Its most popular age-old example is busking. A performer does their thing in a public square or a farmers’ market, the audience enjoys the performance and if they enjoy a little too much they are more than welcome to do a quick shimmy. And when the show is over, the audience puts in the performer’s open box what they felt their impromptu jig was worth. The busker seeks not your patronage, but a direct payment for what you thought their effort deserved. No middleman, straight to the performer, whatever value each audience member felt they wanted to voluntarily offer.

Unfortunately, though, Value 4 Value isn’t the norm or standard. Services often incorporate various tricks to ensure revenue keeps trickling in, whether the customer is getting their best work takes a back seat. The Value 4 Value model does not leave room for tricks for it is transparent. It places the responsibility of delivering value on the creator and its true valuation on the recipient.

As described above, any online info that is non-scarce, easily reproduced, and effortlessly liberated requires a voluntary model. Some describe it as a type of donation, Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) or crowdfunding, and we like to call it Value 4 Value.

One way the Value 4 Value model stands out from the conventional methods of raising funds is the  flippening of the two steps of payment and enjoyment of the content. In most mainstream transaction initiatives, the payment takes place before the work is consumed or even produced. Examples: your local commute, McDonald’s burger, or WSJ subscription. In a Value 4 Value (V4V) model, however, the creator receives value after the “customer” enjoys the content. The creator generates value through their content and in return, the customers decide to pay with something of value without the involvement of a third party, voluntarily. P2P. V4V.

What V4V also does is it makes the creator focus on customer delight and not on clickbaity headlines or those wide-open mouth thumbnails that have plagued YouTube. Unlike the sponsorship infested content that is served to you by echo-chamber prison enabling algorithms, if the customer likes the work you produce, they are likely to come back for more knowing full well that it is their contribution that allows you to keep creating. So, can Value 4 Value emerge as a viable alternative to the advertising behemoth? Simply, it can. By making you in charge of the value you provide independent of any pressures of censorship or worse, self-censorship. When the customer decides the value and pays directly to the supplier, the supplier places the responsibility on the customer to value the service you provided. And when they do offer you some value, you can find a balance between your effort and the return it generates. You are now not chained by the arbitrary desires and threats of the sponsors.

If this isn’t true freedom, what is?