Indonesian developer Marc Köhlbrugge has launched a paid chat. The development is called Expensive Chat. Each letter sent by the user will cost him one cent. The online application consists of a window for all users to communicate and a small rating, where the most generous users are displayed. Now the leader of the rating is the Belarusian carsharing.

More. Koelbrugge calls his idea a "social experiment" that will allow him to earn "a little extra money." So far, users have spent almost $337 on the site.

Some users try to bring their name to the top of the rating for advertising purposes. You can add a URL to the account name (which length is not adjustable in any way), which will also be displayed in the leaderboard.
Another way to advertise yourself is to provide a real account name so that users can find the author in one of the social networks. Such advertising will cost only one cent - you just need to write some kind of message, for example, place an emoji.
Kölbrugge plans to turn Expensive Chat into a service through which public figures can collect donations for charity. In an interview with Motherboard, the developer said that in the future, famous users will be able to “rent” the chat and set their own rates there.

Context. For Kölbrugge, this isn't the first chat he's made money from. The Indonesian developer leads Work in Progress, which provides a platform for working groups to communicate on existing projects. WIP operates on a subscription model and costs users $20 per month. The startup earned about $40,000 last year, including posting jobs and paid ads.

Anton Baev

Entrepreneur Mark Koelbrugge launched Expensive Chat. Each letter in it costs a cent