How much is your information worth ? A method for revenue generation for your information

Thanks to the proliferation of social media and networking sites today, a massive amount of data is being generated by the second. This information is collated, collected and trawled from various sources to construct a `user profile´ of sorts and used to type cast and categorize people. This is done on a regular basis by data brokers, whose sole purpose is to collect user information and sell them to interested parties. Due to the lack of any specific mechanism to ascertain the value of this information, the contributors and owners of this big data, i.e. the internet users from whom this information is collected from, do not realize the potential of their information and how valuable it is and hence go largely uncompensated. In this paper, we begin by explaining the background and problems associated with putting a price to data or information and then we put forth our idea of monetizing information by treating it like an asset and propose a transparent revenue generation model, based on the demand in the information market for various types of information. This model would offer both the consumers and buyers of information a transparent and fair mechanism to conduct business in the information market.