I’m Yepic’s CEO and wanted to thank you for the terrific write-up and make myself available for further discussion if you’d like. You can email me at rich@yepic.com

A few thoughts I wanted to share with you and your readers:

1. “Bloggers will likely be put off by the very low commission rates.”

This is good feedback, and we’ll think very seriously about our current commission scales, but for now I think Yepic offers sufficient value for the fees we’re charging. More on that in item 2. Also note that content creators have full HTML capabilities when creating their assets, which means they can embed advertisements. This is another revenue source for content creators that Yepic–unlike other sites– currently doesn’t tap.

2. “it would be fairly trivial for a skilled blogger with their own server to set up their own PayPal buttons and sell the works directly”

This is true, but there are several advantages that come with publishing on Yepic’s platform that aren’t available to the blogger who attempts to do what you suggest here, and it’s in these capabilities that I believe Yepic earns the small per-article fees we charge. First, Yepic’s assets support all forms of rich media: video, audio, images, etc. PDFs–the most common format used in the method you suggest–don’t. Second, Yepic’s platform fully supports collaboration by other authors, both pre and post-publication. This collaboration happens not only at the content, but at the HTML level. This means Yepic articles benefit from the type of wiki-style collaboration that has made Wikipedia a phenomenal success. Further, Yepic articles are alive, in a way, in that the author or collaborators can update the content as often as they like. As an example of how this happens, Yepic’s platform aggregates and presents to the author user feedback on the article, which, if embraced by the author or collaborators, runs the article’s content through a virtuous cycle of refinement. Yepic’s platform also removes the tedium of having to email or support the download of PDFs to users who’ve purchased them.

In short, Yepic is a platform that has been optimized for the creation, marketing, sale, delivery, consumption, and continued refinement of pretty much any type of digital content. Selling PDFs and eBooks via Pay-Pal on one’s blog is definitely an alternative approach, but an inferior one with many drawbacks, including set-up and management overhead, limited content options, content that goes stale and is generally unreceptive to user feedback and/or collaboration.

3. “Readers, on the other hand, will likely find little worth paying for on Yepic. With so much content available for free, there is little reason to pull out the credit card, even if it is only a few dollars.”

That phrase “so much content available for free” is a two-edged sword, isn’t it? It’s easy to find what you’re looking for if you’re looking for news or common knowledge (stuff available on Wikipedia, for example). But what about when your looking for information that’s rather specific or applied to a certain set of circumstances? Like how to work on a particular automobile? Or how to find a good attorney or dentist? Here’s where the “search tax” starts taking its toll. And out in these weeds, where we spend frustrating hours trying to first find info that’s (a) relevant, and (b) trustworthy, we see a huge opportunity for “information as a service.” In these situations, users are paying less for information and more for services rendered in aggregating, synthesizing, and filtering–or, if all else fails, creating–it for them. We also see opportunities in expert advice. These are models we’ve researched, and we’re very convinced that there’s plenty of demand for this kind of content.

4. “especially while targeting such an unusual niche”

Perhaps we need to broaden the scope of our messaging. While we believe there’s a great value-proposition for Yepic with bloggers, the platform is really open for use by any content creator with wares to sell.

5. “However, to be a good deal for writers, Yepic is going to have to attract a large group of eager buyers. To do that, it will have to attract a great deal of high-quality authors.”

You are absolutely correct about that. Please remember that Yepic is only in its beta period–which, due to some incredible short-term response we’re considering making private. We’re focused primarily on how to improve the platform at this point and nothing is final as to our design and/or business model. We anticipate our official launch will occur somewhere in early 2007, and the recruiting of top-quality authoring talent is at the top of our list for our official launch.

Thanks again for the review.

Best,

Richard

I’m Yepic’s CEO and wanted to thank you for the terrific write-up and make myself available for further discussion if you’d like. You can email me at rich@yepic.com

A few thoughts I wanted to share with you and your readers:

1. “Bloggers will likely be put off by the very low commission rates.”

This is good feedback, and we’ll think very seriously about our current commission scales, but for now I think Yepic offers sufficient value for the fees we’re charging. More on that in item 2. Also note that content creators have full HTML capabilities when creating their assets, which means they can embed advertisements. This is another revenue source for content creators that Yepic–unlike other sites– currently doesn’t tap.

2. “it would be fairly trivial for a skilled blogger with their own server to set up their own PayPal buttons and sell the works directly”

This is true, but there are several advantages that come with publishing on Yepic’s platform that aren’t available to the blogger who attempts to do what you suggest here, and it’s in these capabilities that I believe Yepic earns the small per-article fees we charge. First, Yepic’s assets support all forms of rich media: video, audio, images, etc. PDFs–the most common format used in the method you suggest–don’t. Second, Yepic’s platform fully supports collaboration by other authors, both pre and post-publication. This collaboration happens not only at the content, but at the HTML level. This means Yepic articles benefit from the type of wiki-style collaboration that has made Wikipedia a phenomenal success. Further, Yepic articles are alive, in a way, in that the author or collaborators can update the content as often as they like. As an example of how this happens, Yepic’s platform aggregates and presents to the author user feedback on the article, which, if embraced by the author or collaborators, runs the article’s content through a virtuous cycle of refinement. Yepic’s platform also removes the tedium of having to email or support the download of PDFs to users who’ve purchased them.

In short, Yepic is a platform that has been optimized for the creation, marketing, sale, delivery, consumption, and continued refinement of pretty much any type of digital content. Selling PDFs and eBooks via Pay-Pal on one’s blog is definitely an alternative approach, but an inferior one with many drawbacks, including set-up and management overhead, limited content options, content that goes stale and is generally unreceptive to user feedback and/or collaboration.

3. “Readers, on the other hand, will likely find little worth paying for on Yepic. With so much content available for free, there is little reason to pull out the credit card, even if it is only a few dollars.”

That phrase “so much content available for free” is a two-edged sword, isn’t it? It’s easy to find what you’re looking for if you’re looking for news or common knowledge (stuff available on Wikipedia, for example). But what about when your looking for information that’s rather specific or applied to a certain set of circumstances? Like how to work on a particular automobile? Or how to find a good attorney or dentist? Here’s where the “search tax” starts taking its toll. And out in these weeds, where we spend frustrating hours trying to first find info that’s (a) relevant, and (b) trustworthy, we see a huge opportunity for “information as a service.” In these situations, users are paying less for information and more for services rendered in aggregating, synthesizing, and filtering–or, if all else fails, creating–it for them. We also see opportunities in expert advice. These are models we’ve researched, and we’re very convinced that there’s plenty of demand for this kind of content.

4. “especially while targeting such an unusual niche”

Perhaps we need to broaden the scope of our messaging. While we believe there’s a great value-proposition for Yepic with bloggers, the platform is really open for use by any content creator with wares to sell.

5. “However, to be a good deal for writers, Yepic is going to have to attract a large group of eager buyers. To do that, it will have to attract a great deal of high-quality authors.”

You are absolutely correct about that. Please remember that Yepic is only in its beta period–which, due to some incredible short-term response we’re considering making private. We’re focused primarily on how to improve the platform at this point and nothing is final as to our design and/or business model. We anticipate our official launch will occur somewhere in early 2007, and the recruiting of top-quality authoring talent is at the top of our list for our official launch.

Thanks again for the review.

Best,

Richard