It's "Prime" Time for Skype

Josh Lowenstein, over at the Webware blog from cnet.com, recently posted about a new paid-by-the-minute service from Skype called Skype Prime.

According to the post, Skype Prime is aimed at consultants and other professionals that need to monetize their phone time. Such users can set their own per-minute rates that get charged to the caller. Skype Prime takes 30 percent of the fees to pay for the service, and users can set up as many types of paid-for calls as they want, with short descriptions and custom pricing.

Each type of call gets listed on the users Skype profile for others to see, and there are two options for pricing: a one-time fee, or charging by the minute. Setting up the service requires signing up with PayPal, which handles the fees.

FYI, if you're interested in signing up for this new service, you need to use the latest Windows-based Skype client, which apparently is not the version that is available for download off of Skype's home page. You need to dig a bit to get to the right one.