A year and a half after launching at our first TechCrunch40 conference, document-sharing service Docstoc is taking off its “beta” label with a homepage redesign, open APIs, and a new revenue-sharing model called DocCash. The service is growing at a healthy clip, with 3 million documents uploaded and 1.6 million unique visitors a month in the U.S., according to comScore. (The company’s internal Google Analytics shows 4.8 million unique visitors worldwide).
DocStoc is still much smaller than its rival Scribd, but hopes to catch up with some of its changes (as does Issuu, another document-sharing service that keeps adding features). In order to encourage more activity and higher-quality document uploads, DocStoc is introducing DocCash. The company will be splitting AdSense revenues 50/50 with anyone who uploads documents and wants to opt into the service. Right now the ads only appear on Docstoc pages, but will eventually include Flash ads in DocStoc’s embedded Flash player as well. (See video tutorial below).
DocStoc is also unveiling a new homepage with a much more blog-like feel. Featured documents a will be selected by an editorial team, more images will be highlighted, and different document categories are highlighted on the left (including business, technology, legal, and current events). Former TechCrunch writer and Website designer Mark Hendrickson worked on the new homepage. It looks much cleaner now, with topical documents and those related to breaking news now being highlighted (I’ve embedded Barack Obama’s tax return below—his income was $2.7 million last year!).
Finally, it is opening up its APIs so that other sites can integrate DocStoc functionality into their own sites. These APIs allow other sites to include previews and document embeds, document search, use DocStoc’s document viewer, and upload documents directly to DocStoc.
If DocStoc is ever going to catch up to Scribd, it will have to keep adding features and make sure the best docs are uploaded to it service. The APIs and DocCash might help, as well as little things like upload speeds (DocStoc seems faster to me). But with rising popularity also comes rising headaches. Already authors are beginning to complain about book piracy. Uploading copyrighted works is against the terms of service of both DocStoc and Scribd, but policing such usage becomes harder and harder with the number of documents getting into the millions.
He sure did a good job on the homepage… oh wait, no he didn’t.
http://i41.tiny...com/2h8910i.jpg
Fail on my behalf; http://filebox....docstoc.com.jpg is full size.
Congratulations. Docstoc is run by a great team.
Ha ha .. that’s a joke! How much can one make in Google Adsense and DocStoc is gonna keep 50% of it. So, you are gonna make pennies. Not worth
Exactly. Even HubPages shell out more, and Qassia even gives you 100%. And you’re not just limited to AdSense with Qassia.
Yeah its true i checked out. 50% means….depends who’s doc is popular.
Anyway …..i get good docs…
someone loves the gradient tool a little too much imho.
love the docstoc team
It’s a decent attempt to lure in new users that may tend to flock towards Scribd. I’m guessing that in order to obtain 100% revenue share you’ll have to upgrade a yet to created premium account for say $19/month? Ning and Magnify currently do this and it seems to be working but I don’t think its a viable long term business model by itself.
Won’t get users away while they’re still serving up http://www.scri...seduction-group
Nice new features, and homepage is looking great too. Congrats to the team.
Erick,
As far as I know Google does not allow publishers to share their AdSense revenue with individual contributors.
Do you have some evidence this is now allowed? If so please share as it might help other publishers to grow their business.
James
There’s nothing in the current AdSense ToS against it, and many websites have been doing it for years. DP was one of the first. We introduced a rev-share project back in 2005.
you are providing your Adsense account to docstoc….. they then display your advertisements on 50% of the page views
Congrats to Jason and the team at DocStoc. Sounds like a winner to me!
The new ui looks great. Congrats team
Congrats on being out of beta Docstoc ! Great site!
Wait….this is Tech Crunch, right? Why are we reading stuff about LA-based companies again, and not Twitter and Facebook?
So after 2 years they finally copy gazhoo’s business model. hahaha. Nice going.
Boy, you can monetize just about anything I guess. I browsed around the site and there is tons of really odball stuff on there.
Makes me want to dig out my old pc and upload a bunch of my old spreadsheets and stuff on there.
anyway..i get good docs
There are tons of places to get document you can use to upload and make money with this.
Very easy.
I have been getting targeted traffic from document sharing sites for quite some time so this is an added bonus for me.
So far so good.
good news …i’ll try it now ,but really how much one can make from docstoc..