Olson’s Observations

Mochila, a New York City based start-up, has launched a marketplace for newspaper, magazine and other articles. The basic gist is this: if I want to run content from Entrepreneur Magazine on Olson’s Observations, for example, I can head to Mochila, grab the Entrepreneur Magazine content I would like to use and publish the content on the site for free.

How can they do this you ask? Mochila inserts and ad (served by one of their advertising partners) into the content you insert on your site and splits the revenue with you and the publisher 40 - 30 - 30. The publisher, Entrepreneur Magazine in my example, gets 40%.

This is a fantastic idea considering that the alternative would involve me approaching Entrepreneur Magazine about using their content and then working through a deal that would cost me a lot of money over a long period of time. In the Mochila scenario I can just use the content and I even get to keep some of the ad revenue. Getting paid to use quality content - not bad! Check out the image below for the “look and feel.”

The one downside that Matt Marshall of VentureBeat points out is that the advertising is currently in a set spot dictated by the Mochila platform. However, Matt reports that the Mochila CEO says there will be more advertising options coming soon.

The big publishers also have a lot of say to how their media is distributed (terms, geographies where the stories can run, press embargoes and the like). They can even decide to offer their content in a paid model only.

Overall I think Mochila is moving things in the right direction. There are services out there that help bloggers get their content into the large publications but that doesn’t seem to be what is needed. It’s nice that larger publishers are starting to include the content that us small guys produce but the larger publishers are looking to grow and adding their content to a lot of other sites is a good way to do it.

Key point: Larger publishers need to get their content onto the sites of the smaller guys. In short, they need to start distributing their media in many forms and finding ways to monetize the new distribution channels. Smaller publishers don’t necessarily need to get their content into the larger publications but they do need and want the credibility that content from larger publishers brings.

Mochila helps publishers large and small do just those things which should put Mochila in a good position. Definitely a smart move by the Mochila guys (for more on their history check out Matt’s post - long story short they are a re-start and used to be called Snapbridge).

A couple smaller issues to note about Mochila’s platform:

1. The smaller publishers using the content may want some control over the ads that display. However, I suppose this could be a situation where smaller publishers would, for the most part, accept pretty much any ad happily since it pays them and allows them to use good quality content on their sites.
2. Larger publishers will want control over the sites that are allowed to use their content. I was unable to see if Mochila is already addressing this but I bet they are considering the impressive list of large publishers they are working with.

I would love to hear some feedback from all of you. It sure seems like Mochila is doing a lot of things right.