The 3 Content Internet Marketing Business Models, According To Me

[Brandon1981]

So lately I've been racking my brain trying to do research for what sort of needs I can find and how I can match up my skills to meet these needs. In that process of searching for needs that I can fulfill I can't help but wonder HOW I can fulfill those needs, and what would be the most lucrative. So I've come up with 3 main business models in the content, subscription, and e-commerce genres of the internet fastlane vehicle. Here's what I've come up with...


1. All completely free content/service
Massive amounts of content
Monetization via Adsense/direct advertising/affiliate programs
Example: Pleny Of Fish, Yelp, review websites, Facebook, YouTube, blogs with free content


2. Free content/service, with products
Moderate amount of content, enough to presell the products
Monetization of free content via Adsense/direct advertising/affiliate programs
Use existing traffic base/mailing list/advertising to market/sell info-products
Example: Any subscription website, or blogger with an info-product to sell


3. Info-products only
Small amount of free content, just enough to establish credibility
Products marketed via email autoresponders/newsletters, newsletter/PPC advertising, affiliates, blog, Youtube videos, etc.
Monetization through info-product sales/subscriptions
Example: Anyone who strictly focuses on product sales/services without much free content


Granted, each model may bleed over a little onto the others, but I think this are the 3 main ways of prospering if you want to strictly stick to content, and not get into physical products. I realize that is a whole other ballgame. Here are my thoughts of the 3 models and tell me what you think.

Model 1 assumes the most risk, and violates the commandment of control, and in many cases the commandment of entry. Everyone and their mom has a blog nowadays, and unless you can ramp up the content creation to the 1000 plus page range, bringing in large amounts of revenue is a challenge. The options here are for YOU to create the content yourself, of implement some sort of user-generated content strategy (forum, reviews, whatever). For example, Plenty of Fish makes a few hundred thousand a month in Adsense because there are so many people on the site. However, you are also at the risk of Google changing policies, or affiliates cutting commissions or doing away with affiliate programs altogether. I've already experience my merchant for my old baseball equipment website cut my commissions in half. That sucked! :bgh:

Model 2 is sort of a happy medium, because you get some control back. This would be where you (or visitors) generate a moderate amount of content and build a community...enough to presell a higher priced info-product which will be the bulk source of the income. This is sort of a hybrid model of the 3.

Model 3 is strictly selling your content or service, and barely give any info away for free. You would require your traffic to come from AdWords, and other advertising such as ezines, and recruiting affiliates.

Those are my thoughts, but what do I know?? I'm curious to know who on here is using which model and what type of model you recommend getting into. I'm asking because I would like some guidance on what type of business I should focus on building.

I'd love to hear MJ's thoughts about these models and which method he would recommend if he were to get started today. Or if he would not recommend any!??

Thanks guys!

 

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[DeletedUser11]

Im in business model 1 in my particular niche, I studied all the major players in my niche and found various problems within the structure of their sites and made my site absent of those problems

As far as entry goes, yes anyone can set up a blog where they publish half assed articles, but all the large sites have a team of writers and are pushing out articles in high volume. You must front as a large website not a blog if you want millions of readers. I have never heard of a blog making over 40,000 $ a month, yet techcrunch makes 344,000$ monthly and has an asset value of about 40,000,000$

Huffington post, everything was free not one product was ever sold, it made its money advertising and was sold to Aol for 315,000,000$.

Content websites do make serious money if you can establish a brand, maybe later down the line you can market your companies OWN products to your readers/customers.

Hell the NYtimes made 175,000,000$ in 2009 thats 3.3 million weekly.

Just make sure there is a large unserved market that NEEDS your content or the current big players are not doing it right.

Remember you will never get millions of readers talking about polar bears leave that to the bloggers, you have to enter a LARGE market

 

[DeletedUser11]

Also content based sites where users create there own content generates TONS more revenue such as

Ask.com - 74,000 $ daily
About.com - 49,000 $ daily
Blogger.com - 83,000 $ daily

 

[healthstatus]

I saw a presentation where the person had 47 ways of making money on the Internet.

Mine is a combo of 1 & 2, in that we have massive content and my writers pump more every week day. We also add email strategy which you don't really talk about. We are over 8 million visitors for the year.

 

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[Brandon1981]

Thanks guys! This info has helped confirm some things for me. The main battle in my mind is the Commandment of Control issue with the free content model. Every time I consider an idea for starting a new strictly free content based website, I worry about the things MJ says about affiliate programs getting cancelled, or Google doing some funky crap with Adsense or whatever else.

However, it seems that you could easily gain a lot of this control back by negotiating with advertisers directly and setting up your own proprietary advertising system, absent of any middle-man. Granted, those advertisers can cancel any time, but if you've got tons of traffic coming to your website, and you've done a good job of getting into a market that has money in it, it seems that you wouldn't have problems selling advertising.

It seems to me that if you can command gobs of traffic, YOU have the control, not the advertisers, because you have what they need...people who are interested in the advertiser's products. And yes, I did forget the email. If you have a huge email subscriber list, that FURTHER strengthens your control.

Am I wrong? Does the strictly free content model still violate the Commandment of Control if you have tons of website traffic, a huge email subscriber list, and a committed reader base? What are your thoughts?

 

[Jonleehacker]

I think number 3 will give you the best return on your time and potential for leverage.

For example you can have affiliates sell your products.

Here is a good load of information on #3 type content marketing, I think you'll find it very useful

Get Your Free Teaching Sells Content Here

 

[DeletedUser11]

Even though you can be making mid six figures monthly you are a passenger and the advertising company is the driver.

At best you get 10,000,000 impressions daily = 5,000 - 50,000 $ daily

Advertising agency eg valueclick, buysell ads - 1,000,000,000 impressions daily equates to much more money

 

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[healthstatus]

However, it seems that you could easily gain a lot of this control back by negotiating with advertisers directly and setting up your own proprietary advertising system, absent of any middle-man. Granted, those advertisers can cancel any time, but if you've got tons of traffic coming to your website, and you've done a good job of getting into a market that has money in it, it seems that you wouldn't have problems selling advertising.

Am I wrong? Does the strictly free content model still violate the Commandment of Control if you have tons of website traffic, a huge email subscriber list, and a committed reader base? What are your thoughts?

Using an ad network is just outsourcing your sales team for ads. There is a lot of effort required in finding advertisers, testing, pricing and so on, the big boys don't come to you, you go to them. Most advertisers only want a person to see 3-4 ads of theirs, each day. So its not like you get one account and they buy all your ad slots. If you get 100,000 page views each day from 20,000 visitors (5 pages/visitor), and 3 ads per page, that is 300,000 ad slots, but if you only show 4 ads from one company to each visitor, you have to have 4 advertisers at a minimum. Combine that with campaign start and end dates, fake clicks, maintaining creatives, reporting, billing..... Even the top 100 sites use networks to solve all this crap.

For me it is a distraction to be on that side of the fence, as traffic attraction, and maintenance are very high priorities.

 

[Brandon1981]

I think this thread is summing up the biggest question for me right now and my ability to decide what route I want to take. I like the idea of building a site that would allow users to generate most of my content (a product review site or similar), but I also agree that coming up with my own info product and selling could be more lucrative quicker. Maybe my answer would be to go with the #2 model and have a little of both.

Healthstatus, if you have time, would you mind PMing me a little about some specifics of your business model, and what market you are in? I'm curious to learn about what you're doing. Thanks!

 

[AZEG]

Also content based sites where users create there own content generates TONS more revenue such as

Ask.com - 74,000 $ daily
About.com - 49,000 $ daily
Blogger.com - 83,000 $ daily

I'm curious to know where you are getting your statistics from?

 

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[AllenCrawley]

Healthstatus, if you have time, would you mind PMing me a little about some specifics of your business model, and what market you are in? I'm curious to learn about what you're doing. Thanks!

Take the time to read Healthstatus' previous threads. He has covered this before.