so how do you *really* make money?

Just had a Skype conversation I’d like to share.
I’ve anonymized the person I had the conversation with, but he asked just the right questions.

Q: how do u *really* make money?
A: we make money with the real time web… we sell platforms like http://theplaya.mobynow.com for between 20-80k per year…

Q: but that’s not a mobypictures thing that’s mobynow no?
A: MobyNow is build on top of Mobypicture… MobyNow is nothing else then a contextual template on top of Moby content, still need to showcase that to you
His reply: I get the idea

Q: how many of these have u sold?
A: Right now we are selling one or two every week…
His reply: :O

Q: r u serious?
A: this week we’re actually launching 4 MobyNow platforms, theplaya.mobynow.com is a freebie btw

Q: lol who buys 80k topic radars? at 2 a week?
A: it’s way, way more then a radar… it funnels the traffic there… it doesn’t just aggregate… we give the publisher back the traffic and let them own the conversation again… 80k is the highend… we sold a couple of those

Q: how does it funnel traffic there?
A: because Moby does the distribution of our users adventures, we control the traffic
If the context is right we can then direct the traffic to the MobyNow.

Q: from Mobypicture?
A: yes, we control the moby.to link we posted for the user on all the social networks (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube)

Q: so ur like doing contextual ads – if someone takes a pic #burningman u promote this page?
A: if he/she approved of sending the traffic there yes… check the link on this tweet: http://twitter.com/ncilla/statuses/22109465224
The publisher totally owns related the MobyNow platform, can add all kinds of functionality to it and can convert all the traffic any way they like… so the traffic lands in the site, so we actually give the publisher a Mobypicture sharing service… integrated in all social media…

Q: so photos tagged a certain way redirect u to topic pages that ‘own’ that tag
A: tagged, geofenced or by predefined lists of users etc. (red. read about MobyNow)

Q: but the user has to be using Mobypicture for this to work
A: we aggregate all the content, but the traffic is dependent on Mobypicture usage… which the publishers heavily push amongst their target demographic of course…. so we also show flickr, youtube, twitpic postings etc. on the platform… and facilitate the conversation on the platform as well. right now Moby is integrated in over 800 third party services and sites, but getting in all the apps is an important focus
(we are in all the major twitter apps)

Q: hah too funny
A: but you’re not using it yet you should!

Q: so u can hijack my photos to destinations sites
A: exactly
His reply: lol
My reply: but seriously we don’t hijack anything it is all opt in…

Q: how do they opt in?
A: people want to share their pics amongst other fans, when you send something which is relevant we send you an @reply stating the tweet/moby/blogpost has been aggregated and ask them to sign up… during the sign up we ask them if they also want their traffic to end up there if it is relevant…
His reply: interesting! cool stuff – very ethical
I’m not being sarcastic
My reply: click on the ‘going to the playa?’ button
http://theplaya.mobynow.com/ and you see the opt in (actually they can opt out )