September 23, 2009
By the ZippyCart Shopping Carts Content Team
Most people are familiar with ecommerce and shopping for goods or services online, but not many people are familiar yet with buying their content online. In an effort to stay in business, more struggling online media companies are trying to make money by selling paid content. Some media companies are experimenting with a model where you pay for an all you can read type model or where certain articles cannot be read if you don’t pay. Redwood City based Zuora, wants to make this process much easier for all types of online media sites to sell their content and generate more revenue. The new product offering dubbed Z-Commerce for Media will debut at the fall Demo conference this week in San Diego. Not all media companies are in favor of this pay for content model and many are unsure how many consumers will really follow through with paying to read content. Some feel that it is inevitable for the tides to change and for things to switch where content is no longer free.
Z-Commerce for Media was created because online media publishers were demanding such a service to help them grow their revenues. As people shift from reading traditional media to digital media it seems that savvy media publishers need to continue to innovate other means to generate revenue besides a pay for content model. We might very well see a digital divide where free content publishers rebel and ban together to start a movement to promote boycotts to paid content sites.
Amy is the co-founder of ZippyCart. She went to school for film in Cleveland, Ohio and ended up working in the field of viral video marketing, which eventually led her to her real profession: SEO. When she's not writing for ZippyCart, she can be found out and about Seattle, WA.
