Israeli bloggers can now get paid for their creativity after Internet portal Tapuz People launched its new business model rewarding authors of the most effective content on its Web site.
By AVI KRAWITZtapuz logo 88(photo credit: )
Israeli bloggers can now get paid for their creativity after Internet portal Tapuz People launched its new business model rewarding authors of the most effective content on its Web site.
"This is a new concept and I believe the financial reward will be a significant catalyst to create new content," said Guy Eliav, CEO of Tapuz. "We have no doubt that this model, as an expression of income for users and in bringing new authors to our network, will benefit everyone."
Under the model, bloggers will receive NIS 8 per 1,000 views of their written content from Monday while video bloggers on its user-generated video site flix.co.il will get a reward program of their own around the second quarter of the year, Tapuz said.
The company will keep 30% for income tax on behalf of the user which it will refund at the end of the year if the bloggers profits were less than NIS 4,000 for the year.
Eliav said he was confident the new profit-sharing policy would not hurt Tapuz's profits.
"We don't expect this launch to affect our profits at all because it will attract many of new bloggers and a lot of new advertisers who will create a zone of unique and very highly instructive content," he said. "Today we have tens of thousands of bloggers a month and we think we will double the amount within a year of this launch."
In its most recent earnings release, Tapuz said it had revenue of NIS 19 million for the first three quarters of 2006, showing growth of 39% over the parallel period the previous year. For the same period its profits grew to NIS 2.5m., from NIS 2.3m.
The company took a strategic decision four years ago to focus on the user-generated content market and in the last year has invested heavily in its video content site flix.co.il and its live blog technology blogTV which it recently launched also in Canada and which Eliav said will enter the US market within the next six months.
Meanwhile, Tapuz is the first portal in Israel to introduce a reward program for its users, and brings it in line with global trends after some of the leading user-generated content sites, including Google subsidiary Youtube, have hinted at introducing similar profit-sharing models for users.
While Eliav believes the new payment system will further boost Tapuz's position locally, the company is keeping a watchful eye on other trends pushing the market.
"We think the next big thing in Israel this year will be video ads and more user generated video content," he said. "Internationally, the next big thing will be user generated live streaming videos and we have our eye on that market also, we must have."
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