Only in the perverted world of the web can something as simple and fundamental as making money be in need of a fancy word like “monetize”. The most basic principle of business doesn’t need an exotic dress and an academic hat. Just a pair of working gloves.
It’s no longer either: “How can we make money?” vs “How can we monetize this?”. And the former even benefits from not having “I’m such an ass” sound to it.
tom s.
on 25 Jan 08Well said. It’s one of the more hideous new words.
Vicky
on 25 Jan 08I think it’s the difference between a call girl and a hooker.
The well off have call girls, while the less fortunate get hookers (or worse yet, a prostitute).
People enjoy lying to themselves and upscaling their image in their own minds, it gives them a warm, fuzzy feeling of superiority, while they watch taped Jerry Springer episodes and think ‘I’d never stoop that low’.
Lance
on 25 Jan 08Agreed.
Anson
on 25 Jan 08To be fair, the term monetize is more referring to “how can we take this thing we already have (traffic, users, etc.) and convert it into money”. Not just “how can we make money?”.
It’s about the process of taking something with no direct monetary value and converting it into legal tender.
The faith that the industry has had that page views, free accounts, time spent on pages etc. can eventually be monetized is the reason we have an internet today.
Seriously, there bigger fish to fry David!
Steve Drees
on 25 Jan 08I beg to differ. The internet existed before their was this need to monetize page views, or monetize eyeballs, or monetize clicks, or whatever they are trying to wring cash out of this week. The internet was created to SHARE information. The internet flourishes where sharing is easy.
Aaron White
on 25 Jan 08@Anson: Agreed! I think it’s reasonable to look at the web’s ‘natural resources’ and ask ‘what can we do with this?’
What’s wrong with figuring out how to extract value from something that draws attention? The word & it’s usage get a thumbs up from me.
Anson
on 25 Jan 08@Steve—that’s a whole ‘nother argument, and a side-issue to the one at hand. Let’s not go there!
Gary R Boodhoo
on 25 Jan 08Anson, you could not be more wrong. Mainly because the internet existed long before the “industry” you speak of. Alternately because the web devours itself.
Howard Mann
on 25 Jan 08Amen to that and well said.
I was taught a business has 3 goals: Make money, have fun and do good. To say it any other way makes it more complicated than it has to be.
mkb
on 25 Jan 08Wrong. “How can we monetize this?” actually means “How can we make this make money?” and is thus more efficient and avoids the double use of “make”.
It’s also been around since 1879.
Anson
on 25 Jan 08@Gary—Let me rephrase:
“The faith that the industry has had that page views, free accounts, time spent on pages etc. can eventually be monetized is the reason we have the web as we know it today.”
Without faith that search traffic could be monetized there would be no Google. Without faith that poking could at some point turn a dollar there’d be no Facebook. My point is that neither of these hugely successfully businesses knew how they were going to “make money” when they started. They just had faith they were building something that people would want to use, and that someone would work out a way to monetize that.
Olivier
on 25 Jan 08“Monetize” is “overutilized.”
ls
on 25 Jan 08Yeah god I hate all those fancy academic words like agonize, advertise and criticize that could only exist in the perverted world of the web.
I can see how you needed to get that off your chest.
Brian
on 25 Jan 08There are a lot of bullshit words out there but I don’t think this is one of them.
(This page has been monetized with The Deck.)
Mark Leichliter
on 25 Jan 08The first time I saw that word, I thought “Monet-ize”? You mean, scrunch up your eyes to make everything blurry, like the plein-air painters do? When I learned what the word was intended to mean, I realized my initial thought was correct – it is linguistic bullshit designed to obfuscate the fact that you are trying to figure out how to make money from something that should just be free.
Vicky
on 25 Jan 08Well I’m in agreement with David in the fact that people are sick of translating words and looking for meaning, which is why I think blogs and informal writing has become so popular.
The meaning of a word, as defined, is only well used if people know the true meaning of that word. If you are trying to hit a target, the best method is a straight line to the point.
KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle works for me. Some of you sound like a democratic politician arguing over the meaning of the word ‘is’!
Joe
on 25 Jan 08I’m trying my best to sell the 37signals software and the Getting Real approach where I work. I have convinced people around the company to installer RSS readers and subscribe to the 37signals feed. Posts like this turn people off, and make selling the 37signals approach really hard.
Monetize is a word that has a specific meaning when used in context. It is useful word for making conversations shorter, therefore making meetings shorter.
Monetize means to take a pre-existing cost center or an asset, and find innovative ways to turn the cost center into a profit center, or turn an asset into something that makes a company profit. Assets that would otherwise depreciate and incur total cost of ownership would now make a profit. “Monetize” also implies that that asset or cost center is not currently set up for profit making, and that a new supply chain would need to be set up.
“Making money” doesn’t come close to capturing that concept. Anyone that says otherwise is exposing them self as ignorant or inexperienced in business.
Please help me sell 37signals wonderful message by not being so zealously anti-corporate. It is self-defeating, and its a real shame.
Steve Drees
on 25 Jan 08In my opintion 37signals is:
Zealously Transparent. Zealously Honest. Zealously Simple.
If that makes them zealously anti-corporate what does that say about corporations?
Vicky
on 25 Jan 08@Joe
There are so many podcasts, videos and other stuff of these guys on the internet where they are very ‘corporate’. A blog is a blog…. Point them to their homepage, download their book, subscribe to the software.
It is unfair to use an informal tool and expect formality. Blogs are all about opinions, and 37 Signals is opinionated.
ls
on 25 Jan 08this really is one of the most ridiculous posts in SvN history.
Kalle
on 25 Jan 08I’m with Joe here.
There is a perfectly legitimate concept: to discover or design a method for money-making. Complaining about it makes you come across as hippie anti-capitalists. Which you are not.
It doesn’t matter that some, or lots, of people may misuse the word.
Matt White
on 25 Jan 08I disagree as well. It simply describes the process of taking an asset and making money from it. But instead of saying “Let’s make money with asset A” you can say “Let’s monetize asset A”. As someone with such a flair for writing beautiful code, I thought such a concept would be very amenable to David :). However, I do agree that it could easily be misused to create “Let’s monetize our under-leveraged best practices in an effort to increase our market capitalization.”
Lucas Húngaro
on 25 Jan 08Yes, 37signals is “anti-corporate”. And that’s great!
I really don’t see the point with those who are disagreeing and spending a bunch of lines to say “Monetize X” = “Make money with X”.
The big problem is that people use such kind of words hoping to sound superior and to mislead costumers into buying things they really don’t need.
But people are getting conscious of this now and refusing to take this “business bullshit” seriously.
Evan
on 25 Jan 08Isn’t that kind of what you guys did with Basecamp? Created it without a plan to turn it into a business and then decided to do so with a plan to monetize it?
Also, since some basic economics of business have changed considerably, it makes sense that the concerns and procedures around it have changed. The investment to start a business or build a product-let’s call it CapEx 2.0-is much smaller now relative to the possible payoffs of what you’re building. Accordingly, more stuff gets built and there’s a lower threshold for certainty of making money on those things.
brad
on 25 Jan 08The same term often has different meanings in different fields. In the environmental economics, for example, “monetizing” means “placing a dollar value on something that is not normally bought or sold.” So, for example, environmental economists talk about “monetizing externalities” such as clean air, a view of the Grand Canyon unclouded by smog, etc. —things that don’t normally have a dollar value, but for which you can estimate value based on people’s willingness to pay for these benefits.
Joe
on 25 Jan 08I’ve read Getting Real and think its fantastic. I’m using the Getting Real methodology to develop software where I can. Unfortunately most people don’t think like 37signals, so its a constant political struggle in a big company to practice Getting Real.
When 37signals people make public posts based on the “uncoolness” of various words or concepts, it works against 37signals and the people that would advocate them. Its just not smart. You guys should be conscious of that.
Lets be pragmatic here – used correctly, the term “monetize” has a specific meaning and helps make meetings shorter, which is one of Getting Real’s big messages. Thank you to the smart people that are posting to this effect.
Don’t hate the word – hate the person that uses it out of context to sound more corporate.
Read up and get your facts straight before you start hating. It makes all of us Getting Real advocate’s lives difficult.
Dr. Pete
on 25 Jan 08Don’t worry: pretty soon, we’ll have a new word. I’m going with “monetizify”, as in “How can I enhance the monetizification of my blog?”
Cyndy Aleo-Carreira
on 25 Jan 08Look at it this way; it’s the more polite way to say “Dude! Where’s your BUSINESS PLAN?”
TWilson
on 25 Jan 08David, you might like a book called “Gobbledygook” by Don Watson. A choice quote:
”...Managerial language is to the information age what steam engines and belts and pulleys were to the industrial. It is mechanized language, or language as an assembly line…it removes the need for thinking: the uniquely human faculty of thought is suspended along with all sense of what feeling, need or notion inspires your activity.”
I think that gets at the difference between the needs to “monetize” and “make money.”
Watson also calls managerial language “an abuse of human rights,” which might be going a bit far, but at least makes me smile.
DerekC
on 25 Jan 08Example of making money off website: selling it Example of moneting website: running ads on it
See there difference?
DHH
on 25 Jan 08Joe, speaking our minds freely about concepts and words is what we do here. It’s what we’ve always done. Getting Real bashes functional specs, this post gives “monetize” a work over. If either of those opinions offend your company dearly than I doubt you’ll have much success introducing anything from Getting Real.
Cyndy, what’s wrong with “How do you plan to make money?”. Very simple question that needs neither the fancy wrapping of “business plan” or words like “monetize”. If the asked can not answer in as simple terms, I’d say odds are good he’s working on a dud.
Derek, not at all. So the farmer milking his cows and selling their milk is monetizing the cow? How about he’s just making money off the cow? I think the latter is a much simpler version and you don’t need a suit to utter it.
Dingo
on 25 Jan 08The problem with monetize is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the product or service—making something great and worthy of people paying for leaves the table and gets replaced by a whole slew of compromises.
Khoi Vinh
on 25 Jan 08It’s not my favorite word, but I don’t find it offensive enough to accuse those who use it of sounding like ‘asses.’ I think that’s even more counter-productive than using the word ‘monetize.’
pwb
on 26 Jan 08I see no problem with either the word or the concept.
The fact is, services like eBay, PayPal, MySpace, Google and others grew up as free services that eventually were able to “make money”; albeit in different ways, at different points in their histories and in ways other than their founders originally envisioned.
Gene
on 26 Jan 08I agree the word is silly, but how can you comment on a word like “monetize” and say that people who use the word are “asses” and expect peopel to take you seriously?
Joe
on 26 Jan 08DHH – we don’t use functional specs in my team, and nobody was offended by your giving monetize a “work over”. You are missing the point.
Nobody was offended – just less enthusiastic about trusting a methodology touted by dogmatists who rail against them and the legitimate language they use.
Please speak your minds freely, but I ask that you put your prejudices against good people who make a living working for a big company aside before you do. You’ll have a much better time advocating the Getting Real approach we all love.
Mark J
on 26 Jan 08I agree, bashing the word by itself is not really fair and then generalizing that people who uses it are an ‘ass’ without proper context is not right.
But i think this is DHH’s personal opinion and this is 37s blog, so no need to go overboard about a word and an opinion. :)
rumblestrut
on 26 Jan 08It’s not such a bad word – used properly, it can cut down on the amount of words used.
Example:
“How can we monetize this?”
vs.
“How can we make money with this?”
Four words instead of seven sounds like something out of George Orwell’s playbook.
Adam H
on 26 Jan 08No wonder the use of the English language has gone downhill. People are discriminating against the use of proper vocabulary now?
There is nothing “exotic” about using appropriate words with appropriate meaning to form an appropriate idea and communicate it written, verbal, or otherwise.
I didn’t learn to read and get an education to be told the way I speak is to “exotic” because I use a vocabulary word your not comfortable with. Especially when its completely appropriate.
I can agree that the post you recently had regarding the “biz dev” email you received is vocab (or buzz word) over kill and certainly warrants the delete button, but we are talking about quantity over quality and vice versa not “use monetize = ass”.
Richard McLaughlin
on 27 Jan 08you may be right about ‘monetize’ and I know that I originally felt the same. I decided to monetize the word monetize and have trademarked it. Since you have blogged my word, please send a check to…
tom s.
on 28 Jan 08I cannot of a use of monetize that would not have been covered perfettly well, ten years ago, by “profit from”.
I do not know why “How can we profit from this?” has turned into “How can we monetize this?”, but I think part of it is the suggestion that this new word marks out a new concept.
tom s.
on 28 Jan 08I cannot THINK OF a use…
An editable commenting tool would help to make me look less stupid than I am. Maybe someone could make money from it.
Arik
on 29 Jan 08Personal opinion is no longer opinion when it disrespects another person. Sure, someone using the word “monetize” may appear to be an ass. But your blanket generalizations on irrelevant subjects pull you into the same category. Use the company blog for something other than a childish rant box.
Marc Lehmann
on 31 Jan 08To monetize is to convert into money, not to make money or increase an asset or income streams value. The misuse of the word has changed what people like David think it means. You monetize an asset when you sell it. You make money when you improve the asset. I my full take in my blog. I like the word.
This discussion is closed.