Maximising Revenue #5 - Total Monetization by deriving revenues from every online activity

Many people don’t realise quite how many ways you can have to derive revenues through your online presence. In this article we focus on generating revenues from and through a website and its associated online activities. There are other ancillary monetizing streams like App creation and merchandising, but these typically require additional resources and expertise so they are omitted on this occasion.

We always encourage our solution customers to consider their own consumers’ onsite journeys. Obviously you have several different types of consumer: Suspect > Prospect > Customer > Regular > Advocate - and each will use the website in their own different variety of ways. Early stage consumers are more interested in prospecting, research and validation, whilst latter stage consumers require their own voice and a dialogue / input with the site owners and other site members.

It’s fascinating to see how Amazon, Apple and Google have evolved their offerings and ramped up their customer bases. If we take Amazon as an example - with its gradual evolution from hard copy to digital formats (eBooks, Music & Video) and the creation of devices (Kindle) to consume those services. Apple and Google have always been digital players so their evolution was much more straight-lined. Although each has come from the opposite side of the spectrum - Apple moving from digital devices (computers initially) into digital services, whilst Google evolved the other way round - from services into devices. All three companies though are highly proficient at monetizing different touchpoints and activity centres.

All website owners should be tuned into a similar mindset - if you are a solid products player, you need to evolve digital offerings as the marketplace is becoming more and more ’mobile-oriented’. As a digital services provider - which category all websites fall into now, you cannot get away from focusing on the mobile devices with which consumers will increasingly consume your products and services.

Most people think of monetizing in terms of either straightforward ecommerce or advertising sponsorship. There are however many more ways to accrue revenues if you have the correct type of website platform. Here are some of the key examples:

• Charge for site / area access / membership - e.g. access to additional or enhanced functionality and content
• Charge for content / media / event upload - e.g. upload to professional directory or course / events calendar
• Charge for content / media download / on-demand - e.g. valuable articles, research, analysis and reports - hard copy or animated formats
• Earn revenues via advertising - strategic campaign placements on key gateway pages and newsletter areas
• Earn revenues via sponsorhip - strategic ’brand owner’ campaign placements on pages and newsletters
• Earn revenues via product / content placement - hosting of paid-for advertorial content and other formats placed within general content
• Earn revenues via funding - take percentage fee from providing funding / turn-key services
• Sell stuff! - Sell physical and digital products in any combination / bundle via store
• Monetize tokens, vouchers and store credits - give consumers more ways to consume your products and services
• Provide professional services like online recruitment / category recommendations
• Earn revenues via instant / daily / weekly / monthly content subscriptions
• Earn revenues by syndicating content to relevant third party sites

The Affino Social Marketplace Saas delivers all of the above possibilities and more out-of-the box, you just need to be creative with how you innovate your online business and just how you utilize all the powerful functionality available on-tap.

Contact our Business Development Director Marcus Svensson on maxrevenue@comrz.com for further insights on how Affino can evolve your online business to one of Total Monetization.