What I think Google should do about Google Shopping and about YouTube Donations and YouTube Shopping Monetization

Posted by – June 29, 2017
Category: Opinions, Google

Here’s an illustration of what I think Google needs to do at the top of Google search for when users search for any item that can be purchased online. I think Google needs to automatically list a bunch of top price comparison sites as well as a list of top e-commerce sites like Amazon and the likes which Google would otherwise anyways list as the top search results below:

It’s important that Google cannot be taking any commission or advertising fees from these competing price comparison sites or these competing online stores like Amazon for them to be listed here. Google must fairly list the top most relevant price comparison sites and online stores which they would list at top of search results anyway. Google must integrate better with competing price comparison sites so they can nicely automatically list the top prices and if possible also grab images, product details to show on mouseover or even if possible integrated in this list if there is enough space.

Google can display Google Shopping as one of the options, let’s say, probably at the bottom of the list of price comparison search engines listed.

Users can customize how these lists are generated, users can choose to show by cheapest price. Users can select one or several favorite sites to always use each time they come back. Just as one can choose a default search engine on Chrome, one must be able to choose one or several favorite price comparison search engines, or for example choose to always only display Amazon Prime results on each search if Amazon Prime is the user’s favorite way to buy.

A click on a price can lead directly to shopping site, bringing a commission only to the price comparison engine on the sale, not taking any commission to Google on the sale. Unless the clicks are from the area of Google Shopping.

This UI and comparison or top price comparison sites and of top shopping sites must be adapted for mobile.

As for YouTube:

New Monetization should be implemented in two ways:
– Same as above Comparison and integration of top Price Comparison engines and of top user favorite stores such as Amazon must be integrated as the Instant Buy Now and Price Comparison overlay on top of every YouTube video. YouTuber must be paid as close to a 4% commission on each sale as possible, regardless the shopping site. YouTuber can choose if limit to any specific e-commerce site such as Amazon or let Google figure out the best comparison sites or shopping sites to show. YouTube may take a fair commission on the sales revenue on YouTube Shopping because the YouTuber choses to link only to sites that give a 4% commission back on each sale. A feature I have been asking YouTube to implement for nearly a decade.
– Viewers must be able to Donate and support their favorite YouTubers directly, see my illustrations below:

To easily allow viewers to one-click to donate any amount to support the YouTube content creator, the YouTuber must be able to enable a Dollar sign to be displayed on the left side of every Thumbs up icon on all monetized videos of the whole channel of the YouTuber.

Dollar sign in USA or if viewer prefers to donate in USD currency, this currency icon can also be €, £, ₹, ¥ or whichever based on viewer location (donations must work for any viewer worldwide) and converted in list of top donators to be displayed in the local currency of the viewer who is looking at that list.

Scroll down on the video page:

Below the video area, below description, but above comments, it should show the list of the top donators for that video. Viewer can switch to view top donators on whole channel in the last week, month, year or lifetime. YouTuber can limit if these week/month/year/lifetime lists should be shown or not throughout the whole channel of the YouTuber.

Donators can decide to display nickname (any amount of text up to short limit), realname, or display their @socialmedia/+googleplus/facebook-link or to display their blog/website/company URL as the donator. Google can be slightly smart and make sure an anonymous $0.49 donation cannot link as mcdonalds.com as the YouTube/Google account holder may have to verify ownership/control over advertised website.

When donating, the user can easily choose other ways to regularly support the YouTuber by recurring weekly, monthly, yearly or by payment for each new video posted, or for each 5/10/any number of videos posted.

A donator can have his comments highlighted and automatically pushed to the top of comments displayed below. Top donators can highlight comments more based on how much they have donated. There may be some settings that the YouTuber can control as to how much of a highlight the comment can get based on how much the donation amount is set for.

This system can thus turn some of the donations into advertising, as people can then show their appreciation for the YouTube content by showing off their blog, website, company as the top donator. As the top donator just for that video or the good idea could be to have companies and patrons/philantropists compete to be the overall top donators/sponsors not just for supporting under that one video, but supporting the whole channel over the past week/month/year/lifetime.

A donator can hide their contribution(s), turn those into anonymous and back into public name/company/socialmedia/website at any time.

Eventually YouTube can automatically add top donators/sponsors as end of clip “Thanks for the support of:” or any other text customizable. And top donators can even have their logos displayed automatically as end of show credits clip that YouTube can automatically add to specific videos or to the whole channel and to customize over time. A $20 sponsor may not have his logo in the end of show credits, YouTuber can specify certain thresholds that may or may not unlock that end of show credits placement. A very large donator/sponsor can even be inserted as a brief “Supported by” clip at the beginning of each video, but it must not be permanently inserted in the video, that dynamic credits system should be inserted by YouTube at beginning/end and can just be temporarily.

YouTube must not take a commission on the top donations system on YouTube, YouTube may only keep the approximate 2.6% credit card processing fee. This Top Donators system must be considered a system for fans and companies to become Producers/supporters of the content that is created. YouTube can still monetize every video as they usually do with ads, with YouTube Red subscriptions, and with the Buy Now one-click Shopping and customizable Price Comparison system that I specified above.

I have been wanting and asking to see a perfect Top Donators systems since 11 years ago when I paid a programmer $350 to get a WordPress top donators plugin made: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/paypal-donations-realtime-meter-top-6-donators/ but I didn’t follow up with it much, other than using it on my previous blogs for a few years and collecting something like $1000 in donations through the plugin in total I think.