Lifting the Veil on the News & Media Business
3 min read
In a world where the major news and media establishments still survive to fight another day, following their dodgy policies, it’s quite the wonder that media and news still makes for a profitable business path to pursue. We’ve witnessed the emergence of the phrase “alternative facts” among many other dodgy policies, yet broadcasters that come out with so-called fake news are still reporting and they still remain in business. Lifting the veil on the news and media business lets us in on why this is such a profitable market to get into, even in a time when creating your own online news site is as easy as installing the same, free news WordPress template everybody is using.
Advertising
The one thing you need to keep in mind about the news and media business is that it’s centred on advertising. News outlets, even the biggest of them in existence, survive solely on the advertising revenue they generate. Sure, some of them may have different channels through which they generate some revenue, such as producing feature shows and documentaries, but even in that case it all comes back down to advertising.
How to get started – focus on publishing high-quality content
With the knowledge that your revenue will come from advertising, the emphasis on producing and publishing high quality content should be made a priority. After all, since we assume you don’t quite have the budget to start an entire news network channel that has a dedicated satellite or public TV slot, the likelihood is that the path you’ll take is that of installing a news theme WordPress template and run your media and news operation as a blog.
Since this approach allows you to get going at such a low cost, you’ll be competing with many others, so it’s important to focus on the quality of your content and to be consistent with it. You can pick a niche if you want, but to reiterate, you need to focus on building trust through quality.
User retention
Forget about any monetisation in the earliest stages and focus more on building an audience of users which you can retain. You need readers who will keep coming back for fresh content, so it becomes about targeting specific niches within the news and media space. If you’re a sports enthusiast for example and at certain times of the day you endeavour to get your fix in sports news and results, that’s a good path to follow with regards to your news and media operation.
Re-visiting the advertising discussion
Once you have a consistent flow of returning traffic to your news and media blog or website, it becomes easy to attract advertisers. You won’t even need to worry about landing the business of repeat advertisers, because even if every single advertiser on the planet advertised just once on your blog, in their lifetime, you’d have long since sailed off into the sunset with the knowledge that the advertising dollars will keep rolling in. Of course it’d be great to land the business or repeat advertisers and some of the bigger advertisers, like political parties.
