For the likes of my mate Paul, something like this might just be very interesting. He and a friend are working their way towards self-employment, and as IT support people, charging for their time is a must.
So using something like Skype Prime to charge for their support expertise over the phone, as it were, would be a boon:
“Skype rolled out Skype Prime, a new service that lets people charge for Skype voice and video calls. Users set the fees they want to charge, on a per-minute or per-call basis. Skype charges the paying side via their Skype credit, and then pays the money out, minus a 30% fee, via PayPal (Skype’s sister company).”
There are however other industries that would benefit greatly from such a service, but I won’t go into that.
Or, maybe I will.
You see, the thing is, these guys are the pioneers of this industry. Those saucy chat lines have proven that there’s a business model that can potentially generate a lot of money for other industries.
Now granted, these guys have a very specific service to offer that’s always going to be in demand. Tastes, such as they are can be satisfied by any number of means, not least a dirty conversation with a woman.
But the underlying service is very, very simple: phone lines with a woman on the end of each.
Now, things have suddenly got much simpler and cheaper: one phone line, a decent broadband connection, a copy of Skype and a headset for each woman.
Transpose this business set-up across to the industry of your choice and the possibilities are immense.
And who said talk is cheap?