If you are not directly earning revenue from the sale of your creative content over digital media such as the web, how else can you use your content to make money for you?
Show me the money
Go back half a generation, and the biggest challenge facing certain creative people such as writers, artists, emerging musicians and performers was finding ways to interact with an audience. It usually meant going through the exhausting process of finding a publisher, or gallery, or record company, or theatre, or some other such intermediary. And of course, it usually meant quite a bit of money needed to be involved.
With the explosion of digital technologies such as the web and mobile, creatives now have audiences to burn (not literally of course). Creative work can be seen by more people than ever before, and the reliance on the intermediary process is far less.
And for a lucky few, money can be made by selling work online. But for the rest, the vast majority, a new challenge looms. Plenty of people may be seeing your content in digital form, but they won’t be paying for the privilege. So while you may be getting recognition, that’s not translating to food on the table.
Content as currency?
This is a conundrum facing most online content providers. While people are prepared to transact online to buy products and some specific services, they view the ‘transaction’ of content very differently – that is, it should be free.
Rupert Murdoch and News Limited have been grappling with the problem of how to truly monetise their online news and information for years. Totally frustrated, News is now trialling directly charging online readers for online content.
So, as a creative content creator, is the web barren ground for making money?
Yes... and no.
Yes, if you approach publishing on the web the same way you approach offline business – that is expecting to be paid by the word or illustration or song. No, if you are prepared to think in a different way of how your creative work can work for you on the web – and be prepared to put in a bit of time and effort.
Content is king
Murdoch hasn’t totally missed the point of the web. More than ten years ago he observed of the web ‘content is king’. So as a content creator (and assuming your content is good), you are halfway along the road to web royalty. Trouble is, it’s the other half that is the hard bit.
Online business models
Making money on the web (legitimately) can be a complicated affair. The old adage applies – if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. But there are ways to make money on the web, based on five main business models:
Subscription - Users pay for content. A lovely thought. Very hard to make happen, simply because whatever content you have you can be pretty sure somewhere else there is something similar for free. However, if there is something truly unique about the content users will pay for it. One of the biggest subscription categories is gaming, such as World of Warcraft. But each game site does offer something unique (their game/s) – most content in the world of the web today is a commodity and a free one at that.
Merchant - Where users pay for products or services directly from the seller. For example, bookings made directly with travel providers such as airlines.
Brokerage - Where the buyers and sellers are brought together and the website makes a commission or ‘brokerage’ fee form the deal. A prime example is the travel aggregators such as lastminute.com.au.
Advertising - The content of the website attracts a lot of eyeballs to the extent where it is attractive to advertisers, who pay to have their ads on the site. Many, many people have thought they would make it rich through the advertising model. Few have succeeded. Having said that, there is nice steady revenue to be made if content is attracting consistent eyeballs and the type of eyeballs that advertisers want.
There are a myriad of ways of organising advertising – bigger sites partner with adserving companies, with one of the longest established being www.doubleclick.com (owned by Google). For smaller players, Google’s AdSense can be a good way to go (they are the ads you see on many sites (including some large ones like The Age) headed ‘Ads by Google’). The Google site (under the Advertising Programs link) explains it all very well.
Affiliate - One site sends traffic to a second site and the first site gets paid for that traffic. Even better, the traffic buys goods or services from the second site and the first site gets a cut of the action. Again, not for those wanting to retire to the South of France any time soon, but can be a good source of consistent revenue. Affiliate programs can be organised on a one to one basis (each site interacts with each other) or through an affiliate network. One of Australia’s largest is www.commissionmonster.com.au.
Stay tuned for part two of this post – which will focus on the content producers revenue model.
David Schloeffel is a CIIC Business Adviser for Victoria and Tasmania, and is based in Melbourne. He has 30 years experience in Creative Industries with senior management and creative roles in advertising, marketing, digital, PR, DM, radio, theatre, event and video production.
T: 0414 636 613
E: david.schloeffel@monash.edu