The beta version of Skype Prime, part of Skype 3.1 for Windows, a widget that allows Skype users to become online, on-call experts.

For example, if you’re a business consultant of some kind, you can set up a hotline for people to call you for advice and guidance in your area of expertise. Experts can charge per minute or per call.

Payment for the service is made through PayPal, of course, and Skype receives 30 percent commission.

"If you are a financial advisor or astrologer," says Sten Tamkivi, general manager of eCommerce for Skype, "a sports coach or a tutor and you want to sell your expertise online, Skype Prime opens up a whole new market by letting you sell your knowledge to Skype’s global community."

If the Skype Prime service sounds familiar, that’s because it’s not the first time we’ve seen something like it. Back in June of last year, Ingenio’s Scott Farber was just gushing about his new Ether product, a SkypeIn application birthing what Farber called "v-commerce," or voice commerce.

Ether customers could set their own rates for phone conversations, and Ether processed payments, collecting a 15 percent commission.

The next month, in July of 2006, Charles Carleton, co-founder of Jyve, told WebProNews all about his award-winning JyvePro, a Skype-based plug-in. Earlier that year, JyvePro won the Voice Services Award from…wait for it…Skype.

Jyve teamed up with Click&Buy to process online payments made by community users seeking expert, monetizable advice. Click&Buy’s commission rate: 15 percent.

Skype says its new Skype Prime product is still in the very early stages of its lifecycle and was "built from the ground up" just like Skype itself. And who are we to say it wasn’t? Perhaps they were just too slow about releasing it.

But you have to admit the timing’s fishy, and the 30 percent commission seems inordinately steep, considering two lesser-known competitors (without the leverage of 171 million users and all that eBay money) are offering a similar – really similar – service for half the price.

We can a lot from Microsoft.

Skype-Per-Minute Widget Launches

At the recent eBay Developers Conference, Skype bequeathed upon JyvePro the Voice Services Award. Jyve already operated an online Skype-powered community of experts, putting people in touch that had similar interests or business needs.

“The underlying premise,” said Jyve co-founder Charles Carleton, “is that at any given time, there are 6 million users online. We’re trying to match these people up and convert them to a pay system.”

That’s where Click&Buy comes in. Click&Buy provides the online payment system that allows these experts to charge for their time by the minute and enable the payment transfer. Click&Buy has developed a metered system that can be negotiated and implemented at the expert’s discretion.

Unlike Ether, which brokers the payment up front and connects interested parties via an assigned phone number that can be placed on websites or business cards, JyvePro also provides a searchable and taggable social networking community, which puts less onus on the intellectual service provider to aggressively market himself.

In future, says Carleton, Jyve will add interactive chat sessions where visitors preview a group of online experts, and click a button to talk to one of them one on one. It will also include video chat and the option to charge more per minute for that feature.

So Ether says it wants to keep its customer base more “high brow.” That means no phone sex or adult services. Has JyvePro set any such standards?

“Not yet, no,” said Carleton. “It hasn’t been an issue. If it starts then we may partner with another company to handle that traffic.”

Carleton said JyvePro’s commission was about the same as Ether’s, which is 15 percent of client revenue. Click&Buy can be used for micropayments or monthly subscriptions. The company makes use of SOAP and XML feeds to automate the billing process for the merchant. There is no charge for the SOAP service.

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Scott Faber, co-founder of Ingenio and General Manager of the Ether division, calls it “v-commerce,” or voice-based commerce. Ether is targeted toward niche experts, bloggers, and celebrities, like Gordon, who is embracing the service as a way to offer his expert advice. Faber has in mind “traditional service providers” like computer professionals, legal experts, therapists, and accountants who want to monetize their services in new ways.

“We don’t do Adult,” said Farber.

Sono phone sex?

“No phone sex,” he said.

Here’s how it works: sellers visit the Ether website to acquire a free 800 phone number; something like 1-888-MY-ETHER, with a unique extension, such as 1234. The seller sets a value on their time, a rate a customer must pay in order to be forwarded to the seller’s actual cell, work, home, or SkypeIn phone number.

Dialers are prompted for their credit card numbers before calls are forwarded. It can be set up to charge per call, by the minute, or by the hour and sellers can set a schedule of availability to ensure calls only come in during specified times. Additionally, if phone traffic is heavy, callers can set appointments to call back using a time window.

The Ether Phone Number can be embedded on websites, blogs, business cards, newspaper ads, billboards, you name it. What’s Ingenio’s cut of all this? Ingenio charges a fee of 15 percent of earnings that includes credit card processing and long-distance costs. Ether phone number pages get indexed and are searchable.

“Whenever your phone rings through, there’s money on the other end,” said Faber.

Faber uses entrepreneur and author of the weblog Mashable (where you will see the “Call Me” button to the top right) as an example of someone using the Ether service.

“Whether it’s health advice, tax help, computer support, or wine recommendations, Ether makes it simple for people to get paid for the time they spend sharing their unique insights and expertise,” said Faber, in a statement.

What about psychics and Tarot readers?

“Sure,” he said, “though we try to keep it more highbrow.”

Because, of course, the Internet is known for its highbrow uses.

In addition to the voice service, Ingenio has also launched “Pay-to-View” with Ether that enables people to sell and deliver digital content like documents, photos, computer code, podcasts or video. Buyers read a description of the digital content for sale on a website, but only view it after paying the seller’s specified price.

Ingenio has a fraud team and a “Play Fair Team” set up us as intellectual property rights watchdogs to reduce the unauthorized resale of copyrighted material. After the content is sold, however, it’s up to the content owner to track violations.

Still in development, Ingenio is working on another Ether-connected service called “Bid to Talk.” If your thoughts are so valuable that people are lining up to talk to you during every calling period, this functionality would allow you auction off your time to the highest bidder.

“At a high level the web is becoming more about people than about pages,” said Faber. “We see ourselves building a whole community where you can find the information that you want.”

That may have been a slip of the tongue. When asked if the company was looking down the road to create a centralized social networking-like community where people could search for experts on topics and click to call them (an extraordinarily profitable sounding idea), Faber said the company right now was focusing on the basics – helping people sell what they say.

“We just want to nail it first,” he said. But he admitted a social networking site based on the service was a possibility down the road.

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Phone sex!

Darn it. Need to work on that.

This is not a product to make it easier to get into the phone sex business, though that is certainly a possible (and likely) use. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk business.

Still in beta testing and backed by the same investors as eBay and Skype, Ether provides a telephony-and-web platform that allows people to call you directly for a fee.

Actual home and cell phone numbers are not provided. Calls are redirected from an 888-number after an interested client has paid to hear what you have to say.

“How much is your time worth? $75 an hour? $15 for 15 minutes? $30 per call? Whatever you like. People will only be able to call you when they’ve prepaid your rate,” reads the website.

Clients can choose their rates, their service, and their hours so they’re not called at the wrong times. The Ether number can be put on a website, a blog, a business card, a bathroom wall, whatever. Ether charges a 15% commission on the money you earn.

They’ve also set it up so that digital content, like reports, photographs, podcasts, videos, etc., can be sold through email.

The content will only be viewable once people have paid to see it. In addition to that, there is also a Buy Now Button that can be placed on a website, which will make it extra easy to sell any type of content directly.

Next time I’ll try to restrain myself from stating the obvious.

But this one I know something about too because I met with the founders last week. They have an interesting concept and a – gasp – business model.

They’ll let you sell your time online. Say I want to start a consulting business to help companies get into blogging. I could set a price, let’s say $100 on weekdays, $300 on weekends. (There’s no minimum price, by the way, you could try it for free if you want to see how the system works).

They give me a number. I put that number on my blog. You call that number and it’ll make the appointment, take care of collecting your payment info, and do EVERYTHING about the call. They collect a small percentage of your fee.

I liked this cause it was unexpected. It did something I didn’t know I needed, but once I saw the concept I saw that it’ll let new people start businesses that they might never have considered before.

Anyone have any ideas of how they’d use Ether?

Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

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