How to sell content in the net?

Content sales for the sites became conventional business in the Internet long ago. Main products are texts, graphics and video. Not so often it may be some news of any kind. How to sell content in the net and how much one can earn on it?

All information being sold in the net can be divided into two parts: custom-made and the one which is placed for the free sales. The first one always costs rather expensive than another. The most widespread and cheapest way to present information to the people around you is evidently texts. In quantitative proportion they are the largest part of information in the Internet. From the other side persons interested to earn with such easy (at first sight) way are too many as well. For that reason texts are the cheapest kind of content.

The main types of text which are sold in the net are four. The most expensive one of them is copywriting, i.e. advertising texts for the sites selling goods and services and also useful articles which may attract the people who are interested in the problem or such goods. A copywriter is an author of the advertising text who creates his article based on information found in the net, gathered off-line or got from a customer. Such text is unique upon its meaning, content and data spin. Creation of this content – is very labor-intensive process. That’s why the final product costs so expensive.

Much cheaper at buying is rewrite, i.e. text which original has been found in the net. But the small cost of this content type compensates with usury because of the scopes in which it is in demand and relatively low labor-intensive of its creation. It is almost impossible today to sell copy-paste –copied from the different resources text with changed headings. Toughening of searching robots’ algorithms makes such content less usable for the sites and appropriately cheaper. It is worth to discuss separately scans of books’ texts. Such texts themselves are only pictures and need for additional processing: recognition and editing. And only then they may be used. So value of scanned texts depends directly upon topicality of the data.

Rates on text content are defined by its type, data value, subject difficultness and author experience.

The simplest and cheapest way to announce yourself as texts’ seller is to register on the text exchange. In the Internet are about two tens of the promoted resources where one can sell the articles. About fifty of sites – beginners are hard on their heels. The first registration on all text exchange in the Runet is free.

The most popular and cheapest exchanges of the text content are TextSale.ru, Etxt.ru, Advego.ru and Textbroker.ru. Here one can sell ready texts and find the clients who order writing on the new texts. But price of ordered text on such exchanges does not exceed 0,5 – 1,5 $ per 1000 characters of text for copywriting and 0,2 – 1 $ for rewrite. The prices of ready texts put up for sale is even less starting from 0,3 $ per 1000 characters of copywriting and 0,1 $ for rewrite.

To increase rates on your product on these exchanges is possible by means of grow-up of your account rating. Rating will grow jointly with the quantity of the sold texts and positive responses from the clients and your craft-brothers. But the upper limit of texts’ fee on such exchanges does not exceed 2,5 $ per 1000 text’s character. So profit of writers working on text exchanges is within 50 – 100 $ a month. Much more profitable for producers and sellers of texts are exchanges positioning themselves as professional free-lancer’s resources: Free-lance.ru, Copylancer.ru, Weblance.ru. On these sites not only writers but also designers, painters, photographers and programmers can earn their crust. Nevertheless the most part of executors here are the people selling text content. Averagely prices for copywriting here begins from 2,75 $ per 1000 text characters, fore rewrite – from 2 $ per the similar scope. Each of these exchanges has it own shop where one can put up ready articles on sale. Prices on ready content are lower here like prices on the text exchanges. Skilful copywriters earn on such resources from 300 till 3000 $ a month. But requirements from the customers to such texts are much stricter. The pitfall at selling of the text content is the high level of risk in the field of payment because a client can begin to use the text before getting it. Having put up in the net and indexed with the searching systems the text content has lost its uniqueness and become generally accessible for copywriting and rewrite.

The second type of content which is popular in the net is graphic pictures and photos. They are used at decoration of blogs, articles, become elements of site’s design and are put up as galleries.

To sell photo, vector graphics and picture in the Internet is possible through photo-banks. These banks are called also as photo-agencies, photo-stocks or photo-libraries. Such sites, per se, are the shops of graphic content. In Runet the most popular ones are such resources as iStockphoto.com, dreamstime.com, stockphotos.ru. The most expensive is shutterstock.com site.

Before putting up for the sales a picture is checked on its uniqueness, compliance to the site’s subjects and some other requirements. If site’s moderators will be satisfied then it will be put up for sale. One can get the money when author’s account has minimal amount which the photo-stock allows to withdraw. Averagely it equals 50 – 100 $.

The advantage of graphic content sales is that one picture may be sold not once but several times depending on run-time license for the picture having bought by a purchaser. As a rule photo-banks offer four types of such run-time licenses at picture purchase.

The most popular one is Royalty Free which reserves all author’s rights on the picture after its having sold. A purchaser has a right only to use a picture, i.e. he can, for example, to place it on his site or make a design element from it. Royalty Free does not give the right to a purchaser to resell the picture, to use it for advertising or commercial purposes. But photographer can sell the same picture several times. The price of such run-time license does not exceed 0,5 – 10 $. Royalty Free is convenient additionally as it allows placing the same picture in any quantity of photo-banks. Averagely for one downloading of the photo an author can get 0,25$ - 2,50 $. For downloading of the vector picture the price is 1 – 5 $.

The second type of license offered by photo-banks is Extended Royalty Free. It gives the right to a purchaser to use a picture in the projects where it provides commercial profit. For example, to place a picture on the broadsheets, posters, T-shirts, calendars and other products which will be bought in the first place because of the picture on them. A picture with such type of the license can cost up to fifty dollars. Extended Royalty Free allows to sell a picture several times as well and to locate it on the different resources. Seller’s profit in that case will be 10 – 40 $ depending on picture’s type.

Right Managed license exceeds the picture price up to 200 – 500 $. However it obliges an author to put up a picture for sales only in one photo-bank and assumes the contract conclusion between an author and the resource. In turn the site keeps data about when and whom a picture has been sold. The Right Managed license transfers a right to a purchaser on using a picture for advertising purposes. A purchaser in a process of buying such license gets information about whom and when the selected picture has been sold and has a possibility to reject from the purchase if the picture has been sold earlier by the competitors. In that case the authors get 100 – 250 $ for each down loading.

And finally Exclusive Buyout license transfers to a purchaser all rights on picture’s usage and the author at the same time completely forfeit them. After having bought it the picture is removed from the sales. Moreover the license is distributed on all pictures of such series. The price of a picture being bought by Exclusive Buyout license may be 2000 – 6000 $. In this case the acquired money can be divided between an author and photo-bank. But in the most cases Exclusive Buyout license is assigned on the basis of the contract.

The pitfalls at operation with photo-banks and purchase pictures on Royalty Free and Extended Royalty Free licenses is that such pictures sooner or later get to free access and begin to distribute in the Runet free of charge. The most popular photos get to the free access faster than any others. The second disadvantage at operation with pictures’ shops is that most of them operate with the western payment systems and it makes some difficulties at withdrawing of money.

Demand for video content grows together with communication capabilities and distribution of optic-fiber networking. One of the most perspective niches is sales of video-footage, i.e. clips with duration 5-30 seconds. Some impressive catchy frames, cartoons created by means of 3D-graphics, interesting video-effect or abstraction and so on are considered as video-footage. Video-footage is typically sold through photo-banks. This type of content is sold the same as picture per four types of licenses. The average price on this content is in the range of 10 – 50 $ for one downloading upon Royalty Free license. An author in that case gets from 3 up to 30 $.

The disadvantage of video-footage sales is that almost all of them sooner or later get to the free resources such as YouTube. Though the quality of rolls represented there is very low it has a negative effect on the sales.

The second popular type of video content is films, TV-programs and other entertainment products. But in order to open an official site for online sales of the licensed films you have to invest significantly and conclude agreements with the right holders. That’s why the resources legally trading video films online are very few in the Runet. Torrent-trackers does not favor their prosperity as well. To sell the films manufactured by yourself you can on such sites as Kinovip.com. But frankly saying the audience of this recourse is mainly English-speaking. Russian people are not so interested in such projects. Averagely downloading of one film from such resources costs within 1-3 dollars. Profit of the user who has placed a video for 1000 downloads is 100 – 500 $. But in order to attract traffic to the placed products it is necessary to use additional methods of promotion. Only web-masters can sell such content successfully.

They say that blogs have killed news periodicals and take away reporters’ crust of bread. For today printed publications are satisfied with the statement of commonly-known facts and information trail, i.e. comments of state agents and public persons. The same may be said about electronic publications. Information about most public events enters to the Internet as photos and video immediately at the moment of its appearance. Literally for an hour news has been indexed by the searching systems, located in the news sheets and copy-pasted by an army of the bloggers. So for the printed and electronic mass-media it makes no sense to pay for the information which will be in free access within the following minutes and will be commented and copied a great deal of times during a day. It is for that the most of e-newspapers assigns so much “space” for analytic materials, specialists’ comments and surveys.

But mass-media pays readily for the advance news, i.e. information about events which will happen in future and, accordingly, about which there are no information in the Internet. I.e. one can sell the news at the condition that the only person who knows the information is the seller. And the price of such information will be very high. To sell exclusive news or photos of the star having made a blunder is possible to any mass-media with appropriating information format, in the other words, which publish something similar. As a rule you may settle-out your own price but it should not be exorbitant. In Moscow the price for such material may be within 500 – 5000 $.

The ways to sell the content in the net are great number. Selection of one or another depends on author capabilities, product quality and sales method. Everybody looks for the optimal variant himself. The earnings’ amount on content sales is limited only with its producer or trader capabilities. The lower limit of “salary” begins from 20 $ a month and there is no upper limit at all. According to the legends which go about in the copywriters’ environment the real specialists may get for advertising text on one page up to 2500 $, and talented designers up to several millions of roubles for logotype creation. Average salary is within the limits 300 – 2000 $ a month depending on product type and its sales method. But it is worth to notice that such profits are got by journeymen or enthusiastic dilettantes.

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