I had a meeting today with a company called iCopyright (I actually met with their Canadian counterpart). They opened up an interesting opportunity to me that I had previously not seriously considered for my website: sell the temporary rights for others to use your content. The idea is simple: you have already taken the time to write quality content for your blog / website. Why not leverage the work you have already put in by selling reprints and granting permissions for others to use it?

If you read most blogs about making money online you usually find advice on selling advertising (direct or through networks like Google AdSense), selling e-products, or promoting affiliate programs. What about selling the rights to the content itself?

Leading magazines, websites, and newspapers are always on the lookout for new, appealing content for their publications. If you write on an interesting topic then you might be able to scoop up another revenue source by selling the reprint rights to them. Some of the examples they showed me were of website content owners charging over $100 / month for the rights to use an article. That’s not bad for one article!

Because my website has the largest collection of famous entrepreneur stories online I have been approached by a number of companies who have been interested in republishing the articles we’ve written. We worked out a deal with Microsoft but, until today, I had never really considered licensing as a real opportunity.

The iCopyright team up here in Canada is still working out the final details of the system but essentially you pay a small up front fee ($100), a small monthly fee (under $100), and share the revenues that come in (usually a 70-30 split in favor of the publisher). In return they help promote your content, drive traffic to the website, and negotiate the deals with the publishers who want to use your articles. They handle all the hassle so you don’t have to do it yourself or bring on someone with the added expense of hiring another person.

I’ll keep you posted if this turns out to be a good opportunity or not but it certainly is an interesting way to make more money that I have not heard others talking about online.

Evan Carmichael