Lessons from Journalism’s Hunt For New Revenue Models

Associations looking for revenue-raising innovations may find some inspiration from reading the news.

For years, news outlets big and small have struggled to find the right model for their businesses, with many hitching their wagons to advertising and others trying to make paywalls work.

(A few notable names, such as The New York Times and Andrew Sullivan (opens in a new tab), have gone down this road, with varying degrees of success.)

But if you dig a little deeper, you’ll see some interesting trends happening. Harvard University’s Nieman Lab  (opens in a new tab) recently points out a study, “Chasing Sustainability on the Net,”  (opens in a new tab) [PDF] which shows experimentation happening in journalism startups around the world. These revenue models  (opens in a new tab) offer some interesting insights that could be taken back to associations, including:

A membership model: A few months ago, the American politics site Talking Points Memo launched TPMPrime (opens in a new tab), a $50-per-year membership-based site that offers exclusive content, a members-only forum, and an inside line to the publication’s writers. According to SuBMoJour, other sites around the world are trying this model, including Slovakia’s Piano Media  (opens in a new tab), the Japanese nonprofit OurPlanet-TV  (opens in a new tab), and the popular American tech site Ars Technica, which, like TPMPrime, offers a $50-per-year membership  (opens in a new tab) for access to exclusive content. Associations know a thing or two about membership already, but is there room to gain some insight from these approaches?

Data/analytics sales: One revenue model worth keeping an eye on for big-data heads? Tweetminster, a British site that automatically curates important political voices in the country through Twitter. How does it make money? Well, it sells useful analytics based on the data it curates  (opens in a new tab). “Everything we do outside of politics we charge for. We sell a license to use our software. It’s an API, so as the clients make more calls, the price goes up,” explains Alberto Nardelli, the company’s CEO. But that approach doesn’t translate to the content itself. “We don’t charge for politics because we are passionate about the political space and helping people access information, and experimenting within the political space,” he explains.

Client-based work: Other companies offer professional services to subscribers, focusing less on the end-user experience and more on creating a product that proves useful to their clients. The Irish site Storyful  (opens in a new tab), a wire service built around social media, sells its news-gathering and verification services to a number of large news organizations around the world, including The New York Times and The Economist. The Italian site Effecinque follows a similar model, selling unique storytelling models to its clients  (opens in a new tab).

As the journalism field matures online, it’s likely we’ll start seeing larger sites use similar approaches. What content or services could you offer members that would diversify your revenue model?

(John Foxx/Stockbyte/Thinkstock)