DeepDyve's clients are typically non-traditional research users in small to medium businesses as well as non-institutional users, a market that DeepDyve CEO William Park sees as a $2-4 billion industry. Instead of chasing these users to "pirated" research content, non-institutional users and users in major institutions without access to specific collections can get a read-only view of scientific and technical research for 24 hours on a "rent-to-own" basis if it's premium content, or longer use models, including links for unlimited use and publication subscriptions. Revenues are split 50-50 with their partners, who see it mostly as found money, since it's going for a community not typically targeted by their institutional sales forces. "It's better to get half of something than all of nothing," a DeepDyve partner noted, the "something" in this case being about an 8 percent conversion rate into sales from initial exposure in search views via DeepDyve. This is a model that readily extended to content beyond the scientific, technical and medical community, of course, which is an opportunity that is likely to be a focus of DeepDyve moving forward. This is a good model for publishers that need to market their content effectively to Web-honed users not attached to enterprise subscriptions. I expect it to do well.
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