Methodology for the Infopreneur
Infopreneur and the Information Society
Selling information for financial reward..perhaps. But think about the public sector..probably the largest information society component in most countries...do they sell information, sometimes, sometimes they give it away as a public good.
But always e-services that provide public sector information aim to achieve efficiency savings in delivering their services.
The main point here is that in reality there isn't much difference between the entrepreneurial exploitation of information in either the public or private sectors. Both seek financial gain, sometimes directly other times indirectly.
The same is true of an individually operated small business or even a sustainable hobby website.
Information is the key...the only difference is that in many cases those responsible for the development of e-services, for government, business, commerce, education, health and individual financial freedom forget the fact, falsely transferring offline thinking (presence - location, location, location) to the online world, which should be (content - information, information, information).
I have worked on the development of public and private sector e-service delivery since the 80's (Viewdata, Prestel and Teletex,), during the 90's using Internet Technologies and Today on the World Wide Web. But it took a Canadian Doctor of Medicine, Internet enthusiast and netpreneur - Dr Ken Evoy See Ken's Bio to convince me that a methodology he calls CTPM (Content, Traffic, Pre-Selling and Monetization) would guarantee the success of an e-service solution.
It brought home to me just how effective we have been in the last couple of decades in the development of e-services in general..in fact over 90% of the estimated 200,000,000 websites around the world fail to live up to their promise, and most importantly how we can improve on current strategy. It was in fact the missing link. As we move away from the information society based economy towards a more knowledge based one its effectiveness will likely change, but is easily modified.
Having worked on sites like e-service-expert.com where the development costs can be measured in the $000's to commercial and government sites where the development is measured in $000,000's it is clear that Dr. Evoy was onto something.
Although developed for small online e-businesses to succeed online it has in my opinion very much wider application. The success of a website or e-service has as much to do with the approach taken to its development as it does to the size of the investment...what is more the approach, at least for the time being, is universal.
In the absence of know real alternative I commend Dr. Evoy's approach to any individual or mega-organization to think seriously about the approach and irrespective of whether the e-service is for profit, pleasure or for sustainable public services......More following soon!
