what's it worth to them?
by John at 4/06/2004 10:56:00 AM
This is related to the post below.Yesterday, I was referred to an article at the website of a newspaper (the Austin American-Statesman). To register, they ask for current address, home phone number, gender, year of birth, and household yearly income. According to the SWIPE data calculator this data may be worth as much as $16.25 to them (disclosure: or as little as $1.25 if household yearly income and birth year do not count as employment information or bithdate). That's a lot to pay them just so I can read an article. Of course, I could set up a bogus email address and fill their data base with fake information, but that is still a lot of work. I don't mind giving the data to companies I visit often as fair compensation for the service I receive, but if I am just dropping by once, the data gathering doesn't do them a lot of good (unless they sell it to someone else) and it annoys me.
That's why the mailinator.com idea (below) is a good one.
