Will People Pay for User-Generated Content?
Whereas former attempts to define Yepic began with a discussion of why users would be willing to pay for UGC, we've now found information that lots of people already do, and in prolific quantities. Per a Market Research tool eBay recently released, more than 600 user-generated articles priced from $1-20 have sold in the last few hours. Oh, and that was just in the "self-employment" category, which is one of 5 sub-categories in the "How-to" category, which is one of 3 categories in the "Information Products" category, which is buried in the "Everything Else" category on eBay. These information products sell everywhere on the site. I found some on how to get Disney Fast Passes that would work all day without any wait periods over in the category that displays tickets to Disneyland.
The fascinating thing about these articles is that they aren't masterpieces that have been collectively massaged by dozens of very, very active Wikipedians . . . they're rather ordinary pieces of content with titles like "Get ex girlfriend/boyfriend back - REVERSE BREAKUP NOW." That one was written by lucbecks7, who has an average 1-star rating from just 39 users. He sold his article today at approximately 1:44 p.m. MST for $8.97.
Fascinating, huh? What's more fascinating is that whoever bought Luc's article--which required, per Luc's pitch, the download of an eBook file from a secure site . . . an eBook which requires a reader, which the consumer might also have to download and install--could have run a search on Google for terms like "REVERSE BREAKUP NOW" and "get your ex back" and found these sites (1, 2, 3, 4, 5; there were many more, as you might imagine) in less than 5 minutes.
Why didn't they? I'm not sure. Perhaps they did. This much we do know: They were willing to pay a guy named Luc with mediocre eBay seller ratings almost $10 for his thoughts on the subject.
Why? Boy, now that's a tricky question that I need to work on in another post. Why do we ever buy anything the way we do? And just how much time and effort are we really willing to put into pre-purchase homework when it comes to $10? $5? $1? I mean, if the shoe fits . . .
A friend of mine spent all of 5 minutes searching for Easy-Bake oven recipes on the Internet, and when he found an eBay article for $3, he whipped out his credit card and bought it. "I didn't give it a moment's thought," he said. I did some searching on Yahoo Answers and found what appeared to be several legitimate recipes for Easy Bake ovens, and they were free. My friend is a professional blogger and a computer programmer with a graduate degree in computer programming from the University of Chicago. He's very technical and savvy on search and other technologies. Why didn't he keep searching? Why did he pay?
The answer deserves more thorough consideration, but I suppose the big factors here are low-cost convenience, saved time, and greater relevance and specificity. The information we want right when we want it for a reasonable price is really a good deal for most people. Sure, there are folks who find it unthinkable to spend money for something they can get with a little elbow grease. These folks probably also change their own oil and wash their own cars. But folks like me find the exchange of cash for right-now service more than worth it in most cases, and we often find that the pros who provide the service we've paid for did a much better job than we would have on our own.
But there's much more at play here than just avoiding the sizable "search tax," I think. Paid articles are very likely better when it comes to relevancy and value. Why? I think it's pretty simple: when I'm creating content recreationally--this is the way MOST of the UGC on the web is created, click here to read more on that subject--here's what I'm not doing: thinking about exactly what you want to know. What makes me do that? Competition for your $$, that's what.
The point is, Yepic doesn't just make sense because current Info Capitalists have a rough go of it selling stuff on the web today (click here to read more about that); Yepic makes sense because an info marketplace is going to dramatically improve the quality of information products on the web today!
