Presentation startup SlideShare presents its ‘freemium’ business model
SlideShare, a site where users can share presentations, documents, and videos, continues to experiment with ways to make money from that content. Today it’s unveiling a set of features bundled together in a service called SlideShare Pro.
Whenever I talk to chief executive Rashmi Sinha, she emphasizes the site’s professional content and professional audience, so introducing premium pricing seems like a a natural fit. The company already launched business services last fall, specifically an advertising program (where the ads are actually SlideShare presentations) and the ability to collect sales leads in your presentations.
The LeadShare feature remains relevant for some users, but Sinha said many don’t need all the lead filtering features. And SlideShare users are more interested in paying for online services through a subscription than they are in buying ads, she said.
So that’s where SlideShare Pro comes in. Features include the creation of a customized SlideShare channel with your branding, analytics and social media monitoring for your content, the removal of SlideShare’s ads, and a simplified version of the lead capture product.
The San Francisco startup has already been testing this with about 120 users, Sinha said. The most notable ones are big companies like Dell and Pfizer (Pfizer’s channel is one of the first social media campaigns from a company in a regulated industry like healthcare), but with pricing that starts at $19 per month, SlideShare Pro should be useful for individuals too.
The company has raised $3 million from Venrock and others. SlideShare says it attracts more than 30 million monthly visitors.
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About the Author, Anthony Ha
Anthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining the site in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.
