Edgeio launches paid content platform

The classified service edgeio is launching a new kind of paid content service at the Gnomedex conference in Seattle that facilitates 'in-place' transactions. Edgeio CEO Keith Teare calls them "transactional classifieds," and is targeting digital content. You can transact for digital content on variety of services today, but edgeio is providing a platform that allows you to place transactional classifieds on any site and distribute them via "share this" buttons.

"You could upload video to YouTube, Yahoo or other services and it could be paid content," Teare said. "Anything with embed code could be a payload, and we support streams, file downloads and plain text. This will make any digital content available to any publisher who wishes to become a point of sale, so long as the publisher chooses to use edgeio."

Edgeio is targeting publishers who want to monetize research reports, videos, tickets, music and software on a per-user basis.

Edgeio provides the code for embedding the listing on any page, including the transaction and distribution elements.

You click the View Content button to pay and a pop up window appears and takes the user through the transaction, which requires a credit card or PayPal. Then you a have choice to view the content in place or to download the file. Users needs to have an edgeio ID, so the system knows if you have already paid for an item.

Edgeio takes 20 percent of transactions. Content creators get the majority or can share the 80 percent with affiliates who resell their items. At this point, Earningscast.com and Chris Pirillo, host of Gnomedex, are using the service.

Edgeio has come up with the right idea for providing a Web-based distributed paid content. It's certainly going to get the attention of the giants who dominate the Web.