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Scribd will hit the Jackpot just wait a few years.

Ok so twitter is a daily obsession not a day goes by without it makingthe headlines on TechcrunchDid you know that until a few month agoScribd had a similar or evenbetter growth than Twitter? Twitter is 3 years old and is not making a dime, Scribd is 2 years andisalready profitable+ and this where it gets crazy Scribd is introducinga new additional monetization strategy that will hit the jackpot big timeand this is why:

Scribd’s initial business model:

Scribd’s initial business model is by itself already a goldmine: a ton of people upload a ton of documents that get a ton of views all they haveto do is host the docs which is not very pricey compared to youtubevideos, make sure they scale their service properly, improve their flashreader and encourage more uploads.A lot of Scribd’s traffic is international (South East Asia and India).Visitor are not all born equal, developing countries visitors have lessdisposable income and are therefore less interesting to advertisers. That said, most of Scribd’s traffic are search engines non tech savvypeople. These are the visitors you want to have. They don’t haveadblock plugins and like my sister click on Google ads thinking theselinks ad value. Digg for instance has a lot of traffic but a lot of it aretech savvy who either block the ads or never click on them.Scribd is a SEO superstar: upload a doc there it will get a LOT LOT moreviews than if you upload that same doc in a blog plus it is a snap foranyone who has a blog to embed it.I once heard Marissa Mayer explain that google acquired youtube notfor the site itself but because it was becoming a platform for sharingvideos across the web the same goes for Scribd.Docstoc is Scribd’s biggest competitor but is6 times smallergameover for every wannabe competitor. Scribd is the big name in theindustry.Scribd is already profitable and will continue to grow its share of the $50 Billions online advertising industry which is quickly growing as moreand more money is shifting from traditional media to internet.

The Additional Monetization Strategy

Tuesday Scribd announced that publishers can now sell ebooks andcash 80% of the sales. This is not a novel idea I think lulu and others had a similar, thoughless generous, offering a few years ago already but it never took off.Scribd will pull it off:- Scribd has 60 million monthly visitors and is becoming a destinationsite.-Perfect timing:Karim Jawed co-founder of youtube said in apresentation one of the main reason youtube was so successful wastiming. Youtube started right when broadband internet access anddigital cameras were democratized.It is exactly the same here withScribd. The kindle is becoming a big thing and will continue to explose.A Kindle reproduces the feel of a book and a has lots of advantagesyou can buy an ebook in seconds no need to order it online, it is a lotcheaper, you can take notes,use a dictionary and google anything youwant.-“several authors are now selling books on Scribd for $2 make moremoney per sale than they would selling books priced at $18 in abookstore.” The economics is here it is a lot easier and lucrative to publish anebook. The newspaper industry is dying ( New York times and others).Independent publishers, bloggers without middleman expect for Scribdis the future. Scribd positioned itself to become precisely the vehiclethat will facilitate that change and this is when they cash the Jackpot.Scribd will become a threat to Amazon at some level and they mightbe forced to acquire them. Nice exit for Scribd! $$$$Why didn’t I invest $$$ in Scribd?

http://jadito.com http://twitter.com/jadito

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GratefulAl

This raises some very interesting points and I agree that timing in such fast moving markets and technology is the crux of it all. Especially with so many "distractions" online contending for our attention.

reply10 / 01 / 2009

Scribd Will Hit the Jackpot Just Wait a Few Years

Analysis of Scribd. http://jadito.com http://twitter.com/jadito

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Category:	Research > Internet & Technology
Rating:	(3 Ratings)
Upload Date:	06/27/2009
Copyright:	Attribution Non-commercial
Tags:	Scribd scribd profitable scribd seo scribd strategy scribd positioning Scribd scribd profitable scribd seo scribd strategy scribd positioning (fewer)