Re: Selling Content on the Internet: Its Happening, But Is It Profitable?

["Heather Morrison" <hmorrison@ola.bc.ca>]

very interesting article!

Online content can apparently include anything from newspaper articles to
music, dating services to greeting cards.  There seems to be room for
scepticism about the numbers, implied profits, and willingness of
consumers to pay for online content.

The internet does have tremendous business potential, and in some cases
this will occur in the form of online content that has no relation to the
types of content traditionally supplied by libraries.  For example, it
makes sense that sets of graphics for printers to use will move from CD
format to online.

The article talks about the potential profitability of highly specialized
information services.  There could be job opportunities for
entrepreneurial library types here.  It might be possible, for example,
for one person or a small group of people to set up a library service for
a number of corporations that would be too small to have their own
libraries.  In time, this could lead to the growth of the library sector,
as some of the smaller corporations grow and decide to develop full
libraries.

It might be interesting to compare the growth of paid online content with
total online content.  This is still growing, is it not?  Is the
percentage of paid to free changing at all?

some personal thoughts by,

Heather Grace Morrison

liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu writes:

>Selling Content on the Internet: It's Happening, But Is It Profitable? 
>
>If you look at the latest report from the Online Publishers Association
>(OPA) covering online paid content, you might well think that online
>information is a hot commodity. Surfing around the reaches of the
>Internet, consumers spent $748 million for content during the first and
>second quarters of 2003, a jump of 23% over the same six months in 2002,
>the OPA says.
>
>Jupiter Research, an international research outfit, predicted earlier this
>year that spending on online content will grow by 30% in 2003 to $2
>billion from $1.6 billion in 2002. By 2007, Jupiter says, payments for
>online content will be $5.4 billion.
>
>[Edited to an abstract for copyright consideration. Full article is
>available at
>http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&id=872&homepage=yes]
>
>****