Ether is a start up that I think will interest many Pro Bloggers – especially those looking for a way to do consulting online.
It has a range of services (remember it’s in beta) available but the one that interests me most is the ability to sign up and get an ether phone number which you can make available to readers to call. It will forward to your home phone and those that call it will be charged whatever consulting rate that you set.
You set your rate, set your hours of accepting calls and they handle the rest.
ether take 15% of your income from the call and handle all the credit card costs, call costs etc.
They also have two other services that I’m sure will appeal to some bloggers also:
1. They have a method for selling digital content which I think some bloggers will find useful for selling special reports, e-books etc.
2. They have a similar service to selling content on the web but it’s email based.
I’ve been contacted by a number of companies over the last 6 months who are developing services like this one so I expect to see more in the year ahead (disclaimer: ether could have been one of these companies – I’ve done interviews with a few now and I can’t find their names!).
This is something I’d be very interested in using here on ProBlogger as I do have quite a few requests for consulting work each week and one of the problems has always been the logistics of it all.
So far the beta test is invitation only – if I get one I’ll give it a go and let you know how it works. You can put your name down to be notified when they accept more testers at their site.
Found via TechCrunch
update: My only suggestion would be that they enable calls to be booked as I like to have a schedule for the day ahead of time.
This is a great idea this company has, and 15% is quite an appropriate amount to charge. I’m sure some bloggers would do well in this.
I think that the 15% is a high fee to charge. However it does sound like a very good idea, as it opens up the channels for monetizing one’s blog.
Good tip, keep us posted Darren.
I guess this sounds like google answers or yahoo answers.
Except this will be over the phone.
You may want to check out this article on Techdirt. Apparently startup is not the right word.
As someone coming from an industry (real estate) where people are only too happy to waste your time with phone calls no matter what time or day, I think this is a great thing. I’ve had calls on Christmas Day, calls after 11 PM and calls before 7 AM, so holidays aren’t sacred and there isn’t even an 8-hour sleep window late at night and early morning. But I’d sure be a lot happier about it if I knew the person at the other end was definitely paying instead of just time wasting. Bob Parsons of GoDaddy wrote that he very rarely returns voice messages for basically the same reason though on a bigger scale, I’m sure (see post in my signature above). So, bottom line, there’s a huge market for this from the supplier end, it’s just a question of how many of whether too many calls that could have led to payment will be put off by the format of payment.
[…] Back on track. I believe Ether’s timing couldn’t be better. As Darren Rowse of ProBlogger states: Ether is a start up that I think will interest many Pro Bloggers – especially those looking for a way to do consulting online. […]
Ether sounds like a great concept, I wonder what their screening process will be like, I hope very tough, or we’ll another great idea get ruined…
There is many “charge for call” platforms like “wengo” or bitwine, but they all have own software and not promote Skype Prime. There is site that was build to work with only Skype Prime and no additional software needed. If you are interested please visit
http://www.primeskype.com/
i have used ether, it’s pretty cool
Has anyone actually done this? Would this be helpful to someone like me who is new to blogging and wants to take it up a notch?
Thanks in advance
That sound like a great idea… does anyone have any feedback for it?
So its basically like clickbank, but it has a few extra features?
Has anyone used this? It would be nice to hear from some people that have before checking it out for myself.
Sounds like a good program, ill probably check it to this soon.