The web is tightening up. More and more content sites are becoming paid sites today. And users are more willing to pay for valuable content too. And if you can become one of these content sites by just connecting the people concerned - the authors and the buyers and provide a platform for them to interact on, what more can you ask for. Content like market reports, trends in the industry, a la Gartner are the kinds that are up for grabs on the Internet today. Now, you might wonder, "what's in it for me? I don't have the content and don't know whom to sell it to." Yes, we agree! But would you like to tap into this industry and make a killing? By connecting the content experts with the people who are interested in buying the content through the Internet?

Yes, you can provide the platform and build a marketplace for content. You might be wondering about how you will campaign for the right content experts and get them to use your website as a platform for their content? Today, if authors want to publish their work they would need to contact the right publisher and then make the right promotional efforts in order to sell their work. Through the right marketing strategies and the right distribution, the book might just get sold. The process of publishing, marketing and selling is a daunting task indeed. A simpler method is to sell the content online. We are not talking about ebooks here. Instead we are talking about content that is created solely for the purpose of selling on the web. The hard copy is created if/when the user needs it.

Why provide a channel for content?
The Internet makes it easier and cheaper to exchange information, it allows sellers to reach new potential customers and conversely allows buyers to compare the offerings of a greater set of suppliers. As a result, sellers can think of better ways to gauge customers and demand for their products, thus being able to make changes and adjustments to their products accordingly.

The Internet becomes the marketplace where buyers and sellers can use it to find out more about each other, from reputation to the authenticity of the content and the transactions that happen on the site. Internet technologies permit faster and more cost-effective matching of demand and supply thus allowing for faster negotiation methods and transaction settlements. The important factor to remember is that such e-marketplace sites can be designed by anyone, starting from the infrastructure provider to the content provider or the buyer or any third party.

Let's look at some of the paybacks involved.

Individual market participants hope to get a leg up on their competitors by deploying information systems that provide faster and better market information or that helps close a transaction faster. Since such a website will provide a platform that will act as a marketplace where there are three players - the content providers or the experts, the buyers and the website that hosts and sells this content.

For the author or the expert who creates the content, what are the benefits? Usually the content that is sold will be in the form of reports - business analyst reports and market research reports.

How does the content expert distribute and market content?
By contacting a printer, or a publisher and then marketing the content through the right channels. If he shells out content in a number of categories, then the job of tracking the content, the transactions, the buyers and other useful statistics can be quite cumbersome indeed. He can avoid this painstaking process by using a common platform (the web site) that in turn does all the work for him. If the content is in the form of a pdf doc, or html or any other file, he can just upload the file at the website. He can specify the kind of format he wants it displayed in too. He can write a summary or a teaser that can be viewed as a preview of the content details. He can also specify whether the website can sell the soft and the hard copy, and if there is a hard copy he can give printer specifications. This saves him a lot of work and makes the process of selling easier. The bookkeeping process of accounting, tracking buyers and other statistics can be cumbersome indeed. In addition, there is no immediate investment upfront, he gets paid whenever a sale is made on the site and in turn pays a commission to the website for the transaction.

For the buyer:
The buyer can access a common platform to read content belonging to various categories. He can be assured of quality because the site affords a rating and review section. Costs are cheaper because the process of selling and distributing content is cheaper. The buyer can select the paper quality, size of the page, etc for the printed version. He can also create customized content where he selects content from various authors and various types, etc.

How can we help you become a key player in this business?
Let's look at what an e-marketplace for content will do.

What are the features and what are the processes involved?
Let's look at the different players in such a scenario:

• Content Expert
  
• Platform provider - the website owner
  
• Buyer
  
• Admin

• Admin Area: Where the administrator of the site logs in and reviews the reading patterns on the site, receives a status report for each transaction and takes the necessary action regarding each sale.
  
• Member Area: Users can become members and avail personalization features
  
• Buyer area
  
• Transaction Area (cash details, checks, credit card etc)
  
• Statistics Area (useful to make decisions on whom to promote)
  
• Delivery / Shipping Area
  
• Content Area (categories, content management, search)

What are the benefits to the content providers?

Features:

• Registration/login/member panel
• Facility to upload content - files of pdf, html, doc files, preview docs like summaries, free articles, digital content, what format it should be available - hard or soft and if there is a hard copy, any specifications.
• Identifiers for paid content items
• Rate/costs for content items
• Transaction area - where the amount details can be checked
• Statistics area - that displays how many people saw the summaries, how many viewed details of a particular type of content.
• Site creation area - where they can create a site within the main site that will showcase info about their content.

How does the content marketplace function? What are the features that buyers can avail of?
Features:

• Browse facility
• Search facility
• Read free content (teasers)
• Add to shopping bag
• Check-out (payment, formats)
• Mode (email or download)
• Personalization - member panel, no need to enter details while checking out, history, recommendation engine
• Create micro sites