Are you selling data over the Internet or subscribing to services that do? There is a myriad of data available online. Some of it free, some available for a fee. In her article, exclusively written for IBLS, Barabara Quint gives an overview on the issue of selling data, with seven rules that help establish the protocol of what data providers need to know. She concludes with a list of which information professionals will be the winners in selling their online data.

Why doesn't the online data sell the way it should? Because it is not calibrated to people's questions. Fix it right, price it right, and the sky would be the limit, but the only way to do that is to design and re-design online services by "Searchers' Rules" mean that the search isn't over until you see the light bulb beaming over the clientís head. The questions define the answer. The questioner defines the success of an answer Machine. Professional searchers who query online databases for clients today all too often come up empty or with some fraction of an answer. When that happens, the searcher cannot just shrug, pocket the money, and walk away.

1. Rule One: Design for Ignorance

Design database products around the needs of the ignorant, not the knowledgeable.

2. Rule Two: Wrong is Right

Design systems to accept as a database query what any reasonable adult would accept as a sensibly worded question. The database should work for the client, not the client for the database. Customers want the education of answers, not education in searching. Design database searching to cover a range of possible query statements.

3. Rule Three: Follow the Law Of Equivalent Simplicities

Design online products to match user expectations from offline products. People test new answer tools by what seems simple to them based on their experience with old answer tools. This rule explains why full text searching still seems like magic to new users or even to old-timers that retain a childís sense of wonder. Design database products that seem natural and simple to the user based on their past information searching behavior.

4. Rule Four: Get Feedback

Was it good for them? Ask customers whether the product satisfied and heed their answers. The industry cannot fix what it doesnít know is broken.

5. Rule Five: Price What the Market Will Bear

Charge what customers will pay and the way they want to pay. There is no one right price or one right pricing structures. When the database industry debates pricing structures and different arguments support different approaches, offer them all. Never should a pricing structure along impair a sale. Fixed-fee subscriptions create a prepaid search environment. The actual user perceives databases as free or very cheap. This form of pricing encourages usage. Usage-based pricing, whether connect-time or output oriented, puts pressure on the searcher to perform more than the system. It supports the profession of intermediate searching. It discourages end-user searching if the fees are high. However, as long as professional searchers are a market, they need usage-based pricing or at least usage billing to allow them to bill their clients. Establish prices and pricing structures that match the potential or actual market perception of value and ability to pay.

6. Rule Six: Protect Data Quality

Make sure users get their money's worth. Load the best data. Maintain its currency, Provide quality measures like dates of updating, scope of coverage, accuracy assessments, etc. Again, an industry that does not encourage users to inform it of errors looks like an industry that would rather silence the messenger than hear the bad news. Customers wonder why. Could it be the industry fears the error rate is too high to handle? When new kids on the block partner with database industry firms, follow my self-serving, but still accurate, advice: Get an experienced searcher on your side of the design team. All too often the data base industry sells products that are a foot or a nickel short. If anyone can create a Web page or a database of information, how can one tell whether the information is valuable? How do we find it? How can we decide whether it is work a try? Can we state some standard and identify quality? Simply know that a source carries high quality documents on a certain subject today, does that mean that it will provide timely, relevant information six months from now? Will the Webmasters update the service? When was the last update? How does one cite to the source and a particular revision so others can locate it? If you donít know whether or where a particular Web site exists on a subject, how can you locate it? If you do locate an index to resources, how was it created? Keyword in context? Full text? Full text of the first Web page? Thesaurus? Indexer-assigned terms? Some other way? Which standards matter most, matter enough to pay for?

7. Rule Seven: Let Others Make You Rich

Support online service as a platform for third-party developers. The gold mines of online data need a massive mining operation. The more miners, the more gold. Let online database services become a platform supporting networks of specific answer products created by experienced searcher designers. Or what about online newsletters with informed commentary built around individual records selected from full-text or substantive abstract databases? On the weekend, newsletter editors could come into the system and read the articles and references retrieved by their current awareness profiles. After mulling over the information, they could write their commentary, tie specific comments to designated articles and load the melange as the next issue of their online newsletter service. Readers would pay subscription rates and come in regularly to scan the commentary and display any full-text article that interested them. Or they could have the whole newsletter or established sections faxed to them automatically through an electronic mail-to-fax connection. Gosh! We could see hundreds of newsletter services spring up that way. Build a platform for third-party developers providing fixes for a spinning new products out of existing data resources.

"And the Winners Are?"

Information professionals who:

- Emphasize intellectual, not technical skills by packaging and analyzing information.
- Maintain the quality and security of searching, e.g., through firewalls and other security or privacy protection methods, buy settling copyright problems in advance, through filtering mechanisms, adding indexable, searchable images.
- Develop a strong competitive strategy, e.g., diversification, niche marketing, partnerships and joint ventures, etc.
- Provide better value to users by saving time, keeping users current, providing full archival quality, carrying more or better information such as images.
- Provide flexible formats which can adapt to new technology, e.g., international telecommunication technologies
- Eliminate the need for lots of training and experience for successful use.
- Provide reliable, clean data.
- Central, comprehensive information services: one-stop shopping centers, information supermarkets, etc. with premium services added, both digital and print archives.
- Localized, niche-market services and the Internet service providers who support them: boutiques, meta-sites, etc.
- Effective delivery of more sophisticated material, e.g., document imaging systems, SGML and other standards, conversion services and products, filters for news or e-mail, re-package-ability of results, etc.
- User-friendliness in software and service, including live help like Web masters, anything that leads to instant information gratification.

Users must know:

- Contact information such as the name and address of the producer, and Help Desk, along with an estimate time for response. Is help online instantly, within 24 hours, a week?
- Assurances of confidentiality and security (especially credit card information on shopping systems). Warnings if addresses, phone numbers or other information on users may be sold to mailing lists or direct marketers.
- Frequency of updating and amount of updating. The form should always reflect the last date of information updated. Scope of coverage and change sin scope.
- Language (English, etc.)
- Intellectual property. Who owns the data? How was copyright handled? Do fees need to be paid for downloading?
- Added Value. How is the index generated? What is indexed? The registration should note any controlled vocabulary tools.
- Is the abstract written independently or is it just the first 300 words, or first three pages?
- Time and resources available for improvement. How much development and maintenance can users expect from the producer?
- What is the link quality - type of link? If there is a link to somewhere else, then a bit of description of that area should be included as well, so a user can decide whether to explore the link.
- Fees for using the site and subscription requirements should appear on the registration form.

Establish your worth. Deliver information in the form the user needs. Tailor output to each individual. Train and offer support to users of online systems. All of these components make up the vital parts of a good marketing program.

Quality: What about the quality of data in the new information world?

Vendors, users and producers all derided the quality of Internet data. Wading through the World Wide Web when you need some good solid facts wastes too much time. No more unthinking, middle persons: If info pros are to survive, we have to do better than hand out piles of paper without adding any additional organization or interpretation.

Author's Biography:

Barbara Quint is the editor of "Searcher," the magazine for database professionals.