What is "infopreneur"

n. A person whose primary business is gathering and selling electronic information.

An inforpreneur is an entrepreneur who identifies opportunities for creating enterprising information-based businesses by identifying knowledge deficiency situations and selling target-based information products and services, mainly through the internet. An Infopreneur can also be understood to be a person, or a person running a bot, whose primary business is gathering and selling electronic information. In spite of the preceding reference, there are many examples of Infopreneurs who are selling content in Paperback or Hardback book form on the Internet. Infopreneur is a neologism portmanteau derived from the words " information" and " entrepreneur".

The term is often used on the Internet. The word infopreneur was registered as a trademark (USPTO) on February 1, 1984, by Harold F. Weitzen. In 1988, H. Skip Weitzen published "Infopreneurs: Turning Data Into Dollars" (John Wiley & Sons).

Before the explosive popularity of the Internet at the turn of the millennium, such an occupation already existed. These legacy infopreneurs sold their information in other mediums such as audio tapes, audio CDs, CD-ROMs, videos, talk shows, and conferences. The classification of infopreneur has created a new style of business on the Internet, which allows anybody with a computer and an Internet connection to start businesses by publishing information that may appeal to a specific market.

There are generally two kinds of infopreneurs: those that sell information they have amassed on their own and those that earn commissions from selling information that they know nothing about. The latter may be considered more of an "information trafficker".