by Jacob Morgan
This question was actually came from a previous post I wrote on here a few days ago titled, “If Social Networks Started Charging, Would You Pay? Why or Why Not?” I started thinking about social networks charging for their services and then I realized that there is more than one currency that social networks can use to charge. Let’s say that hypothetically all of the social networks you are currently using gave you a choice, you can either pay $5/month to use the service or you can sign up for free under the condition that you will receive 5 email ads a month (or be shown 5 ads on the social network i.e. twitter). Now I’m not exactly sure how the currency from time/money converts but just think about it for a moment. What would you rather pay with, your time or your money?
Let’s say you decided to pay with your money, well then that’s simple. You enter your credit card information once and then the network automatically charges you $5/month, total time spent? around 2 minutes to enter all of your credit card information. So you are looking at around $60/year in overall cost. Is it worth it to pay that much so you won’t be interrupted with ads?
Let’s say you decide to go with the advertising approach. Your total cost each month (in $) is now 0. But how much time do you think you are going to spend looking ad ads/deleting them/clicking on them and browsing around/etc? Perhaps you will find a good deal here and there from the ads that you are shown. But, is it worth it? How much do you think your time is worth? $20/hr, $50/hr, $100/hr?
Psychologically many of us view the cash choice as being more costly because we are actually being charge. But when you start to think about your time as being more valuable, then the equation changes quite a bit. Now, keep in mind, we are assuming that all the social networks are going with one of the above models, you can’t switch to a network that is free.
You have to pay, the question is how would you rather pay?
Thanks for reading
“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.”
~Jim Rohn