoo
Yahoo has created a massive developer "channel sales" network that could scale it outwards. Is suspect Jeremy Zawodny had some influences on this, he's been keeping close tabs on Amazon's S3 web services, these Yahoo offerings will help developers scale out infrastructure, without having to hire a sys admin or deal with excessive web hosting.
What will come out of this? I can think of a few application developers that I know that could really benefit from this.
My prediction yestereday was right, developers can pass on some of the residual revenues to users, incenting them to sign up, with the benefit of storing all of one's data in the "cloud". If done correctly, a savvy business model will let developers make revenues higher than the $10 premium sign up, so there's profit sharing with the developer and the user.
What is "Paymium"?
The model is flipping, soon we'll say good-bye to "premium" (sites you have to pay for ) web sites and hello "paymium" (websites that pay users). Did I create yet another stupid jargon term, probably. Welcome "paymium". Chris Coulter will probably rant on this post, I look forward to it.
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