How Can You Make Money With Your Online Data?

Big advertising platforms, such as Google and Facebook, make a fortune by monetizing your data. Every time you interact with their services, go on a website, post something or even travel around, they get a flood of information about you. They then use this to personalize the marketing that you receive, allowing them to generate massive revenues from their advertiser customers.

For decades, theyve been doing this without your permission. Whats more, they havent told you about how valuable your data actually is. Youre led to believe that what you reveal about yourself is practically worthless, but it isnt. In fact, data is probably a more valuable commodity than oil right now. The top four tech companies in the world - Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google - make around $1.2 trillion per year in revenue from your data. Thats insane.

You might be thinking: thats all well and good, but what can I personally do about it? Well, it turns out that you dont have to give away the profits from your data. Instead, you can simply sell it yourself - after all, youre the one generating it!

Your Personal Data: Who Controls It And Why Is It Important?

At the moment, organizations such as big tech companies are profiting for free using your data. Theyve built systems that allow them to pretty much know whatever they want about you, from your shopping habits to where you go on vacation.

But when you think about it, they couldnt benefit at all from you unless you were generating all that data. They wouldnt have any competitive advantage over traditional advertising platforms because they wouldnt know any more about you than a radio station or TV company.

At present, big tech companies claim that they have a right to use your data how they want because you sign up to their services. So, for instance, if you use Google, then Google says that it can use your information to personalize ads and make recommendations.

But thats just an assertion on the part of big tech. Its not actually true. Yes - theyve been skimming peoples data for years. But just because you use their services doesnt give them the automatic right to profit from that.

In recent years, governments have been cottoning onto this fact and making legal changes. Europes General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and Californias Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) are both attempts to give consumers more power over how companies collect their data. The legislation states that it is citizens rights to know how tech companies are using their information.

These changes publicised how big tech was profiting from the information that we all generate online. People living in these areas were finally able to see the financial value of their data and opt-out of having their data collected.

For privacy campaigners, it was a major victory. Today, organizations operating in these areas can only collect data with users permission. They must also reveal how they are using the data.

This is important. In the past, individuals had no idea how their data was being used. Firms collecting data could be providing advertising services to companies that a person believes behaves unethically, but there was no way for the individual user to know.

Personal Data Monetization

So, in summary, big tech companies have been using their knowledge advantage over their users to hide the value of data. However, thats now changing. Many people are waking up to the fact that they can personally sell their data to the highest bidder and make a profit from it.

Personal data monetization is a big new trend, and it will make it possible to more equally share the profits from the data revolution. This process allows users to see where their data is going and avoid brands using it for purposes that go against their values and ethics. It also improves data accuracy by specifically sharing data with individual brands, instead of allowing third parties to scrub information and then distribute it more widely.

How To Monetize Your Data

Monetizing your data requires engaging in so-called data licensing. This is where you allow companies to access your data in exchange for a fee.

Which data you want to monetize is up to you. Most people who go down this route like to monetize everything that they own, including their browser data, social network data and bank data.

Theres nothing particularly technical about this process either. You dont have to be a computer whizz to make it work for you. Tapestri.io has a simple app you can use that runs in the background that lets you generate money from your personal data all day long. You can choose which data you want to share and with whom, and start profiting immediately. You dont even need to do anything differently - you just carry on using the internet as normal.

Data monetization has been around for a long time. Survey companies such as Swagbucks offer users money rewards for providing information to online surveys. They then pass survey data onto brands that then use them to get a better picture of who their customers are and what they want.

But thats a lot of work. You often have to spend hours just filling out a questionnaire and, in many cases, there is no way to automate the process. But with data monetization apps, it all happens automatically.

Use Tapestri To Monetize Your Online Data

Companies are making tons of money with your data online, why cant you do the same? With our app, coming soon on both iOS and Android, you dont have to take surveys or answer questions. You simply agree to the terms once you download our app and do what you do normally online. Also, sign up for our affiliate program when you refer friends.