User:JPxG/Infopreneur

An infopreneur is an entrepreneur who identifies opportunities for creating enterprising information-based businesses by identifying knowledge deficiency situations and selling target-based information products and services, mainly through the internet. An Infopreneur can also be understood to be a person, or a person running a bot, whose primary business is gathering and selling electronic information. In spite of the preceding reference, there are many examples of Infopreneurs who are selling content in Paperback or Hardback book form on the Internet. Infopreneur is a neologism portmanteau derived from the words "information" and "entrepreneur".

The term is often used on the Internet. The word infopreneur was registered as a trademark (USPTO) on February 1, 1984, by Harold F. Weitzen. In 1988, H. Skip Weitzen published "Infopreneurs: Turning Data Into Dollars" (John Wiley & Sons).

Before the explosive popularity of the Internet at the turn of the millennium, such an occupation already existed. These legacy infopreneurs sold their information in other mediums such as audio tapes, audio CDs, CD-ROMs, videos, talk shows, and conferences. The classification of infopreneur has created a new style of business on the Internet, which allows anybody with a computer and an Internet connection to start businesses by publishing information that may appeal to a specific market.

There are generally two kinds of infopreneurs: those that sell information they have amassed on their own and those that earn commissions from selling information that they know nothing about. The latter may be considered more of an "information trafficker".

Online publishing
As the Infopreneur is his/her own developer, marketer, producer, and distributor - some infopreneurs consider themselves being in the publishing business. Unlike in traditional print publishing, the Infopreneur puts down, in electronic form (usually), what he/she knows from experience or what he/she learned and passes the content on to the world through publishing on websites, blogs, ebooks, emails, etc..

The impact of these infopreneurs has also had a disruptive impact by slicing through the traditional publication industry that involves agents, publishers, distribution channels, and retailers. As a result, entrepreneurial firms have emerged to serve artists and authors who want to be self-published.

Blogs and advertisements
Information traffickers do consider themselves infopreneurs. After all, they are making money out of information. Many of them utilize the power of the World Wide Web - creating websites and blogs to act as their storefront.

The infopreneur may attract traffic to his/her site by manipulating their site to appear higher on search engine results. This may be done by creating a site that is robust in information, and configuring meta-keywords and descriptions that accurately describe the web page. More often, infopreneurs who are out to get a "quick buck" will create a mash-together of information by publishing popular, sought after content, often incorporating RSS feeds from more popular sites. The infopreneur then makes money from AdSense ads, affiliate links, referrals and leads, and/or selling ebooks that are related to the search parameters and keywords. Essentially, these infopreneurs "piggy-back" on already established information. For example, there are many such splogs that copy verbatim the articles from Wikipedia.