Thursday 9 April 2020

AncestryHour proposes new platform to provide genealogy content

The following is from the team at AncestryHour (www.ancestryhour.co.uk), to flag up a new service it hopes to be offering soon, and to seek expressions of interest:

#AncestryHour in Action

The current COVID19 pandemic will hit many self-employed people very hard and with archives and other record repositories closed genealogists and researchers in associated disciplines are no exception!

Three of the #AncestryHour team (founder Susie Douglas, technology wizard Fergus Smith and DNA expert Michelle Leonard) have been busy thinking of ways we can improve our offering to BOTH professional researchers and amateur family history enthusiasts alike. The current crisis has meant our plans have been somewhat expedited but we believe we have found an exciting way in which this can be achieved!

#AncestryHour will now be offering a platform for professional researchers and writers to sell high quality educational presentations, webinars, eBooks and short eGuides covering a wide range of family history topics as well as other related disciplines. The platform can currently support pre-recorded content and we hope to add live streaming of webinars to the site in the near future.

We will not be paying a presenter fee, nor asking for a fee from the presenter to host and sell the content on their behalf. Instead presenters/content providers will be offered a profit share of at least 50% of the gross sale price of each and every download of their content and much of the amount #AncestryHour retains will go towards the cost of providing this platform. It is further proposed that the percentage of sales will scale up in favour of the presenter the more downloads are achieved to 60% and even 70%. The exact increments of when the scaling up will take effect are yet to be finalised but will be set to a realistically achievable target. We believe this will potentially result in a far higher revenue return for the presenters of webinars and tutorials than anything available at present. It is envisaged that percentages for eBooks and other digital publications will be more in line with rates payable by Amazon (70% from outset).

Whilst AH will actively promote the material we have for sale and forthcoming events, the presenters/content providers will also be expected to market them too. Hopefully, with our current global reach and the presenter’s own marketing, a sizable potential market will be reached. Results are unlikely to be immediate but with a combined effort as word spreads, we believe sales could amount to a useful alternative revenue stream over time.

We will be happy to host content from established professionals but, equally, we hope to encourage those who have never created such content before to put their hats in the ring. To this end a new community, Genealogy Live, has recently been independently established by genealogist Natalie Pithers and we are delighted to engage with and take part in this community. Members of the informal Genealogy Live group are planning to freely support each other with anonymous feedback on presentations or written content as well as training and advice which could be especially helpful for those starting out. If you would like to get feedback or advice before submitting content to AncestryHour, you can join the #GenealogyLive community on Facebook here.

If you or your members would like to know more or have a presentation or publication you would like us to host, please do get in touch here.

For specific enquiries we can be contacted directly at action@ancestryhour.co.uk


(With thanks to Michelle Leonard)

Chris

You can pre-order my new book, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 (out April). Also available, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

No comments:

Post a Comment