1. What is digital content?
2. What type of digital content can I sell on TidWiT?
3. What does it mean to sell content?
4. How do I protect the Intellectual Property that I am selling on TidWiT?
5. Why would anyone be interested in my digital content?
6. Would anyone really pay for my digital content?
7. How can I compete against free digital content?
8. What pricing method should I use to sell my digital content?
9. Does it make sense for me to sell my digital content at zero?
10. How do I make my digital content more valuable?
11. How do I price position my content?

Digital content is any form of data or information in digital form (i.e. an electronic file). It can be anything from a simple poem to photos, graphic art, research papers, articles, reports, statistical databases, business plans, engineering designs, e-books, multimedia (music and movies). In other words, any type of content that can be turned into a digital medium, stored, and transferred between computers on the World Wide Web and elsewhere. To access more information about digital content, and how it is different from printed or other types of off-line content, please go to What Is Digital Content?.

As TIDWIT is a global content marketplace that anybody can access and search free of charge, you can pretty much post on TIDWIT.com and sell any electronic content that you think someone out there may be willing to value enough to pay something for the its rights of usage. This includes articles, research papers, e-books, pictures, poems, business plans, engineering and architectural designs, graphic art, music, movies, etc. The most important aspect of selling digital content on TIDWIT is that you have to own the intellectual property rights to it (i.e. you are its original creator, benefactor), or have obtained the rights to resell. So, if your content is digital and you own the intellectual property rights to it, you can sell it on TIDWIT.

Unlike selling physical objects, when you sell your content, you are essentially selling the right for the buyer to use it (read it, play it, print it for personal usage, or present it). However, unless agreed to otherwise, the intellectual property rights remain with you as the content creator and seller; and the buyer may not be able to reproduce your content for resale or reprint without your strict and written consensual approval. In todays digital age, it is important for you as a seller to understand this and other aspects of your intellectual property rights. For more information on this, we recommend that you access the following page www.copyright.gov.

At TIDWIT, we believe that it is very important to understand and protect your Intellectual Property (IP) rights. For a detailed explanation on your IP rights, please access www.tidiwit.com/myiprights.htm. TidWiT is just a venue where content buyers and sellers interact. Due to the nature of digital content, there is a risk of having your IP pirated, which we cannot protect against. But if you really think about it, these risks exist today in other publishing mediums as well. For example anyone can buy a book and make photocopies of it. Anyone can rent a DVD and burn a copy, and anyone can transform a song from a CD into mp3 and distribute it. Therefore, these risks are not limited to TidWiT as such, and there is no way TidWiT can guarantee against them potentially happening.

While, we cannot guarantee the protection of IP ourselves, we will do everything within our power to help advise our sellers and buyers on their duties and rights. A simple rule that we go by is to balance the costs incurred in protecting an IP, with the benefits obtained. The easiest and least expensive way to protect a written document, for instance, is to secure it using software such as Adobe Acrobat Writer, which transforms a word processor document into an unalterable format such as pdf. The benefit of a format such as pdf is that it has become a universal standard for exchanging documents, and its reader (Adobe Acrobat Reader) is downloadable for free from www.adobe.com. This benefit to most users may far exceed the limited encryption or securities that are available for pdf documents. In any case, before converting the document into pdf, be sure to include details about yourself as the author on the cover page and perhaps on the bottom of each page. The same principal applies if you are selling images, where you may want to use some photo editor in order to integrate your or your entitys name on the bottom corner of the image and then selling that integrated image to interested buyers. For film or music, you may want to include reference to yourself as the author at the end of a song or in the movie- Hitchcock anyone?

With all that said, there are even more secure encryption methods, for those who have the volume or can justify the cost-benefit. Whatever the IP protection method chosen, we recommend all of our sellers to be vigilant on TidWiT and elsewhere. After all, so far in both the on-line and off-line worlds, when there is a will to illegally copy someone elses IP, there has been a way, from cheap and basic photocopying methods to more complex de-encryption mechanisms. At least, within the TidWiT community, our sellers can count on the vigilance and support of the rest of the community to protect their IP; and on TidWiTs quick response when infringement is found.

With hundreds of millions of users accessing the Internet, and millions joining on a daily basis, the market potential is vast. TIDWIT is revolutionary in that it gives content providers- no matter how small- a unique and low cost publishing and distribution window to the world. Once you have published on TIDWIT.com, will the world be interested in paying for your content? This will depend on how good your content is, how well you classify it for potential buyers to find it, how qualified you prove to be as a content provider, how you price your content, and how much positive feedback your buyers give you. At TIDWIT, we have lowered your barrier to publishing and distribution to such a degree that posting your content -even if you are not sure it will be sold- may very well be worth your time. Who knows, out of the hundreds of millions of people out there, there maybe hundreds if not thousands of people interested in what you have to sell and willing to pay for it. The only way for you to find out your digital content potential is to post your content.

There are many reasons why people would be willing to pay for other peoples content. For example, if the content you have is highly specialized, it may not have a big enough audience for a typical publisher to pick it up and publish it in a book or other format, because he may perceive the market to be too small for the necessary investment. However, there may still be hundreds of researchers all over the world interested in obtaining italbeit for a fee- at some point or another, and when you may least expect it. If your content can save others time and effort, they are very likely willing to pay something for it. For example, if Joe Lee is looking to open an oversees office in the Comoros Islands, he may find it handy to pay Chris Lancaster US$100 for his digital content titled, What Every American Needs to Know about Doing Business in the Comoros Islands. In this case, Joes US$100 investment is likely to give him an amazing return if he can avoid some common pitfalls, such as local habits, customs, business etiquette, good or bad neighborhoods, business laws and regulations Unfortunately had Chris himself tried to publish his book using traditional channels, odds are strong it may not have been picked up, and Joe would not have had access to such valuable information. Examples such as this abound. The truth of the matter is that anyone who is willing to go to a bookshop, to a library, or to a music store to buy content is also likely to get the same marginal utility (ECON 101 anyone?) buying it on-line particularly if there is no off-line medium through which to buy it from or get free access to.

With the above said, some TidWiT members may decide to post their content and sell it free of charge. They may do so for several reasons, among which are to market themselves, to help others, or to get initial feedback on a document before finalizing it. It is perfectly acceptable for them to do this.

A common misconception of content providers and buyers alike is that free content on the Internet is taking away business from content providers and publishers. Studies have actually shown this not to be the case (Read Shapiro & Varian, Information Rules, 1999). Rather, whenever content has been posted on the Internet, it has boosted the sales of traditional channels- newspapers being the primary case. In the case of TIDWIT, most of the content providers are going to be individuals, small businesses and consulting boutiques, NGOs, and government agencies all of whom may have original work and yet do not have sufficient alternative publishing channels. This mere fact means that they are the only ones who can decide whether they upload their digital content or not; and is so, whether they give it away for free or charge something for it. Another common misconception is that the Internet is free. It isnt and someone happens to be paying for whatever we are accessing be it by paying for the hardware on which it is stored, the software it uses, or the bandwidth on which it is being transferred.

So, essentially, where a content provider feels the material is freely available elsewhere on the Internet may put it up free of charge and simply pay posting fees. However, if one finds that the material is relatively exclusive and in demand, they would charge for it giving them extra incentive to do more original content work. In other words, even if they could afford to put up a web site with an e-commerce functionality for charging and downloading, they are unlikely to generate enough traffic to justify putting up such a site, let alone administering it.

Content can be sold in many ways on TidWiT. It could be sold using a fixed price (Buy iT) feature, via a haggled or negotiated price (Haggle iT), via pocket change (Pocket Change iT), or via an auction. How it is sold depends on several factors including the exclusivity of the material, its time sensitivity, how sure the sellers are in fixing a price, and their willingness to negotiate.

The easiest and most straightforward method is via a fixed price. In this case, a seller- say Mary Pine- posts her research paper titled A Survey of Nano-Technology Usage in the Clothing Industry, and offers it to her potential buyers for US$11.95. This means that anytime potential buyers search for it, they will see a Buy iT button next to this content. If they decide to buy and download this paper, they have to pay Mary the fixed price of US$11.95. If they feel this it expensive, they would just decide not to buy it. This method is best used when sellers have non-exclusive content (content that can be bought and used by many buyers at the same time) and which is not time sensitive (see auction below for definition of time-sensitive content). It is also best used when sellers feel relatively comfortable with their pricing or if they do not want the hassle of buyers haggling over their content price. In general, for anything, which is not free and less than US$15, we find the fixed pricing method to be the most practical and cost-effective.

Another method, which is an extension of fixed price, is negotiated price for the content. This is best used if the content is more expensive and the author is not too sure of pricing. For instance, in the above case, Mary Pine posts a price of US$19, but chooses the Haggle iT to state that the price is negotiable- a Haggle it button hence appears next to her content item. A potential buyer interested in Mary Pines paper may offer Mary US$8 through TidWiT. Mary can respond that she cannot go below US$15, the buyer offers US$12 as the last offer, and they settle. In this case, Mary could have posted her research for only a fixed price of US$19. However, she would not have been sure whether or not buyers might have potentially been turned off by the price tag, and so she places a negotiable price tag. By doing this, of course, Mary risks inviting people to negotiate; but Mary also may see the benefit in selling more of her research. For example if she can sell her research 20 times at an average negotiated price of US$12, it means she would have earned US$240. However, had she sold a quantity of only 10 at US$19, it means she only made US$190. Also, it is important to remember the added benefit of making the buyers feel they got a good deal. While this method, is more flexible, it also means both buyer and seller have the time and inclination to negotiate, which may not be the case. As in the fixed pricing method, this pricing does not work well for content which is exclusive and which is time sensitive.

A third method of selling uses the TidWiT developed concept of Pocket Change (see www.tidiwt.com/pocketchange). Anyone with content that they would like to share with others can post it using this option, allowing their respective buyers to pay whatever value they deem appropriate or can afford. Pocket Change content items have a list price of zero, and would show the pocket change logo next to them. Buyers (members only) will be able to download the item. Once the item has been downloaded, it will be added to the shipping cart of that Buyer. The buyer will have the choice of putting whatever pocket change she or he wants and paying for the item together with any other item. Sellers should know that upon checkout, some buyers might opt not to leave any pocket change. If sellers are not comfortable with this, they should choose the Haggle iT feature with a low starting price.

A fourth method to sell content is via auction. Auctions are not commonly used in selling content, except when the sellers have content, which they will be selling in an exclusive mode, which are time sensitive, or which the sellers do not really know the market value for. This functionality is not currently available in TidWiT, but is forthcoming in the near future.

It could make a lot of sense, depending on the content and on the reasons. If the content is really not of a good quality, and yet may help spread the word about your work, you might want to incur the posting cost but not charge for its download. If you feel your content is worth something very small, you may want to consider the pocket change option mentioned above in section 8, because it allows potential buyers to pay whatever they feel it was worth to them. At the end of the day, it really depends on you. One thing we like to tell our members is not to feel ashamed charging for their content. While some may not be expecting to be enriched by it, receiving some extra compensation for their hard labor, if anything would rightfully give them incentive to produce more intellectual property.

In general content is made more valuable by having a reliable and trustworthy provider; and by the content itself being worthy and well marketed. A solid and trustworthy reputation goes a long way in the real world, and doubly more so on the Internet. Working hard on maintaining an impeccable record by having good products, good feedback, helping others in your specific community by growing your circle or becoming a peer reviewer, and by pro-actively reporting violations all help a content seller establish a solid content reputation. Of course, trustworthy sellers must have reliable content, which people can use, appreciate, and perhaps even recommend to others. To value content, a provider needs to start off with it being good content. Weak content is likely to get weak reviews, which can turn off future buyers for this content and others the seller may want to sell. The best way to avoid this is to be as honest as possible in the contents description, classification, and pricing. Sampling may also help, either by having a table of contents, a few pages of text, or a piece of the poem, design, or music. It could also be helpful to advise potential buyers of what the content does not provide. It would also be beneficial to have others review your content and give feedback on it. From a marketing perspective, featuring your content (bolding, highlighting) might be a good way to draw a crowd to it, purchase it, and start a virtuous cycle.

In terms of pricing, you will have to do your homework. A good place to start is figuring out the competition. A report author may warrant looking at books that cover a similar space. Keep in mind though that books are printed in quantities and hence the price of a book may actually sell much cheaper than that of a specialized report. Figuring out a pricing method as discussed in question #7 above is important. If you are unsure about fixing a price, start off with a negotiated price and see where the average price comes out, then perhaps fix it.