I am not so sure about the US market but inside the german internet market there are several online currencies. They are used to have an value in exchange for several online services. For example you can buy posters for your site or you can give others some credits for doing a review on your site. I also tested this kind of services on my own and I earned around 10$ for a month of online activity, but honestly I believe those networks are going down within the next five years.
But first of all I want to give you a short impression what all these online currencies are about:
- klamm.de is the biggest provider of an independent online currency, founded in 1999 and having around 45000 members already. With an incredible exchange rate of 1,000,000 Lose = $0.20 . The main aim behind klamm.de was the idea of creating virtual batches, so users can investigate batches to win a certain Jackpot of either batches or real money. And very fast the users started exchanging batches versus online services and even real money.
- ebesucher.de is the biggest provider of view and mail exchanges in Germany, claiming to have more than 100 000 users and their currency which is one 15 second view equals around 100 Lose from Klamm.de .
- primusstart.de that is the third provider I want to mention at this point because they keep their value as $0.01 = 300 Primus, which again equals 30 000 Lose from Klamm.de . They have around 30 000 Members.
It is pretty obvious to see that the provider of these sites make a lot of money. But the first question I want to go into at this point is why are those online currencies that popular.
The Advantages of an online currency:
- it is a pretty easy way to exchange services, you make a post and you get paid (for example certain providers at klamm.de offer around 300 000 Lose per post).
- the real value is very low but as they are using big numbers people seem to feel good about what they are doing. Or do you know anybody who would start posting for $0.07 per post ?
- there are basically no rules and some users even use services like the cash doubler where you pay a certain amount of your choice in one big jackpot and then the everybody who paid for the jackpot before you did gets a small payout until their investigations is doubled. You won’t see people doing this with real money but on klamm.de they do, or they waste their money on external lottery sites.
So to sum it all up as theirs no control on the market you can earn a lot and you feel like loosing nothing as you because you do not spend real money, just your time.
Nevertheless I am pretty sure all these sites are going down within the next five years, because
- the inner circle of all these networks is around 40 years old, which is pretty old when you think about that other new networks like twitter.com or facebook or even google are founded by young people who just finished college.
- the design is really bad, which is caused by none professionals building up a business with people who do not really know what the web 2.0 is. People who have not heard about things like clear and simple design. I guess one of the most ugliest examples is klammgeil.de which looks like the websites I used around five years ago.
- the whole system is pretty unsocial, people want to be paid for anything they do and if they are not they won’t do anything. This again is causing the age inside the inner circle of klamm.de because only those who have been online for a very long time have the chance to built up an successful external site. Therefore the network won’t be facing any chances until those who work with the site for five years or even long want to change it and that is why their going to be an decrease in popularity of klamm.de in the coming years.
For myself I was thinking about some kind of next generation website share holder market where people trade shares of websites with the exchange rates listed and all that stuff. Sure I wanted to design all this in an nice and cute web 2.0 style but I canceled the idea after I experienced the online solidarity on social networks like twitter.
I met people there who helped me with problems I ran into for free and in exchanged I helped them and that is how we became friends.
While during my time on klamm.de I made around 20$ in two month by doing several post exchanges and other services but I did not have any personal relation to the people I worked with. But it is not only the fun why I like those social networks so much more it is also the idea of living in a group where you help each other and that is what is creating vital websites, sites people are looking for.
Because when I made a deal on klamm.de for getting paid for a certain amount of posts, I won’t go back to the forum at any time to look for the others and to see what they are doing but when I joined group on twitter of other webmasters we started out helping each other for nothing in exchange as we know the other group members would do the same for us.
The web 2.0 is meant to be social, not paid !
