It's not Worth it...

… is one of the most common reasons for customers not wanting to pay. Then what is?

Here are some reflections after a few years in the online community business where we have struggled with the balance of payment locks all along.

I give away my conclusion already here – it must be easy peasy to pay and you must appear generous and not greedy.

It’s stressful, because there is no truth, no yes or no. You never know which model will work the best. You will have to try out and test a balance through recording statistics, running surveys and looking at competitors’ progresses. At Stardoll I was convinced for a long time of that the best trigger would be to let the users try everything and pay for the top extra features, but when playing Panfu I realized how much I wanted fully locked doors. When I ones had made the choice to go there, I wanted in. The locks are nothing but a user/reader experience!

Models I can recall are

1. Play (read) if Pay

2. Play (read) for free, pay to save

3. Play (read) for free, pay to get the extra fun stuff

4. Play (read) for free, pay to get currency to buy stuff for

5. Play (read) for free and earn currency/points, activate the currency when paying

The two latter require some creativity and new thinking for the magazine business but it’s easy to see the them in the same future as an ‘earn points to buy extra special tooth paste for when brushing your teeth with a digital sender to your Internet account’ type of world. (At 21.00)

To know what they will pay for and when you must know your customers. By heart. The details. Either you are one of them yourself, or you love them deeply, or both. You must know whether the blue mini dress is more trendy and attractive than the red purse to know what you should offer, or exactly when your customer will be willing to pay.

All customers will always want everything ‘for free’. You need to know the psychology behind their needs. You must listen to them. Bring them in, ask them and let them talk. Interpret their words with the background of your skills of business development and turn the information into doable ideas. Make them feel that it is for free and that they only have to pay if they really really want to themselves.

Entering the business of online payment it is also time to track the user behavior when looking for and clicking the Pay button. It must be so darn easy to pay that there is no friction at all. But this easy purchase includes so much more… first time visitor special page, introductions, SEO teasers, continous offers for loyalty and frequent returns etc etc. It feels like the news paper online business has only begun their journey.

Any payment thoughts from my community perspective then? Why would I keep my mouth...
Traditional ads is a dead end for online press. Why should anyone click on banners in the short future. There is so much else to choose from and ads are irrelevant. Unless they are integrated as desirable content, but this market is narrow for independent magazines and news papers.

Focused feed ads is another thing though - give followers what they want when they want it. Let the readers choose themselves if they want to be reminded, and remind them with what's interesting to them, and they will be your best ads.

No chance that news papers can continue to be the journalists all themselves though.
Let the readers in, at least if they are going to pay. Online people tend to pay for extra chances of being seen – not the basic right to be seen though, that’s what makes them just stay.

Few things are unique today. Time and friends is what is valuable. People pay for the time they spend on something. Let the readers be the free content, friends are the best glue and inspiration.

Feels as I will have much more on this tomorrow morning.

More on payment locks

Mashable - Newspapers Are Still Dying, But the News Is Not Going Anywhere
Despite newspaper share prices seeing a 380% increase in the last year, don’t be swayed by the perceived recovery. The only way for newspapers to survive is by investing resources into innovation online.

Jardenberg unedited
Det finns en relation mellan hur mycket tid som spenderas i ett medie och hur mycket annonspengar det mediet snurrar runt. För alla traditionella medier pekar utvecklingen neråt, för internet pekar båda kurvorna uppåt. Men det mest intressanta är det finns en samband mellan tid och pengar i alla kanaler, och på nätet är det ett glapp som är värt minst 50 miljarder dollar, i grov jämförelse med övriga medier. Det är potentialen.

MyNewsDesk
Nu lanseras ”betalväggar” på många nättidningar i USA. En trend som troligtvis kommer att fortgå och sprida sig till Europa. Tanken är att generera nya mediaintäkter för mediahusen, samtidigt som marknaden protesterar och slutar länka till intressanta artiklar. Med den här pågående trenden blir spridning i sociala medier och sökoptimerat pressmaterial allt viktigare.

5 basics when selling the way Kajsa Lundfall does

OMG What Happened - pay with a Tweet

Just love to pay with a Tweet on Oh My God What Happened. How about to pay with a tweet or a Facebook post to get a discount cupon, or a log in code, or a special hairstyle on Stardoll, or a...

3D fantasy inspired by real life objects

Sherwin Williams - Paint Chips from Orion Tait on Vimeo.

Sherwin Williams Color Chips World is another sample of my fascination for inspirations from 3D to real life and the other way around. Here it's more of real life pantone strips arranged in a way that probably would be too time consuming to put in this order that have inspired to this 3D movie.

Also check out a second version on koikoikoi.com.

Compare previous 3D inspired art
Once upon a time 3D was amazing, today hand made is

Färgsamling

Nu är jag igenom Maja Jacobsons 'Färgen gör människan' och har under tiden hunnit tänka igenom vad rosa, lila och blått betyder för mig och många andra. Kläder speglar alltid det aktuella samhället och det blir lika mycket en historiebok som en bok om färger. Det är ju det som är så roligt med mode... tycker jag. Jag samlar här flera artiklar kring färg.

"De där svarta kläderna är verkligen jag"
Du får bara en chans att göra ett första intryck. Under den parollen blir vi slavar under våra ytor. Men även om vi har ett aldrig så avslappnat förhållande till innehållet i våra garderober, så sänder kläderna meddelanden om vilka vi är - eller vill vara. I kostym blir man behandlad på ett annat sätt än i munkjacka. Genom att välja sexiga kläder stärker man sin könsidentitet inför festen. Men den som är alltför stajlad på universitetet får det svårt att bli tagen på allvar.

Kampen om färgernas betydelse går vidare
Färger reser över tid och rum och byter betydelse genom grupptryck, teknikutveckling, kommers, revolutioner och ren slump. Vi har läst boken "Färgen gör människan", pratat med författaren Maja Jacobson och ger sju kulturhistoriskt färgstarka svar.

Färgernas alfabet
Med färgsymbolik menar vi användningen av färger för att beskriva sinnestillstånd, egenskaper och kulturella uppfattningar. "Färgska" är det första språket vi lär oss och ett användbart sätt att kommunicera utan ord.

Svart sätter färg på trafiken
Den vita hajpen har lagt sig. Silver börjar bli hopplöst ute. Nu kommer svart på bred front. Men den som vill synas i trafiken ska välja starkt gulgrönt. Bilfärger är både mode och vetenskap.

Den problematiska färgen
För flickor är rosa bekymmersamt, för pojkar i det ­närmaste tabu. Men hur kan en färg väcka så många – och i vissa fall kluvna – känslor?
– Rosa är en kulturell nyckelsymbol för sam­hällets föreställningar om kön, sexualitet och makt i samhället, säger genusforskaren Fanny Ambjörnsson.

Color Symbolism
The world we see is filled with color. Color is important in art and in various cultures around the world. People of the world see colour differently. This is because tradition, religion, and symbolism affects how people feel about color.

Lace and Purple - Women's only

Lace is something of the most feminine you can wear. You see a ruffled shirt sometimes on some guy trying out the leather rokoko rock style, but a sheer layer of white lace is very rare to spot.

Also the colors of purple and purpur are often reserved for women. Especially in soft materials. As well as the overall - in soft materials, and knickers or bloomers.

Until 200 years ago the fashion was different. Men posed in lace and purpur to show off their financial grandeur. Purpur was the most expensive color to produce, gathered en masse from small shells and lace the most expensive fabrics. The men were just as much as the women porters of these signals of wealth.

With the industrial revolution wealth came with work and men started to wear more practical and dull suits, while their women got the one and single task to still represent the status of the couple with expensive and fantastic outfits. The women became the beautyful, the jewellery great to look at.


At the same time Darwinists concluded that men and women had different purposes, they were different and it got important to show those differencies by all powers. So the purple, still worn by women became the color of the weak, of fragility close associated with trembeling flowers. The lace became as female as can be, and the blommers are only seen as women's underwear ever since.

There was an attempt in the 70s to brake these associations, but I believe it only made them stronger. Will we ever see them on men again? Do we want to?

Sad, not scared, of what we are becoming

Strong images from Japanese artist Tetsuya Ishida touch me as visualizing the human disapproval of and unhappiness in what and who we are becoming.

Female Role Models needed

I need women showing me their achievements. They inspire me. They show me how much courage, effort and patience I need. They tell me what I can expect so that I don't get disappointed but is armoured and prepared for the struggle I need to put up, but also that it is worth it.

The current image of who is born to do what is slowly changing in all different part of the world and women and ethnic minorities are gaining more and more equal value to the white and to the man. Many people don't know this - how big the small difference still are, but they effect me and my life every day.

Women have put their marks in the history writing, and sometimes they should have, but someone else was rewarded in their place, or they were ignored as unimportant in a male context.

Please, let me know any woman you feel has her rightful place in history, or any woman you think is missing!

You are never alone
How did Lady Lovelace talk?
Be the Cook for the Best Product
Barbie is fake, Pink is not
Alice ännu mer i underlandet
A good start of 100 most important women through times, by Shelby Ellery

Alice ännu mer i Underlandet

Var just och såg Alice i Underlandet med några små söta tjejer som sällskap. Visst var det en vacker film med figurer och scener man inte vill sluta titta på, men karaktärerna är ganska själslösa och försöket att ge den gamla helgalna sagan någon sorts förklaring och vett är faktiskt lite tråkig. Det som alltid har varit så galet med Alice i Underlandet, allt man inte fattar och som förblir utan förklaring, blir inte så kul när det anas lite förstånd någonstans.

Hattmakaren och den Röda drottningen är så klart estetiskt intressanta att se på, men det är bara Alice själv som ger filmen någonting av eget värde i form av historieberättande. Sällan har en så tunn och blek flicka så trovärdigt förvandlats till bästa drakdräparmaterialet - en ståtlig kvinnlig riddare i rustning som tidigare bara setts i Jean d'Arcs skepnad.


För mig som vuxen blev istället Tim Burtons nydanande feministiska affärskvinna Alice för långt från verkligheten för att kännas trovärdig (hur ofta på 1800-talet tror ni en just nekad svärfar erbjuder en flicka tjänst i handelsföretaget), men små tjejer som ännu är helt ovetande om denna verklighet får äntligen en varierad bild av vad som kan hända en söt tjej som ramlar ner i ett hål i marken. Välbehövt!

Recensioner av filmen på Rotten Tomatoes är hälften positiva, hälften negativa. Filmen är en egentligen en renodlad barnfilm, helt utan spänning, känslor eller komplexitet och har hittills dragit in 319M $. Hoppas det är riktigt många unga tjejer och killar som har fått vidga sin bild av vem som räddar riket och hur man lever lycklig i alla sina dagar.

I never wanted a pet

I never wanted a pet. My sister had a rabbit when we were young. It was boring and I never wanted to cuddle with it. I adore animals, in the nature, but I have no desire to keep them prisoned in my home. I am born free and can't lock anybody in.

There is nothing in the world my girls want more than a rabbit, a hamster or a dog. Why? What is it that make kids want to take care of a pet so much that they even take care of a virtual pet? Love? A virtual pet don't love you. Response, proving that you exist? True responsibility, making you worth something? Or do they just think that the pet is so pretty that it is worth it?

Barbie is a fake, pink is not

Some seem to say that Barbie and pink is pretty much the same, and it striked me that what if it is Barbie who so completely degraded the color of pink in so many minds. Barbie is known to be a toy for little silly girls only and maybe the color has gone the same way in their affinity?

The color of pink was first recorded in the late 17th century and is the color of the dawn, of rosy flowers and of blossom cheeks. These nouns associate further to youth, freshness and naivety. With this in mind it feels even strange that pink not long ago was a masculine color.

I just learned that less than 100 years ago pink was assigned to gender for the first time, and by then to men as deriving from the red. The blue had been a female color for a long time, associating to melancholy and dreams. It was first in the 40s that it turned the other way around and little girls started to get dressed all in pink.

Well, Barbie was launched in 1959, and the early dolls were not packaged in all hysteric pink plastic boxes, so at least it wasn't her making pink to a girly color. The overwhelming pink color must have been added by time according to sales successes and today Barbie is more pink than ever. The more Barbie presents an unattainable dream of perfect girlyness, the more parents seem to think that the doll is appropriate for their daughters. Of course they are right, only that it’s not preparing the girls for the upcoming future where they will have to learn that everything girly is worth, if not nothing, so not so much. Barbie has been criticized for many more ideals, but I stay with the color and the fake here.

Pink has gained status the past 5 years or so. The romantic fresh pink has maybe never left the upper class cleaned look, but the stinging version was considered vulgar and tacky for a couple of decades.

The first gender revolution was in the 70s with an attempt to not let the colors determine who you are. I guess women felt denied and the following 80s was ruled by power women using the pink color to state that there is nothing wrong being a tough girl.

Again there was a contra revolution in the 90s where the grunge fashion was extremely gender neutral, followed by another contra revolution of very strict black. Again girls grew a new believe in their interests of femininity resulting in expressing their desire for pink. This time the commercial forces are strong and enhances all group selected attributes for mass sales.

What’s next? Up til now the need of pink seems to reappear everytime it disappears. Women want to express that they are women and that it's just as much worth as being man. As for right now more parents than me want their girls to know that they are aloud to be the girls they are with the interests they have. We don’t want to prepossess them to just want to be a specific kind of girl with a specific set of interests, and that’s what we are worried about when it comes to the pink color.

I love pink, and I think we can use it to attract girls to do things they wouldn't dare to try if they weren't safe to be welcome, but I don’t want it to be loaded with values as naivety, youth, stupidity or tackyness as Barbie has made it to be with help of a fake smile, a fake body and fake future. To me it is actually Barbie who adds the dilemma to the color.

Adjusted to Internet

Just felt how annoying it is when you read the newspaper, a book or a magazine and you can't click the cursive text referring to another media or article. I'm used to being able to get to know more immediately. The Ctrl+Z problem for real life is not solved yet, but iPad and e-books will soon master this problem for me. Yet the soft format of a magazine in the sand is most charming.

I want to be a Goddess raising out of the Ocean

Zapphire, azure, beryl, cerulean, cobalt, indigo, navy, royal, sky blue, baby blue, robin's egg blue, cyan, cornflower blue, midnight blue, slate, steel blue, Prussian blue

We can always trust the blue to flow for the summer. If all other colors are changed in the trend schedules the ocean will still always be our biggest inspiration for the vacation outfits.

Blue is of course the color of water and heaven. These are our sources when we feel that blue represents something eternal, calming, harmonic and ethereal. Those adjectives most of us would like to add to our vacations.

Blue is the most liked color. The other colors have stronger symbolic. Blue is not sinful or violent, there is nothing repulsive. Maybe this is the reason that uniforms often stick to the blue color – to not provoke? In the summer we don’t want to be provocative, we want to relax, hang out, be soft and we want it to last forever.

We want to be Venus, goddess of love, beauty and fertility, coming out of the water - year after year – that feeling never changes. This is the feelings of summer, and they are the same to most people all over the world, either through a well spread image or through pure bodily experience of warm days at the beach and smooth still summer nights.


Akris

AndrewGn

Celine

Lanvin

Vionnet

Winning Trend of Hope and Truth in Eurovision Song Contest

I totally adore Eurovision Song Contest. It’s a great remainder of old times when Europe needed a neutral occation to join, have fun, find and respect each other. It still works. We wouldn’t see or hear anything of most of the countries participating if it wasn’t for the ESC. And all countries really take the advantage to show off. Or at least they do their best, even though the taste of the different countries sometimes varies. But very often it doesn’t vary at all, and that’s when the show becomes so amazing. It’s when most countries put their 12 points on the same artist that I get the thrill.

I love to see the different classics in the contributions every year, but this year I also realize that there are true trends in the winners.

Much of the show is about putting up an as unforgettable show as possible. If the tune isn’t great enough, the artist try to put as much fire as possible on the scenery, literal speaking, but the past 4 winners are the songs that don’t need any glitter. Europe (always weirdly including Israel) can see through all the make up and hears the voices that brings something alive inside.

This year it was German Lena Meyer-Landrut who in spite of the commercial process to get her in place, was the most honest, direct and believable participant. She’s a girl we put great hope in for the future.

Last year Norwegian Alexander Rybak went right for our hearts with his dreamy Fairytale, also he is young, believable and gives great hope.

Dima Bilan is the most commercial and spectacular of the four, and it was probably more Evgeni Plushenko and Edvin Marton who gave the hope. Cheap tricks, but skills are always impressive.


First out in this trend was Serbian Marija Serfovic with an extremely strong message and more believable than anyone ever on that stage.


I love these winners. No glitter, only personality and a hopeful message. They show me how people around Europe are growing able to handle the huge amount of noise and cosmetic.

I love the Etno Super Gods trend winners the four year before that too (Lordi, Paparizou, Ruslana, Sertab), all powerful numbers mirroring our needs of those times of Heroes from the Roots.

Looking forward to next year, trends are never very far these times, and we're already in the future. What are our needs, who will we turn to in the future? What comes after Power, Roots, Truth and Hope?

Also I recommend seeing this event with your Twitter feed to get real life communication with people from all the countries. It really brightened the experience. Need the hashtags sorted out though #ESC #Eurovision #songfestival #songcontest #Eurovisionsongcontest #ESC2010

Older posts about the trend of hope
Force majeurs make me relieved
Who's got the power?
Where women are going
Trust the science for the future

Once upon a time 3D was amazing, today hand made is

Chrissie MacDonald's paperworks


Polymer musings of Meredith Dittmar

This art is visually inspired by 3D and vector graphics. This art would easily be made in vector graphics today. But instead someone has put a lot of time on doing this. Doing this is extra time consuming compared with computer work. This is valuable today. This amazes us. Making something real life look like computer graphics is amazing today because someone has put extra time making in instead of doing it the fasted way.

I am strength, what is you?

My 8 year old daughter came to me the other day with a bunch of cards. Each card presented a word - the words were

materialism, greed, tyrant, strength, anarchy, loyalty, wealth, earth, envy, wisdom, old woman, experience, woman, joy, enemy, changable, development, friend, achieved goals, herd, danger, safety, curage, coldness, rest, stubborn, carefulness, the young, late, a new idea, a newbie, a new start, bewilderness, old man, based, hurry, unsure, thought, man, boy, woman, girl

If you are one of these words, which is it? she asked me.

Strength I could answer after a few seconds. This confirmation from myself has given me even more of the same value all day. It empowered me to be reminded of what I am and how I feel.

Achieved goals is me, she replied.

This exersize was not so bad.

Which word is you?

Everyone wants to be a rock star

So there is science indicating that financial bonuses not always work the way they intend to. Let’s say there is a team who needs to deliver something almost unachievable – a most uncertain profit, tripled user or ads sales figures or a huge amount of page views. The board and CEO have a wish, a requirement that is not fully corresponding to the reality, and believe that with a huge extra effort from the team, these goals might be reached. How to make the team want to offer this extra effort?

a) Offer a smaller sum as bonus if the set goals are reached
b) Offer a big sum as bonus if the set goals are reached
c) offer different sums as bonus to different positions
d)Challenge the team to with free hands within the concept and framework of the company, reach the goals.

Monetary bonuses can easily hit wrong. Everyone gets happy for an extra surprising bonus for Christmas according to the good performances of the year, but using money as a carrot is bound to cause problems.

Either the money suggested is not enough to care about. The sense of this will be more of a disappointment. It can even be insulting - Would I work extra for that small sum? Who do they think I am?

Or the sum is that big that doubtful decisions and strategies become a risk as the personal bonus is prioritized before the long lasting result of the product. I'll do anything to achieve the goals so that I'll get the bonus

As those decisions are made the entire organizations starts to doubt the leaders and the ground will start to rock completely.

Also as this research describes, big bonuses do not in any way help to give birth to great ideas. There are no changes in the structure of the creativity process in an organization when setting a financial bonus, and by that no more creative ideas will be born than the day before.

Big economical bonuses might make people work more hours though, desperate to reach the goals, growing a worry by time when the great ideas are not coming no matter how much of their time awake they spend on the company’s agenda. Even though all thinking capacity is focused on the matter no greater solutions are generated than before, maybe even a little less, as the employees get more and more tired. Finally they collapse, or realize that the balance between the job and the personal health has been far too scewed and that it is not worth it.

Different bonuses offered is of course a huge risk by itself as it is difficult to make it 'fair' to everyone and it can even make employees feel not worth as much as others, which will lead to complete apathy.

This is not 'fun at work' and it sounds somewhat true that employees who have fun at work are more productive than those who don't have fun at work.

Monetary bonuses = double failure if implemented for the wrong tasks and/or wrong employees.

I guess d) is the best option? I don’t know, I haven’t tried it, but I am convinced there are some important premises for the c-model to be successful.

Yes – Autonomy is the open structure needed for people to even want to think and create. It sounds as a great way for the employees to become one with the brand as they are the ones developing it and Yes – Purpose is a great carrot or challenge to let our minds focus on the right things.

Yes – the wish for Mastery is what driving most people to develop further. Everyone want to be good at and proud of what they do, but we also want to be rewarded for what we do, not only through mastery, but also through Recognition.

I don’t want to sit alone in my room playing my guitar for myself with no other listeners. I want applause!

We want to be seen. The organization setting the purposes must have a general known habit of letting the staff be the heroes. And this is not something you just say, but you reward them the best with further trust, free hands, raised salaries and public recognition.

People going to work today all want to be rock stars.