Yepic Allows Bloggers to Sell Premium Content
There are many ways for bloggers to monetize content. Bloggers can make money by offering advertising on their site, or they can use their blog as a launch pad for their career. Now, a new service, Yepic, enables bloggers to earn money by selling their content directly to readers.
Yepic is a marketplace which allows writers to offer their articles for sale. Writers set the price for which they will sell their material. Right now, many articles on the service are free and the top per article fee appears to be $6.50. Articles on offer include "How to get into a top business school," "Writing JavaScript games using AJAX," and "Where to eat in Utah."
Yepic allows writers to embed images, video, and audio in their content. According to the Cedar Hills, Utah-based company's press release, Yepic will give content-creators "as much as 75% of the article price each time an article sells."
But will people really pay for content? My first impulse is to say "No Way!" The whole beauty of the Internet is its oodles of content--created by both amateurs and professionals--that is available for free.
On the other hand, the web is vast. Sometimes a lot of surfing is required to find out exactly what you want to know. Yepic offers a forum where potential content-consumers can post a request for content, designating "what I want to know and why" and who would be the "ideal author." A current content request is for an article about how to make the most of your Caribbean cruise. The ideal author is:
"Ideally someone who's been on a few cruises, preferably Royal Carribean ones to the destinations we're hitting. I'm not a penny-pincher, so if you are, please don't write the article."
If I was feeling lazy, or under time pressure, it might be worth $1 to me to have someone else compile information for me on my topic of interest--if there was no free clearinghouse for the information. Or, if I felt confident an author had expertise or a unique perspective that I could not find elsewhere online for free, I might pay for their content.
But, the diversity and enormity of the web makes it unlikely, for me, that a service like Yepic would have any content I wanted that I couldn't find elsewhere.
At a few dollars a pop, Yepic articles are cheaper than a book and certainly cheaper than an online course. If Yelp's content is comparable quality to a book or course, Yepic might have a successful business model. Otherwise, I'm skeptical.
What do you think of Yepic's business model? Do you think bloggers have a well of premium content for which people will pay? Would you use such a service as a consumer? As a content-producer?
Posted by Leslie Taylor at November 10, 2006 5:38 PM | Category: internet + web | 
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