(Reading time: 6 – 10 minutes)
Sean (The Bad Deacon) follows up yesterdays’ Blog World Expo report blogging success with more great information you can use.
Blog World Expo Recap: 8 Proven Monetization Strategies For Media Producers
By Sean “Deacon” Neprud.
I went to a couple presentations on Podcasting and new media production on Friday at Blog World Expo last weekend that were excellent. Paul Colligan presented 7 proven ways to monetize your media. There was actually 8 ways, so we got a little bonus.
One thing that was made abundantly clear at these seminars, and that I want to make clear now, is that these methods apply to any kind of new media. These tips will all apply equally to podcasting, blogging, creating video and other multimedia content, art, music, etc.
Before he started talking about the specific methods, Paul pointed out that you should treat your media as the hub of the wheel. The ways to monetize this media are the spokes that expand out from the media.
Focus on producing quality media, and everything will expand from that. This is such a fundamental point that I heard over and over from numerous people throughout the weekend.
The foundation of any successful venture online is quality media.
On with the show! The following are the 8 methods you can use to monetize your media.
(FYI – the services and websites mentioned in here were mentioned by Paul during the seminar, I can’t vouch for them either way)
Monetization Tip 1: Speak the Language of Advertisers
We, as media producers, usually don’t speak the language of advertisers. They are interested in far different metrics and analysis that we, as media producers, pay attention to. To make money from advertising in your media, you need to be able to speak to the advertisers in ways that they understand.
Better yet, you can let others that know how to speak that language do the talking for you. Paul mentioned blubrry.com as one such service. This company will talk to advertisers for you, and find appropriate advertising sources based on the metrics about your media that advertisers care about.
Monetization Tip 2: Sell The Giveaway
We usually give our media away for free. My blog posts and my podcast are freely available to anyone with internet access. This article you are reading right now is available free to you.
There is nothing stopping you from also selling the content that you make for free. Someone just might buy it.
The way to do this is to bundle up previously released media and sell it on a DVD, CD, PDF or book. If you are starting out and not expecting many sales, you can use a print-on-demand service like kunaki.com
Some people will buy your media if you just let them. In fact, one of the mantras that Paul made us all repeat out loud together was
“If they want to pay you, let them!“
Monetization Tip 3: Own The Characters
Is the personality that presents your media content yourself, or is it a character of some sort?
The example Paul gave was Grammar Girl. She is a character in her podcasts and other media. By creating a character, opportunities to monetize that character through licensing become available. This may include books, TV, t-shirts, and who knows what else.
Grammar Girl can quit, or sell the whole “Grammar Girl” business, and let someone else be Grammar Girl. The character is continuous, even though the person playing the character may change.
By owning the character, you can continue to get royalty payments for a character you create, even after you are no longer doing any work producing any content of and by that character.
Monetization Tip 4: Protect The Franchise
If you create a service of some sort, continue that service into a franchise.
Paul gave the example of Ed Dale’s 30 Day Challenge (they are friends, of course). Ed has his basic 30 day challenge program that includes one month of free training. He has expanded the 30 Day Challenge franchise into the 30 Day Plus, and other programs under the 30 Day Challenge franchise.
If you are successful with a brand, expand that brand out to include other things, and create an entire franchise.
Monetization Tip 5: Just Sell It
If you create some sort of content, whether it is written, audio, video, or whatever it is you do, just put it up for sale. People might just buy it!
This may not work for the regular content that you broadcast for free (but you read Tip 2 above on how to make money from that), but if you create something new that you think is valuable to people, put it up for sale. Don’t give it away or syndicate it.
Monetization Tip 6: Buying = Engagement
When people buy something, they value it more, and they engage with it more. Buying something is a literal investment in that product, and there is an emotional investment that occurs as well.
Paul pulled out the book that was given away to every attendee for free. It looks like it is a pretty decent book. It contains interviews with 40 of the internet’s top bloggers with advice about how to build a blog and increase traffic and followers.
None of us will probably read it, because it has little value to us, because it was free.
If you can get your readers to invest themselves in your media, they will be more likely to buy. If they buy, they will be more likely to invest themselves in following your media, and buy in the future.
Monetization Tip 7: Clients = Opportunities
“Client” in this context refers to a method of getting media by your viewers. Media is available on the computer, labtop, phone, tv, etc, and within each of these clients are various ways to see it. Podcasts can be downloaded from iTunes, streamed from site, available at an aggregater, etc. The same goes for written and video media as well.
There are more ways than ever for people to experience media. If your media is not available in all of these formats, then you are missing opportunities to gain viewers, and as a result, money.
There are services that will upload your content to various distributors, and it serves you to use these services and make your media available wherever and whenever people want it.
Monetization Tip 8: Sell Big
It is much harder to get a customer to buy something than it is to get them to buy something big.
In other words, if you can convince someone to spend any money, it will be fairly easy to then convince them to spend a little more money.
The way that this works is to present a better, more expensive option or add on after the sale has been made. If someone is buying a product, you can offer a second product to go with the first for extra money, or you can offer your customer a deluxe version of whatever you are selling them with added features and benefits.
The important thing is to give your customers the option to buy more if they would like to.
Build a Strong Wheel
The last thing to mention is that just as you need to focus on your media, your hub, you need to add many spokes to make a wheel that rolls. If you have all 8 of these tips implemented in some way or another, your “money making wheel” will be much more stable. If one spoke breaks for some reason, there are still 7 more spokes in place to keep your wheel rolling.
A wheel with one or two spokes only will be in big trouble if one of those spokes breaks.
Sean Neprud operates Bad Deacon Design under the moniker Deacon (surprise!), where he works in a range of mediums from wood block to web design.
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