How To Monetize Your Free Content Online

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It’s interesting to see just how free content is being given online, in exchange to build communities and potential exposure. From YouTube content to Twitch streaming to a plethora of interesting podcasts, it’s easy to see just how the bulk of online content has shifted from upfront monetization to a subtler approach. There are reasons as to why this is. The on-demand nature of many services means that placing monetization gateways before access can prevent many people from engaging with the work from the get-go, and sometimes it’s best to draw people in before you expect a form of transaction.

There is also the issue of online piracy. Why allow people to steal your show when you could provide it for them on an upfront scale? Also, trends in how content is delivered in the first place (YouTube, Podcasts) are frequently offering access at no cost, and that has led to a culture of content providers feeling little pressure to publish content frequently.

Let’s say you run a podcast. How can you monetize this free content in a way that keeps your operation sustained? Consider the following methods:

Promotion

Just like paid content, you need to promote. In fact, you usually need to promote more in these instances. As well as your content being offered, you should also draw attention to your other means of monetization. This could be a business email address should sponsors wish to contact you. You could choose to use email marketing software to generate interesting copy, for news about your show, or to present new deals on offer via your store. You might archive old episodes and sell premium access to that. You may release certain content a day or two early, allowing paying or donating customers to access that in return. When promoting your goods, it’s important to direct to both a renewed interest and your monetization efforts in a mutual balance.

Merchandise

Merchandise is important to get right. To use the podcast example, using in-jokes from the show to create clothing with subtle text references could help your audience feel part of a secret club. Merchandise can also extend to premium lighters, mugs, pillow cases among many other things. Developing your brand to a strong and attractive point can help you sell these once in a while. Consider expensive, low availability items to generate the ‘limited edition mindset,’ helping you both rely on an easy to gauge income, and to help your listeners or general audience take action.

Funding Sites

There are many alternate funding sites that can be used to support content. In the wake of advertisers regulating content harshly on YouTube, more and more content creators turned to websites like Patreon, and crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter to help fund new content. Consider selling premium access to higher levels of your output, and you can be sure that a platform of support in exchange for better content or surrounding content can help you in no small degree.

With these simple monetization efforts, your content is sure to be easy to sustain in the long term.

How Your Business’ Digital Marketing Strategy Can Best Utilize Online Platforms

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales ArticleIf you run a business, you will most likely have a digital marketing strategy in place, and this will probably be one of the main methods in which you communicate with your current customers, and reach out to further potential customers as well. Utilizing your online platforms effectively can see you easily boost your business, but to do this, it is important to understand how best to use the online platforms that are available at your fingertips.

Blogging

Blogging is a brilliant way in which you can not only connect with your customers and potential clients but further keep them interested once they are part of your community. Starting a blog or adding a blog as a permanent feature to your website shows potential customers and consumers that you are interested and engaged in current issues and matters, and you are also a company that values customer retention through the means of sharing information. With appropriate consideration, your business can easily develop and start a blog, where you can post informative pieces that your customers can relate to, and learn from. You can keep up with trends by publishing content that is relevant to your customer base, and the regular posts will mean customers are more likely to come back to read more as time goes on. Of course, adding a blog to your website or business will require a certain amount of effort and research, as it will be obvious if your content is not of a strong quality. You should aim for a balance of quality as well as quantity, with varied posts with the aim to inform and entertain your immediate readership. It is a cost-effective way to promote your business easily, and what you stand for, so what are you waiting for?

Social Media Strategy

Your social media strategy is another vital part of your digital marketing strategy that, when properly implemented, can bring in serious opportunity for your business. Social media can even be a free method of marketing, which you can tailor to suit each platform, as different social media platforms cater to different audiences. Instagram, for example, will require a completely different marketing strategy to a Twitter feed, due to the nature of the content you are sharing and the demographics of each platform’s users. The younger generation that has grown up in a digital age will use social media more, so effectively targeting certain age groups with a media strategy that will specifically appeal to them is a great way to boost business and see potential growth.

Unsure as to whether this is the case? Let’s take the travel industry as an example. It may interest you to learn that a whopping 68% of Millennials found inspiration for their most recent trip through Facebook, and 60% through Instagram. These stats go to show the way in which businesses need to market themselves is rapidly changing. Be sure to stay ahead of the curve if you have a business in the travel industry. Through photos, offers, and blog posts, you can maximize interest in your business and be one step ahead of your competition, in this case, travel agents. To find out more about developing an effective social media campaign, check out a professional Facebook ads agency for hotels who can help you to market your venture using avenues such as paid social for hotels, to inspire potential customers on social media.

Conduct Surveys

Conducting surveys and asking for regular feedback is another way to easily further customer retention as well as potentially gain further business. With every visitor to your website, you are essentially given an opportunity to see how your business appears to ‘the other side.’ Feedback surveys are a win-win situation, as not only are you showing your customer base and potential clients or consumers that you care about the experience they are having, but you also gain an understanding of the areas of your business where you can improve. Getting a customer’s perspective can be invaluable in terms of understanding the best way to improve your business for the better.

What to Look for in a Coworking Space

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Coworking spaces are becoming much more popular. There’s at least one coworking office in most large towns and cities, and some companies offer their members the use of their offices all over the world. There are fantastic. They give homeworkers a chance to work in a positive and energetic environment that’s full of creative spark. They are a great way to make connections that could be useful to your business, friends that can help you combat the loneliness of working from home and experts that can help you with areas of your business that you might not be as confident with. Research shows that people generally get more done in a coworking space than they would at home or in an office alone, and many people find that these kinds of shared working environments bring out the best in them, make them happier, more creative and more productive. If you find the right space, it’s certainly worth the membership fee. Here’s a look at what you need to look for when seeking out a coworking space that’s right for you.

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Access

Think about when you like to work. We don’t all enjoy 9-5 hours, some of us work best early in the morning whereas others like to burn the candle late into the night. Working at home means that you can do this. So, this is an essential consideration of your coworking space. Will you be able to use it when you are at your most productive?

Location

The location of your space is one of the most important considerations. Some memberships, like Level Office Coworking Space, allow you to use any of their sites all over the country. You can often even access a coworking space while you are traveling, even if you leave the country. This is fantastic. It means that freelancers are able to work wherever they are and work to pay for their travels as they go.

But, it’s fair to say that the majority of us spend most our time at home. One of the key benefits of working from home is not having the stress or cost of a commute, so you certainly don’t want to add one to your life. If the coworking space that you are looking at is too far away from home, you won’t use it. Look for somewhere that you can get to easily and you are much more likely to spend time there.

Facilities

A vital draw of a coworking space is the community it offers you. An area with excellent facilities often creates a more passionate and engaged community. If there are just a few desks and a printer, people will just work. They won’t chat, they won’t make connections, and they won’t feel creative. Look for somewhere that offers more. Ideally, it should provide things like a coffee machine and a relaxation space which encourage users to connect with each other and relax. Plenty of color on the walls and a chilled out atmosphere is also a must if you want a work area that inspires your creativity.

Four Risks to Avoid During B2B Web Development

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article

A basic tip provided by start-up technicians, expert technology specialists, self-help experts, and network experts on how to start an online business is: “Be Effective.”

Start-ups in e-commerce do their best, often taking part in courses tagged “Start-up 101” that are being promoted as the “easiest”, “fastest” and “best”, and they all seem to disappear in one or two years for reasons unknown. The people who have created new e-commerce enterprises ask the same questions raised by slick and motivational articles about success, instead of clarifying their vision. Unfortunately, none of these resources contains a single piece of advice on how to avoid at the typical errors synonymous with web development during the creation of platforms.

Our company is not just a web development agency; we are the technology partners of several start-ups. Our focus is on quick launch, and long-term projects have also become our priority. Our company is not only interested in the development hours paid by the project owner, but also in the success of a project, the development of additional features, maintenance capacity, and scalability.

Without further ado, we will talk about the main risks involved in web development:

Risk No 1: Contractor’s Experience

Most decision makers try to find an experienced web development company with skills that align with the planned project. If all companies were the same, there would be no single company or proposal that matches the needs of a specific project.

Solution: Look for a web development contractor with extensive expertise. Brendan Wilde of Discountdomains.co.nz believes that it demonstrates the contractor’s ability to implement different business models and bring the experience of other business areas to the benefit of the system. ‘A contractor with limited experience can be a star in a specific field but cannot always see the system in a broader sense’, Wilde added.

Risk No 2: Shortcuts

Some decision makers believe that if they find a contractor with the same experience in implementing the same type of project, then there’s no use to invest in research, analysis, lists of features, prototypes, etc. This may seem reasonable for small business websites or blogs, but when it comes to B2B systems and e-commerce platforms, these errors could lead to huge losses.

Solution: Take your time. Analyse the functionalities and their means of implementation, plot production, create prototypes and align the system’s professional outlook with marketing experts before coding. This will save costs on redesign, or solve technical bottlenecks created by lack of planning. This phase requires between 2% to 7% of the project budget, but saves a large amount of funds for long-term projects. Since start-ups are high-risk on their own, we suggest you avoid all possible dangers whenever you can.

Risk No 3: Length of the Project

This risk also relates to the cost of the project. The trick is to combine the financing model and the development calendar. In a linear process, different experts participate in various parts of the project, passing the baton to the next phase and to the team of experts. This approach may be suitable for small projects, but for large platforms it can ruin the whole idea. This is because the project could be obsolete before you even launch it.

Solution: Look for web development agencies aware of this risk. We have seen a huge positive impact when involving all types of experts in every phase of the project. This workflow ensures a faster transition of expertise among project team members at every stage of development, reduces repetitions and over-clarification, saves development costs in general, and shortens the development cycle.

Risk No 4: Linear Development

As per practical implementation, consider linear workflow as an example. The customer decides to create a B2B web platform from scratch. In a linear workflow, the first two months would be devoted to engineering requirements, creating feature lists and creating prototypes. The following two months will be dedicated to the correction of the prototype with the designers, the outlook design, the correction of the design (because the customer takes on a marketing agency for the purpose of the project) and the fine-tuning of the design. Development will begin in the fifth month simply because the corrections made in the second phase would return to the previous phase and would be used again in the second phase. This process is long, boring, complicated and risky in a competitive environment.

Solution: Try to reduce these repetitions, since the amount of work done by the requisite engineers in two weeks is enough to start working on prototypes, present the marketing agency with results, demonstrate the concept, and implement the changes and subsequently adapt to the market.

In this way, the client can start receiving comments from project experts in four weeks instead of four months. In addition, several specialists work at the same time: the developers are involved in the requirements analysis phase to discuss the performance of features and in the prototype phase to share their vision of coding design with the highest engagement ratio during the phase of development. The participation of designers is at the highest during the design phase, but also influences prototyping because they share their UI/UX experience and continue to support developers during the development phase.

With projects created in two weeks, you can start the development phase faster, using good WordPress plugins. Since the start of the design work is two weeks after design requirements, one month of preparation in this model is sufficient to initiate the development of back-end and front-end, and align the design or functionality with the recommendation from the marketing agency.

Think big, ask relevant questions, act quickly and pay attention to the details of hidden importance. These can ruin the entire project or bring it to the highest peak of business.

Conclusion

The team of web developers over at ALT Agency believe that with any web development project the key to success comes down to project management.

When projects aren’t planned correctly from the start they tend to fall apart mid project and leave to unexpected delays and often increased costs for clients.

By sitting down as a team and planning correctly and using tools such as Trello and Invision it allows for a much clearer outcome and with through planning with all requirements and elements of a development broken down it’s easy to identify issues before they arise.

Two Things That Can Tarnish Your Online Business

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There are two fundamental aspects of digital commerce that have the potential to tarnish the reputation of your success; the loading speed of your website and the credibility of your email account. Indeed, there are many essential ingredients every business needs but perhaps there are none more important in the sphere of online business than the load speed of your website and the amount of emails that get through to your list of subscribers.

First off, let’s take a look at your email account.

Email marketing is one of the most essential ways to communicate with customers today, indeed it is one of the most essential aspects of digital marketing, yet it can be notoriously difficult as often commercial emails end up in spam folders.

Today, there are over a hundred different SPAM blacklists in operation but with the use of certain tools and strategies such as using email list verification, this risk can be mitigated in order to ensure the majority of emails do get through to their intended recipients.

Now, let’s look at how the loading speed of your website.

It’s well known that there’s a direct correlation between the loading time of your website and bounce rate, that is to say the number of people that visit your site but leave straight away; just like in the offline retail world, where a customer walks into a shop then walks straight out.

In fact, to better explain the term ‘bounce rate’ it can help to picture a busy shopping centre – where people are walking around browsing or searching for a particular solution. In the shopping centre, signposts help point people in the right direction, whereas in the online world, Google is the authority.

In the offline retail world, people naturally browse a few different stores based on the attractiveness of their retail display amongst other factors such as brand awareness and perceived relevance to their needs.

Now, as the store owner once they come through the door, it’s your job to engage them with special offers, product demonstrations, engaging retail displays, and relevant ideas to solve a problem they face.

In essence, your job as a retailer is to engage consumers so they spend as much time in your retail environment as possible – for there’s a direct correlation between the amount of time spent in a store and the amount of money spent. This is why large retail brands invest so much in visual merchandising.

Now, in the digital world, if you have high traffic but low engagement this is known as having a high bounce rate.

The reason a high bounce rate will cripple your online business success is because it’s akin to people walking in your store, and then straight back out, without buying anything. Whilst a high bounce rate can be attributed to many factors such as a lack of engaging content, or a lack of perceived relevance, it has been found that 40% of potential customers will leave your website if the site takes more than 3 seconds to load.

This is particularly pertinent in our increasingly impatient digital world and therefore we’re going to take a brief look at three ways to optimise the loading speed of your website.

1. Hosting

Load speed can be somewhat contingent on your hosting provider, and therefore, it’s something you should seriously consider before committing to a provider. If you have a high volume of traffic to your website then you might want to consider upgrading to private hosting, as this can offer a much speedier service in terms of load speed.

2. Optimize Images

Many website owners use large image files and then scale them down automatically using CSS, to be displayed on the user’s device. This might not seem like a problem, but the challenge is the browser has to load the full size image, then scale it down, which is a very inefficient way to process photos – and this can seriously affect load speed.

3. Enable Browser Caching

When you regularly visit a website some of the elements of that web page are stored on your hard drive, in a temporary storage folder, known as a cache. As a website owner, if you enable browser caching it means you are able to temporarily store data on the user’s computer which means they will have a much faster loading experience.