Back in early 2002 I was working for a b-to-b publisher in Washington, DC and was very tired of the commute in and out of the city. I decided to go out on my own as a consultant and my first client was MarketingSherpa, which had been launched by Anne Holland not too long before that. At the same time PaidContent.org was launched by Rafat Ali and since they were in similar businesses the two companies bumped into each other on occasion.
PaidContent was more of a "newsy" operation while MarketingSherpa was more of a "how-to" for marketers. I haven't talked to Anne in years, but by outward appearances MarketingSherpa is doing very well and I think she's built a sustainable business based on email newsletters that are free (content is put behind a firewall after a couple of weeks, so it must be purchased if you want to see it after that), and then selling premium content like reports and events to the large base of free subscribers. From what I can tell PaidContent went more in the direction of ad sales as a revenue stream, although they also sell ads and host events, and they too seem to be doing very well. So well, in fact, that PaidContent is being purchased by the Guardian Media Group out of the UK.
Nice to see all the hard work has paid off for Ali and his crew, and I'm also glad to see Anne continuing to do so well. They also have shown that there's more than one way to skin a cat in the online media world.
