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TOC: Valuing Content in a Web-Enabled World
Tuesday, June 19, 2007 — posted by Sarah
Jeff Patterson, CEO, Safari Books OnlineSafari Books was founded in 2000. Joint venture between O'Reilly Media and Pearson. Produces an electronic reference library for IT and business professionals featuring trusted content from leading publishers.
Publisher get paid on what gets sold, not what gets read, so publishers aren't prepared to measure what's being read.
Always humbling to ask customers how you are doing.
The issue of "monetizing" content is not a new one. Clear focus at this conference and elsewhere.
Safari has more than 37,000 individual and 1,500 enterprise customers.
Where do IT and business professionals go to find content?
- Corporate customers: 20% to paid website, 28% to printed book, 19% to search engine
- Individuals: 35% to paid web site, 29% to printed book, 15% to search engine
- For urgent problems: Just over 50% to search engines
Some very interesting additional survey results. No agreement that paid content is better, although older respondents are more positive toward paid content than younger ones.
Content closest to project work (for the survey audience) is valued more highly. Programming/design techniques highly valued; financial and budget management techniques not so much.
Providing demographic information is a form of payment. Over half the respondents resist this idea. This is an issue for people who might want to build a web site that is ad-supported and wants detailed demographics to support the marketers.
45% would rather pay than provide detailed demographic information. 30% are neutral and thus willing to consider it.
73% are willing to provide basic demographic information ("name, rank, and serial number"). 73% do NOT want to give detailed information.
Free content is and will continue to be popular.
Search engines are tools for content discoverability.
There is willingness to pay for information that is relevant and necessary, but paid for content must be trustworthy, insightful, accurate, useful; available; and scarce.
Conclusion: Audiences often prefer to spend money rather than give up their time or personal information.
Very interesting.
Labels: toc2007
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