Entrepreneurial journalists must use multiple sources of income

Those journalists are mistaken who think that advertising is their only potential source of income.
Our training course for entrepreneurial journalists at Georgetown University will focus today on exploring ways to make money other than watching ads. I doubt that many organizations will want to use all these opportunities. Especially if you are a small organization or an individual entrepreneur you need to carefully choose options and decide which ones have the greatest potential, given how much time and money they will take. Some of these features are specifically designed for the individual entrepreneur. Other options are better suited for a large organization, or at least for an entrepreneur or team with specialized technical skills.
Here are some of the sources of income that we will discuss in class:

Events

At the journalism conference Online News Association conference on Saturday, Rafat Ali, who built a successful paidContent business , said his four annual events are a significant part of the business model. Well-managed events will not only increase your profits, but also help build a brand, so they can increase traffic and help in advertising other brands. Events are arguably a new source of revenue for the media. One of my former newspapers, Des Moines Register, was a sponsor of RAGBRAI(Iowa annual seven day bike ride) since 1973. This is such a big event that registration is limited to 10,000 participants, who pay $ 140 each (plus a daily fee for each participant and for a vehicle, contributions from bicycle shops and other companies serving the ride, as well as selling goods).

Goods

Some entrepreneurs will find an opportunity to sell goods, such as T-shirts, caps and mugs (you might want to use the goods you sell to strengthen the brand). If your product is interesting to someone, it may be funny or memorable or connected with some local event, holiday, consider the possibility of providing its sales using merchandising. For example: place the "Print on T-shirt" button for a site like "Bashorg" (* note: in the original textsfromlastnight ).

Deals

I discussed the possibilities of direct sales in my article “Community Building Plan”. This is one of the best examples of going beyond traditional advertising. Two important sources of income in newspaper advertising are business and people selling homes and using products such as furniture and household appliances. Belo Corp., publisher of Dallas Morning News and other newspapers, has gone beyond advertising to become an online real estate broker with Sawbuck Realty . The Ogden Standard-Examiner went beyond advertising second-hand goods with its Quality Consignments storehouse. News materials provide a lot of potential opportunities for campaigns related to content: tickets for entertainment and sports events, coupons or gift certificates from restaurants, flowers with delivery, gifts. You do not have to be a large media organization focused on direct sales. WeKanShop is a local business direct selling directory operated by the small city newspaper Ottawa Herald in Kansas.

Daily Deals

Business based on selling daily discounts (discount deals) for companies on the rise with large projects like Groupon and Living Social
But regional players can also succeed, as an example, another of my former newspapers Omaha World-Herald launched the Daily Deal project this year Omaha . This is a business based on transactions where you do not have a preliminary list and the possibility of manual selection.

Social networks

Entrepreneurs actively exploring the possibilities of social networks see the value of social media for news and business. Entrepreneurial journalists should treat social media as a source of income. For example, could you use Facebook ads instead of placing ads on your site? Just think, could you manage your Twitter offers account by pushing local businesses to tweet about your stocks?

Training and Consulting

My first experience in entrepreneurial journalism was as a freelance trainer. Traditionally, news agencies do not spend a lot of money on training, but if you are an experienced user of digital technologies, in particular, you can supplement your working day or start a new business by conducting seminars. I was able to build a tight enough training schedule to turn it into a full-time job with the American Press Institut in 2005. Now it’s more difficult. I know several journalists who conduct full-time trainings, although now I think that most of them already combine training with some other sources of income. Similarly, if you have valuable skills and knowledge, and you apply them effectively in the market, consulting can complement your full-time job,

Content Selling

Making a living as a freelance content provider is difficult and difficult, although I know people who do this. Freelance work can also be an additional income for an entrepreneur who is trying to conduct business using several sources of income. An entrepreneur who manages content at the main place of work should look for opportunities to sell content to another type of media source.

The provision of services for other types of media

If you are developing a valuable tool for consumers, do you consider it possible to have an additional (or even main) business selling this tool to other media sources. Businesses like Serra Media and PaperG serve web publishers.

Content production as a service

As I wrote recently in a discussion of possible new business models for news organizations or individual journalists, how can I build a business that will include professionally high-quality life stories, from serial writing of obituaries to books.

Data

Dan Conover explains some of the opportunities for data revenue , and my Be the Answer report for Newspaper Next perhaps explains more. (* note: the essence of Dan Conover's article is that if the news is accumulated as clearly structured information in the database with filled properties and with a lot of connections by names, dates, events, coordinates, etc., its cost increases sharply).

Donations

Kachingle offers a tool for business journalists to periodically collect contributions from supporters and well-wishers, as Craig Silverman does on his Regret the Error .

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* note - note of the translator.
I translated the first part of an article written by Steve Buttry on his blog on October 31, 2010 .
This is my first public translation experience. At first I translated it for myself, but then I decided to share it.
It is possible that some of the definitions are not translated accurately enough, I’m sorry, I tried to convey the meaning. I puzzled for a
particularly long time over the phrase Entrepreneurial journalists, I can’t find an established form for it.

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Steve Buttry
Job: Director of Community Engagement at TBD (TBD.com - Washington County Media)
His personal blog . Steve on facebook and LinkEdin