You typically need to manage multiple revenue streams to develop and sustain a successful journalism startup. Advertising is assumed to be the linchpin of funding for content businesses, but increasingly, founders look in other directions to supplement ad support. Here are six revenue streams to explore.
Advertising: There are dozens of digital ad varieties, and each platform has a distinct set of formats and approaches. Mobile ads bear little resemblance to banner ads on the web, which are different from social media ads. Traditional advertisements like classifieds and sponsorships still abound online. They’ve been joined by sponsored content and native advertising.
Membership: Some sites offer memberships that provide perks that appeal to devoted readers. Following the lead of public radio and television, some organizations approach membership as an appeal to the goodwill of readers who become members because they want to show allegiance to a quality product they enjoy.
Events: From wine clubs and cruises to ping-pong tournaments and flea markets, events have become a sexy way for news organizations to bring in money. The oddities of behavioral economics mean that people will pay $20 to watch a film critic talk about her favorite movies of the year for an hour but won’t pay $10 to subscribe to that same publication for six months.
Expertise: Whether your project has a geographic, psychographic or demographic focus, chances are you have saleable expertise on your subject of choice. That can mean lucrative speaking and consulting opportunities, assuming you’re careful to take conflict of interest issues into consideration and to be fully transparent with your readership.
Products: People will pay for local restaurant guides, travel tips and best-of lists repackaged as premium content. And partnerships with local art dealers, concert promoters and retailers can yield a wide range of other products to sell through a site popular in a particular community.
Grants: If your idea is innovative, covers an under-addressed news group or niche, or focuses on a type of news that bears significant costs — like investigative reporting — you may want to look to foundations, universities and/or other nonprofits for help in ramping up. But remember that grants are not an ideal source of long-term funding for independent journalism start-ups. It’s crucial to develop revenue streams that enable you to be self-sustaining.
Taken from Entrepreneurial Journalism: Running the Business, a self-directed course by Jeremy Caplan at Poynter NewsU.
