Making Money Off Content While Not Being Evil
I’ve been thinking about the dynamics of community online. Like any community for it to be of value there must be give and take. Sometimes companies claim to be web 2.0 which means they utilize (or abuse) social media to make money. When true web 2.0, unadulterated, is two-sided.
When people take and never give, they ruin community. If people aren’t being completely open about who they are or their intentions it lowers the quality of the interaction.
Wikipedia, Craigs list, Fat Wallet and Digg don’t want the quality of interaction ruined by marketers or commercial interests. They actively discourage it.
Marketers are evil people who want to make a buck off you. That’s means they can be less than transparent. But they (we) exist. My question is how do we give them a place and let them participate in the community while keeping quality?
How do you monetize or even allow for and encourage making money online in a web 2.0 community? To make it do you need to be bought out by a large company? Depend on ad sales? Sell links? (Now this is not a bad idea. A paid box on every page of Wikipedia. Companies can buy a link given it honestly provides a service that compliments the content. Maybe take submissions, have the community vote on them. The companies who win pay to keep it there or charge a one-time fee).
I’m a Yepic evangelist (a role I volunteered myself for) because they solve this problem of web 2.0 communities. A problem I’ve been thinking about a lot this year. They encourage and facilitate getting paid or paying others for their contribution. There’s also a lot of free content.
Lunch may not be completely free but it’s affordable. And making money is encouraged. Content that is incredibly popular or useful can be sold over and over (unlike journalism where you get paid once for an article).
People will be able to make a living or supplement their incomes with Yepic. By buying, selling, editing, creating additions, services, and enhancements for their or other people’s content.
It’s a beautiful thing.
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