Monetizing events - How to create a longtail

How do you create a "long tail" for events that you hold? Read on.

We have been working with a progressive local event holder in Vancouver, Angel Forum, and a high profile content provider, Basil Peters, to test and refine a new business model for events that treats the content as an asset. The learning has been very interesting around the appetite for web casts and the willingness to pay a fair price for watchable, relevant content delivered via the Internet.

At riiPlay.tv we had questioned the current practices of holding live events and not capturing them for follow-on benefits like better retention, reach and revenue generation. In addition, the practice of charging high fees for live events then capturing them and distributing the content "free" afterward didn't make much sense either. While viewing the content online may lack some of the networking benefits of live attendance, the convenience of accessing the content on demand certainly has value.

As Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine said in his epic book, The Long Tail, "Information has value. The Web allows for more niche products to get global attention... in the years to come more and more products will be marketed online taking advantage of the ability of Web methods to fine-slice consumer groups and influence word-of-mouth more effectively than any other time in history."

In interviews like this one with Charlie Rose , he extols the virtues of "free" and that the long tail is creating a variation that 5% of the audience may pay for. This requires driving enough scale that the 5% model can work. There are many examples of this freemium model on the Web, but research conducted amongst attendees completed by riiPlay.tv and Angel Forum, both point to a strong appetite for the content online (not surprising) and a willingness to pay for it (surprising if you follow Chris's model).

So, while various conferences are now charging for video archive access, live streams or DVDs of their content many more are missing the opportunity that exists. As well, these efforts are often executed poorly in terms of capture quality and almost always, in terms of delivery. We believe the future is a recipe using micro-payments, digital rights, reputation management, residual income and filtering to deliver Knowledge on Demand in an exciting new way.

We will keep you posted here about best practices related to our experience proving this new event learning model, other relevant examples and invite you to comment. For a peek at one event leading the charge check out Angel Forum's Exit Strategy Web cast here.

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