Proposal:Creation of "premium content" for fund raising

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Summary

My idea is to create premium content to sell on a subscriber basis or even on an "as needed" basis. It may stray a bit from the core goals and stated missions of wikimedia, but as all know, without funding wikimedia ceases to exist. I'm new to this so if it's in the wrong place please forgive me.


Proposal

Premium content can be sold in any of many different forms and could potentially be partnered with other sites such as newspapers and/or news organizations who are in similar dire straights. It would have to be both timely content and highly desirable content for which individuals and/or institutions are willing to pay for. Individual member created content could also be sold on a commission (for lack of a better word) basis where individuals or organizations might have specialized content that might even be propriety in nature, but wikimedia has the needed eyeballs and internet traffic others might not have available to them. An example could be a small company that has specialized knowledge not generally available to the public. They would like to make the information available, but wish to make a small profit on it. Wikimedia and it's ever increasing audience could offer the web space for a price linked to wikimedia or even make it the appearance of being just wikimedia "premium" content. The same could be offered to individuals, organizations of all sorts and so on. Edit: Another suggestion might be to sell individuals an area where they can add their own personal biography or perhaps family history, etc.

Also wikimedia could perhaps sell online courses of different types. The knowledge base is vast and varied and organizing things into specialized courses doesn't seem to far out of the realm of reality. Many people would pay $100 to take an online course on perhaps the history of XXXX or the theory of how XXX works. This might require an accreditation procedure, but with so many well educated individuals involved with wikimedia I don't see where that would be to difficult although I wouldn't have the first clue of how to do it. I don't see how any of these would take away from wikimedia's main objectives and purposes and could produce a great deal of needed sustainable funding.

Motivation

The motivation is obvious, to raise funds.


Key Questions

Off hand I cannot think of many questions though they will come with time.

Potential Costs

Variable cost, but should be highly profitable

References

None.. Just thought of this idea off hand.



Community Discussion

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