Users: people/professionals that are paid for advice or to perform a work online
Model: a monthly subscription fee
Use: This service allows any kind of person that is contacted via email by customers or potential customers, to provide any kind of advice or to perform any kind of service online and to use the Bilingmeter to calculate the dollar value of the work they perform, to bill for that work and to be paid asap. Any kind of service that is usually requested via email, such as various kinds of advice, legal and administrative opinions, but also of various matters like preparing and editing texts, translations, reading a script, a prevision about stock market, a psychic reading the future, or a customer service on a sold goods.
Thanks to Billingmeter, the time spend in reading the question and answering to it, will be calculated in dollars and displayed on the email screen of the customer and the professional. Once the reply has been formulated an exact agreed dollar amount will be shown. This is the amount that the customer must pay to the professional for the work. Exactly like a Taximeter determines the exact cost of a Taxi ride. Once the answer is ready to be sent to the customer, the professional has 3 choices depending witch send button he will click on the Billingmeter toolbar. In clicking “send for free”, the professional can send the answer like a regular email, for free. The customer that will receive the answer can read it, has nothing to pay, but will know that this service cost the professional a specific amount of dollars. In clicking “sent with a bill”, the professional can send the answer like a regular email and the reader can read the answer has a bill attached to it which can be set up for payment in Pay Pal, Bank Transfer, etc, ecc. In both cases the answer can be read by the sender but a credit/debit relationship has been established and a value has been placed on the work performed.
The advantage of an immediate bill that is issued reduces the amount of administrative overhead needed to handle smaller transactions. The other option, “pay before reading”, allows the professional to send the answer to his customer, but the text of the answer will be encrypted and impossible to read until the customer pays the agreed amount thanks to Billingmeter and reported with the attached bill. The best, cheapest and fastest way to pay for the service and being allowed to read the answer is to pay with “Pay With Mail”.
Scope: Most people are giving away time and effort for free via email. By facilitating the sale of that time and effort and streamlining the estimate, the billing and payment processes the platform extracts value that is currently being wasted and, at a minimum, encourages people to understand the costs associated with the questions they ask. It is likely that some people will stop sending requests for work once they know how much they cost.
The user has the power to fine tune the cost to achieve the right balance of email and revenue streams. Because generally the work done on email is perceived to be for free, small professionals charge small amount and is generally difficult to quantify in and exact and non-contestable way the exact amount to be paid. With Billingmeter all this is solved forever. No more arguing about the value of a performance, no more chasing up customers for small amount, no more being abused by customer’s questions.