The perfect article marketplace?

What kind of "Marketing Research" have you done to determine is such a "Useful" market would be profitable?

OK...

1- Sites need content.
2- Most siteowners don't have the time to write their own content, or they -obviously- would like to delegate this task.

These are no-brainers.

3- Acquisition of content usually takes the form of:
a) Writing for yourself.
i) Original writing
ii) Re-writing
b) Hiring a writer to do one of the above (i, ii)
c) Signing with a service for your ongoing content needs.
d) Using feeds, scraping, etc. (not our focus here)

There could be more ways... I am just going analytical on this.

4- Spinned articles may do for one, or robotized gibberish... but a big part of people who are serious about their online ventures needs, or can make good use of a reliable source on quality content (the affordable the better).

5- People have raised the problem of finding realiable writers many times (even look at the first page of this forum for a sample discussion). It is an important part of business dev on the web.

6- A lot of copywriters too raise the problem of content buyers looking for cheap "aggregations of paragraphs" for too cheap, that even though they are good copywriters they need to work for slave-rates to get started.
a) Going with promotional low rates don't necessarily push you up the ladder as word-of-mouth (though admittedly powerful) gets you at best in the circle of people who are after paying slave-rates. Forum reputation tools too (iTraders etc.) are not telling much more than the quantity of your work.
b) eLance, oDesk etc. is full of the type of people above as well as cheap providers. And you pay to "be eligible" for work there (many other inconveniences for the provider could be listed.)

But you ask for profitability...

7- I am aware that useful doesn't translate to commercially viable. This line of business (operating a marketplace where there is an established need, buyers and sellers) is a commercially viable one.

8- I am aware that useful doesn't translate to commercially succesful either. This should require sound marketing effort, focus on community building among other things. My assumption for profitability comes from me putting my focus on such work.

9- Therefore, people may have take a shot at this and ended unsuccessful (you or a friend of yours perhaps? -guessing from the tone of your one-line input to this thread-) but it doesn't necessitate that the next one will be so as well [mp3 player had been around for at least 5 years until apple came up with their own products, enlarging the market by many times while taking a big big big chunk of it (I wish I could think of a better example)

10- Even if they don't hold in my hands a PricewaterhouseCoopers report on the profitability of this business, most people would see that a killer application in this field would be a nice business.

Profitable?
Ok so...

11- We look at the dynamics of the business. Recruiting copywriters (getting them to signup for free) shouldn't be too hard [you don't need to run PPC ads an pay dollars per click]. Getting buyers to participate would be harder but I have smart ideas for that (won't spill my whole business plan obviously). Web-dev... get it right and secure in the beginning (I won't play for development as I am fairly proficient at employing e-commerce sites in Drupal). Possible business model: buyer buys credits, pays x% of the price as transaction fee (works well for a host of freelancing sites).

I can roll this site ON MY OWN, from development to design to marketing provided I put the time into it.

I have fairly good idea that this would be a winner...

This IS my MARKET RESEARCH in defining better what that winner product would be like...

Perhaps you'd like to share your concerns why such an article marketplace wouldn't be profitable?

I hadn't thought of looking at your signatures and I just did.

If you define profitability in the lines of "easy money" and if you think this is possible with hubpages, I may just have wasted my time.

And "adult affiliate marketing"...
I am not sure how my business idea can compete with that...