Content Marketing: 5 Ways to Make Money [Chart]

How to Turn Content Marketing Into Dollars

Creating compelling content requires resources. If you’re a media company or solopreneur, you need ways to get compensated for your efforts.

Here are five options for monetizing your content marketing or media entity. (And also for helping you to understand the differences in types of media platforms.)

  1. Advertising. Provide an environment where there’s an aggregated audience for other organizations’ promotional messages. In digital and mobile terms, there’s a wide variety of options available. Among the major advertising formats are search ads, banners, text links, sponsorships, video (pre and post roll options), social media options, mobile text, banners and search. Digital advertising offers a broad array of options that are less expensive than print or broadcast options.
  2. Affiliate revenues. Leverage the audience to sell products directly to readers  in return for a fee. This is unique to online media entities and often goes through an intermediary who tracks sales for a percentage of the revenues. The most common examples are books and CDs on blogs and other media sites.
  3. Subscription. Offers a way to pay for content for a set time period.  There are three forms of digital subscriptions: [1] A fixed set of goods or services that’s delivered on regular basis. Examples include newspapers, magazines and newsletters, [2] Unlimited use of service(s) where the usage may be personal and non-transferable or under certain circumstances, for a group utilizing a service at one time. Among the examples are satellite radio and online dating, and [3] Basic access or minimal service plus some additional charge depending on usage. A prime example is mobile phone service.
  4. Content products. Specialized content offerings created from existing content or enhanced content sold for a discrete fee. Among the examples are physical books created from collected columns or licensed content that’s sold to another media entity.
  5. Ancillary products. Use the content marketing’s aggregated audience and their targeted interests to sell them related products. Among the most common versions of these are conferences, events and classes.

The following table shows how these five types of content marketing revenue streams compare. 

While no entity can use every one of these ways for generating revenue from content, a combination of different approaches is often the most effective way to increase sales.

Are there any other revenue generating options you’d suggest for content marketing? If so, what would you recommend and why?

Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen


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Photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aresauburnphotos/2678453389

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