SlideRocket Expands Marketplace with Services, New Partners

SlideRocket, the Flash/Flex-powered web-based presentation creation software, is today announcing a major overhaul of its Marketplace to include new content partners, a brand new services directory, and a a cleaner, portal-style user interface. The Marketplace was launched in November of last year, when SlideRocket came out of beta, as an additional way to earn revenue on top of their software as a service business.

SlideRocket employs a freemium business model, offering a stripped down free version of their very slick presentation software, and paid versions that include additional features like more storage space, versioning, and collaboration. Paid subscriptions are their main source of revenue, and SlideRocket’s Senior Director of Community and Product Marketing Tracy Pizzo Frey tells me that they’re converting free to paid users at an impressive 10-15%.

The Marketplace is a very smart source of additional revenue for SlideRocket. It allows users to purchase assets for their presentations — photography, icons, music, etc. — directly from within SlideRocket, automatically securing the appropriate digital rights. Because the Marketplace is available to both free and paid users, it acts as a way to bring in revenue from free users of the product. According to Frey, SlideRocket has sold “thousands of credits” and is averaging 35 per user. Use is spread evenly across both free and paid customers, so the Marketplace has been successful so far in monetizing use on both ends.

Until today, SlideRocket’s only offered assets from Fotolia (stock photos) and Mimeo (printing services). They’ve added two new partners, PresentationPro (templates, icons) and Andertoons (cartoons), with others on the way, including Fotolia (videos), AudioMicro (stock audio), and Ascender (fonts). In addition, SlideRocket is releasing a services marketplace today, with 11 providers at launch offering design and authoring services to the app’s users.

According to SlideRocket founder and CEO Mitch Grasso the Marketplace, “greatly streamlines the creative process and helps our users save time and money while delivering the best possible presentations.”

It’s also a very smart way to bring in additional revenue and monetize free users.

Josh Catone is the Community Manager at DandyID and the co-founder of Rails Forum.