posted by: Christian

Since the beginning of WellcomeMat’s time, we have been as honest and straight forward as possible with our members. Recently, we have been very forthcoming in regards to the fact that WellcomeMat will not always have “free” written all over it (our families eat food, drive cars, and like roofs over our heads too). We have many, many people that have their faith in us, and-since we began speaking about monetizing WellcomeMat-we have been getting tons of questions that all of you deserve answers to. Here’s all I know about how our system will work from a business standpoint.

Videographers:

WellcomeMat will serve as a broker between video producers and those needing their services, making a 7% commission on projects fulfilled through our system (10% less 2.9%, which is what our merchant account company charges us to collect payments). We need two team members on this thing at all times to insure that a) the thing works the way you want it to, and b) to insure that those doing solid work get good ratings. Ratings will trump every other ranking mechanism on our site: if you have a good rating (many projects fulfilled through WellcomeMat, and positive feedback from your customers), you will show up first within the directory, both nationally and locally. So, someone comes to the directory and is looking for the best video pro in their area, there you are, ranked and ready.

Posting videos on WellcomeMat will remain free. We are not going to charge anyone to post videos on WellcomeMat. If we ever do, it will be for some unforeseeable reason that we are not currently aware of.

Real Estate and Business Marketers

We want to provide the best home to people looking for the best place to market real estate, local businesses, neighborhoods and cities via video. This does not include us charging for people to post their content on our site. What we will charge for is content, that we are paying dearly to host/distribute, that leaves WellcomeMat.com. ie. if you post a video on WellcomeMat, we can monetize that content via ads. If you want to take that content with you to another site, and have that content ad free, WellcomeMat has to charge to help you do this. We intend to charge people marketing properties for the following, premium-level services:

-Automated distribution of videos from WellcomeMat to multiple video/real estate portals. This means you will be able to post your videos once on WellcomeMat, and distribute your videos to many of the places you would want your content to be…automatically!
-Phone/email support: one thing that just about everyone knows is that WellcomeMat takes support seriously. Technology is nothing without support (unless it works flawlessly which is never the case). So, in order to be able to pick up the phone and call us, or to have our team supporting you via email, we need to charge. We will have free FAQ pages for those do-it-yourselfers that want to solve their own puzzles.
-Syndication mechanisms (some people call them widgets): WellcomeMat will distribute our paying members content to other sites when they want, and will continuously provide the best means by which to apply your content on other websites, or blogs. Plan to see us provide many more widgets for our premium level members.

This is our plan in its entirety. We believe that we are charging people only when we are providing a large amount of value, and hope that you feel the same. If you are asking yourself, “why is WellcomeMat killing this whole love-fest free web for nothing party,” the answer is simple. The websites that are not charging you yet will either a) charge you later, or b) riddle their site and your video content with advertisements. Nothing is free, but most companies have the money to defer the reality of their business for a longer period of time. We do not. All we can do is be honest, help our members make as much money as possible by building/supporting the best marketing tools on the web, and-in general-keep it real.

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