You Tube To Charge For Some Content - Finally!

YOU TUBE TO CHARGE FEES

There are reports that You Tube will allow video creators to charge viewers to access content, either using a subscription model or a pay per download system. This could make Google’s video site quite profitable. I think the more people who charge for content the better. FREE is killing the Internet. FREE can build a brand or help specific people, but overall, too many free things is not good for business. Content providers – whether it is book publishers, magazines, newspapers, researchers, videos, audios, music, etc – need to instill value in what they produce. You don’t see plumbers, doctors, or auto dealers giving their services and products away for free, do you? Charge away and re-establish a system with consumers that they should expect to pay for content, and reaffirm that creativity, information, ideas, and analysis have value.

AMAZON STILL DAZZLES WALL STREET

Amazon netted 97 million dollars last quarter. For most companies, making that much money is impossible.  But when you consider how much money Amazon takes in – gross revenue was up 22% from the prior quarter – you would expect a bigger profit. Operating expenses also jumped by 22%.  So this company took in over $21 billion dollars in just 90 days but it spent nearly as much. This has been the case for a long time.  Wall Street seems to like that the behemoth is barely profitable, pushing shares to $285 – up about 100 dollars from a year ago. Amazon continues to capture market share and that some of its expenses ha to do with the construction of mammoth warehouses, so some investors believe Amazon is primed to be in a position to make bigger profits soon. But Amazon’s strategy is to offer cut-throat pricing, even making a number of its products, including its e-reader, a loss-leader. Time will tell if Amazon will convert its huge capitalization, name recognition, and positive customer ratings into a real profit center.

Conversely, Apple continues to bring in huge profits – but because the pace of the profits has slowed or is a little lower than analysts’ expectations, the stock has tanked by more than 40% from its high that was reached just a few months ago. In this case, Wall Street believes that decreasing profits, however big they are, is a signal of bad times.

Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer, the nation’s largest book promoter. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This blog is copyrighted material by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2013 ©