Infopreneur

Infopreneur is a person, or a bot, whose primary business is gathering and selling electronic information. This term is a neologism portmanteau derived from the words "information" and "entrepreneur". An infopreneur is generally considered an entrepreneur who makes money selling information on the Internet. They use existing data and target an audience.

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 inforpreneurs 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 a 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 a "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, what he/she knows from experience or what he/she learned and passes them 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 web sites 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.

Infopreneurship Journal

Infopreneurship Journal (IJ), the first journal in the information entrepreneurship field, (ISSN 2345-265X), is an international, peer-reviewed, bi-annual, open-access journal which focuses on the changing contours of information entrepreneurship, management & business. It publishes original papers of high quality, documenting fresh grounds being explored, new methodologies being employed, conceptual discoveries being made, or innovative experiments being attempted with a view to expanding the frontiers of our knowledge and insight.

IJ publishes conceptual and empirical articles of interest to scholars, consultants, and public policy makers in following topics:

Information Entrepreneurship: Theory, Methods, Processes, Strategies and Practices Information as a Business and a Profession Information Management: Data, Records & Archives Creation, Use, Management, and Preservation Information Technology for E-commerce, E-business, etc. Information Technology & Entrepreneurship: E-entrepreneurship, Digipreneurship, Technopreneurship, etc.

This journal is privately published online by Mahmood Khosrowjerdi [3] in Iran.

See also

• Spyware