Monetizing the User's Information Asset in Internet Information Market

With the massive amount of data being collected and collated every minute today, big data is what keeps the wheels of organizations running. This big data is generally collected by 'data brokers' who then sell this to whomsoever is willing to pay the right price. 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 users from whom this information is collected from, do not realize how valuable it is and hence go largely uncompensated. In this paper, we put forth our idea of monetizing information by treating it like a tradeable asset utilizing the concept of portfolio optimization to create our information pricing model that offers a fair bargain to both the consumers and buyers of information.