REVENUE MODELS III - LATERAL THINKERS
5. (ADVERTISING) PARTNERSHIP
Screenshot: Partner of spiegel.de
Spiegel-Online shows 5 teasers near the footer area that redirect to the offers of "partners". All companies are well-known and trustworthy. Through the "partnership", both Spiegel and the other brands strengthen each other. A partnership is perceived differently (more positively) than pure advertising and so users are more likely to trust these teasers than the other advertising on the page, even though "Ad" is also displayed in the top right-hand corner.
Presumably, these partners pay a higher price for being so prominently positioned and longer on the page than other advertising banners. Are there also potential partners in your industry that you can show on your site?
6. LICENSES FOR TEXTS, IMAGES, VIDEOS ETC.
Screenshot: Licenses and rights of use on spiegel.de
Once again, Der Spiegel should serve as an example. In the "einestages" section, the magazine takes old content and offers it in a new digital format. This includes photo series, videos and historical articles. Within each article there is a link to the usage rights. As Der Spiegel has been around since 1947, it naturally has an unmanageably large treasure trove of knowledge, articles and material. A clever way to generate revenue from this is to sell this content for money in the form of rights and licenses.
If you also have photos and videos or have produced studies, you should check whether you can sell the rights to use them.
7. SPECIALIST PUBLISHER AS A FULL-SERVICE AGENCY
You have a great deal of knowledge about the industry and there are a number of companies on the market that are interested in your products. Offer these companies other services in addition to corporate print publishing . A full-service agency with the following services is conceivable
- Website creation and maintenance
- Customer database management
- Trade fair appearances
- room design
- warehouse logistics
- Job recruitment
- Tax / financial consulting
- and much more.
8. EXIT STRATEGY FOR DETACHED TOPIC PORTALS (E.G. FOR OTHER TARGET GROUPS)
Your main topic is cars. You already have one or two reach portals for racing cars and classic cars, for example. But now you find out that more and more people own e-bikes and that there is a large community here. However, your core business deals with cars and their features. No chance because the e-bike idea doesn't fit thematically? Quite the opposite: you set up an e-bike website, have a small editorial team write articles that promote reach, distribute everything on social media channels and create a large community.
This leads to more reach, sales through advertising, etc. But the best thing is: if you don't want to keep the product yourself, you can sell it completely later.
9. BUY AND PROCESS CONTENT NOT USED BY OTHER PUBLISHERS.
This can save you money: Instead of having your own editorial team work, buy unused content from other publishers and process it. This can be articles, but also glossaries. The main thing is to increase your reach.
10. SELL NON-PUBLISHING PRODUCTS YOURSELF
What is stopping you from selling non-publishing products in your industry? If you have a store anyway, you can easily offer other products as well. Restriction: Do not compete with advertising customers!
11. USE OR SELL USER DATA
11.1 Personalized advertising
Advertising always has wastage. To minimize this, advertising is now personalized. You can purchase this data (e.g. from Schober, DatenDieter or Swiss Post), but you can also collect it yourself. In the second case, you can tell a lot from the interactions on your website :
- The reader has time at the moment. Depending on the time of day, this could mean that the user is looking for work. It could also be that the user wants to store because they have time.
- The reader chooses from 6 different "Editor's recommendations" the article that is about the economy, in this case "Oil price falls below 40 dollars per barrel". Presumably this is not a housewife, a child or a retail worker. Presumably the reader is educated and familiar with the topic. The advertising on the article page should be accordingly.
Screenshot: Recommendations from the editorial team on spiegel.de
- The reader from just now switches to the stock market page next. He also clicks on the link to Manager-Magazin. Now you should have enough information about this reader to sell his user data.
Screenshot: Service offers on spiegel.de
Spiegel again provides an example: Services from partners are offered at the bottom of the page above the footer. The 26 individual offers are tools, articles, calculators or lists. They are divided into different categories and thus tailored to different areas of interest. Anyone who clicks on one of the service offers is interested in this subject area. Another way of advertising more efficiently.
There are other ways to collect and use user data.
11.2 Newsletter
Anyone who registers for a newsletter enters their data (name, email address). Some newsletters can be personalized: The user then indicates what interests them so that the newsletter does not contain any irrelevant content. A very positive aspect of this is that you can offer your advertising customers precisely tailored target group newsletters in which they can place their ads. At the same time, this data is also easy to sell.
11.3 Jobletter
The Jobletter goes one step further. Companies can buy the user data and select suitable candidates in advance.
This article is part of the overarching topic: The future of publishing: The best revenue models for your digitization . In addition to the conservative, innovative and alternative revenue models, the next article deals with another business model for the digital transformation of publishers: Platforms - opportunity or risk for online publishers?
