Digital content – how to earn on it?

Initially Internet was free and its information component was enlarged by enthusiasts who were interested in popularization of one or another issue. Almost all data in the net was textual type. With appearance of high-speed access and high-performance servers more and more graphic content became to appear in the Net then the time came for music and, at last, video. Nowadays you may find in Internet everything beginning from school tests and ending with the last films. A part of this information is provided free of charge but another part is being bought. Inveterate bloggers, expert copywriters and sites’ owners say that they can earn up to several thousands bucks a month on the content. Is it true? What content brings in more money to its authors and distributors?

This kind of information occupies up to 40% of the total space on all servers of the Runet. Quantity of porno and erotic sites has been increasing daily. Such agiotage shows that sale and distribution of this content brings profit. Main ways to earn on adult are two: first – manage of paid access to the information put on the site and second is to earn on the partner programs and advertisement. The biggest quantity of visitors is, of course, on the free resources with photos and videos. Their profit is from partner programs. Owners of these resources collect revenue from each client who has passed from their free resource to a paid one and got access to the closed information. Amount of payment from partner program may equal up to 50% from a cost of temporary password. Averagely profit from 2-3 adult-partner programs put on one site is 100 – 200 $ a month. An advantage of this kind of profit is that it is passive. Though in order to do it passive you have to work hard and invest a lot by attracting traffic to your free resource. Second matter is to provide operation of partner programs the free site has to be interested and present to the visitors fresh “blue subjects” regularly.

Paid sites providing access to their content through SMS-billing or by payment from e-purse get the lion’s share of profit from adult-content. An advantage of the paid resources is that a client coming through a partner link as a rule brings some “friends” with him who register on the site already directly. That’s why profit from the paid adult-sites is higher. The paid adult resources averagely bring up to 1000 $ monthly. Promoted services are able to enrich their owner on 10 – 50 thousands dollars a month. But these sites require daily updating of the content which should be of a good quality.

According to actual fact there is no competition between paid and free adult resources. The free resources are purposive to attract traffic to the paid porno sites, and by turn provide monetization of their sites at the expense of the first ones.

Quantity of sites offering to download music or art films for a charge is not big. This business in the Runet has begun to die away before having been developed. Its formation was prevented by low speed of Internet, large quantity of free resources which offer video and music, development of torrent-nets and, at last, generous Russian nature.

Exceptions are sites distributing specialized information which require to the specialists of separate particular sectors: training video and audio-courses upon one or another activity or business-program. This information are interesting to the narrow circle of people who do not long for to increase competition in their sector, that’s why they do not put the bought information to the common access.

Successful are sites selling music and rollers for downloading to a phone. This field turns out very wide. Furthermore opposite data transfer from a phone to the Internet and putting of rollers and music to the resources for free downloading is obstructed and, per se, beyond power of the ordinary users. Second factor providing profitability of this segment on content market became possibility to download information from the site directly to a phone. As a rule sites dealing with distribution of music and video free of charge gain on the same partner programs and advertisement. With such resources are willingly collaborated companies producing games, game sites and virtual shops selling various goods. Cost of advertisement and quantity of partner programs in which resource takes part in depends on traffic and character of visiting audience.

E-books is one more kind of content. Here situation is the same as in the sphere of earnings on entertaining video and audio. Sales of e-books with entertaining content still stay very low. The reason is again a liking of Russian people to the free information distribution. Separate enthusiasts under obscure motives go to the trouble of by scanning multivolume novels and editing then the recognizing text in order to put it for the common access. Sometimes such work has custom-made. Authors of free libraries attract visitors in order to increase site traffic and create favorable conditions for the advertisers.

Exception is literature useful for narrow specialists. Its sales are low but stable ones.

Last time in the Net new type of content has appeared – digital drugs and special reducing aids. It is hard to say how much their sellers gain directly from product sales. Advertisement of such information products are put on news resources of ordinary level and require expenses about 500 $ a month. It is doubtful that someone who sells this content works at a loss.

For the present there is no such information in free access. There may be two reasons for it: nobody wants to share this information for free as this information is excellent. Second variant: it is absolutely useless and it is simply unreasonable to put it into the net.

Sales of pictures in Internet is practically impossible. As sooner or later any picture will appear in free access, fully-sized and with good quality. Exception is the paid vector clip-arts, templates for Photoshop and plug-ins to the graphics editors asked-for by web-designers and designers of graphic art. The problem is that graphics is large-weighted and is put into common access as preview. It makes no sense to redraw it as it is very labor intensive process. This information is on sale practically without advertisement. It comes to knowledge by means of blogs and professional communities.

But sooner or later this type of content will get to the free access and it is decreased rates of development of such business.

It is hard to call very profitable earnings on text content such as articles and news. But it gains stable profit both producers and dealers in spite of the fact that this information becomes generally accessible at the date of publication.

The most expensive copywriters sell their works at price up to 100 $ per 1000 text characters. Beginners write at price 0,5 $. Prices on rewriting are slightly lower. The cheapest earning in the sphere of text content is copy-paste, i.e. copy of news from the other sites and its location with minimal changing. But this work is available for people without experience.

One of the new work directions in this sphere is sales of places under articles containing selling advertisement links. A price on such place may achieve up to 1000 $, and those who desire to get this service appear more and more every day.

Sales of shareware programs is one of the most stable and profitable ways to earn on content. Resource of ordinary level having corresponding target audience may gain up to 300-500 $ a month on the selling of the shareware programs. Promoted site with well-known programs may gain up to several millions. The most pleasant thing is that there are almost no negative aspects at this type of earnings. It is passive and requires no initial investments. To guarantee stability of profit gain it is enough to take care about weekly updating of the rest graphic or text content in order to keep attractiveness of the site for the visitors.

There is only one disadvantage at shareware programs. Sooner or later they are cracked by experienced hackers or crackers and get to the free access. The more interesting content is the faster its free version appears.

Sales of training programs and content for development and promotion of the information business by words of the sellers themselves bring them up to several thousands dollars a month. Average price of one training course is about 100 $. Actually these products are bough enough seldom as most of Internet businessmen are afraid even to make hints about work nature which has to be done by buyers. According to casting-off profit from sales of this content is about 100 – 300 $ a month.

If one considers showings of typical Internet resources the most profitable earnings on content remains adult. One site can gain to a good web-master up to thousand dollars a month. The second place after adult is occupied by sales of shareware programs. Here profit from one resource may achieve up to 700 $ a month. The third step on podium is occupied by sales of graphic content and program additions for professional designers and programmers. On the fourth place there is an earning on producing and retrading of the text materials. Average profit of a copywriter fluctuates within the limits 300 – 700 $ a month. The fifth place - profits from sales of information business programs. We can not define on what place is sales of digital drugs and electronic reducing aids. Profit from sales of films, music and e-books actually are very low. The most part of such profit falls on professional and training content.

The paid content is most of all presented as links for downloading. Rarely it is sent as archive file to buyer’s e-mail. That’s why the most convenient form of its payment is SMS-billing. This payment form is especially attractive for the sellers of adult and shareware programs. Unfortunately it is often used by the swindlers trying to “sell a bill of goods” to the clients, i.e. to sell them well-known information in the guise of information products. The reason is very simple: at contract conduction and delivery of short numbers cellular operators check reliability of the client very seldom. So in principle everybody can get a short number.

But if content price is high then it is not convenient to sell it by billing. In this case many businessmen get a seller’s certificate in Web-money payment system. At getting this certificate you have to present information about your business nature and a number of other documents. As a rule evident swindlers are usually refused in getting a certificate. Payment through WB may serve as a guarantee of goods quality for the buyers.

Both listed payment systems are convenient as they work automatically and do not require any activities from a seller.

Producers of content such as copywriters, designers and programmers prefer to get payment, in a manner of speaking, personally. It is caused by specifics of their work and floating system of prices.

It is possible to earn on content development and its sales in the net. You may earn on it even without investments. It is confirmed by Russian reality and forty-year experience of the west specialists. But talk that there is “free” money in the Net is akin to fairy tales about golden tree and Wheel of Fortune. Every day more and more information appears and users make high demands to its quality. On the other side here is growth of readiness of Russian people to pay for information quality. Producing of qualitative content independent, if it is graphics, texts or program software, requires special skills and knowledge. In order to distribute the information and to find the sellers on it you have to know a market and your target audience. So there is a great future for earnings on content. But this future is destined only for professionals.

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