Innovating Through The Challenges Of Monetizing Niche Media Brands And Platforms In Africa.

One of the major challenges faced by media and content brands, or news websites, especially those just starting, is monetizing the content, news, and editorials they deliver to their audience. Launching a news or media brand can be capital-intensive especially when hiring the best writers, journalists, and creators to deliver high-quality content for your platform. 

The first and most popular monetization strategy that comes to mind is selling advertising slots, displaying the advertisements of businesses seeking to achieve business goals and objectives through digital marketing. For new brands, this strategy may not yield the best result as their websites and other media distribution channels may not have garnered enough followership/readership to drive the interest of potential advertisers.

Moreso, with the advent and growth of social networking sites, many advertisers are more invested in running their advertisements on these social platforms as opposed to news and content websites, thereby negatively impacting the revenues realized from direct advertisements by these media brands. 

In Africa and some parts of Asia, this problem is even more worrisome as the interest and demand for the advertising slots on websites are much lower, resulting in lower Cost Per Mile (CPM) bids from advertisers seeking such placements.

To increase advertiser interest in running direct advertisements, media brands in the continent would be in a more advantageous position by focusing on specific high-interest niches like technology, food and recipes, dating and relationships, parenting, and health and wellness.

Exploring Other Monetization Strategies:

In Africa, especially in the sub-Saharan region, advertising revenue generated by media platforms may never be enough to cover their operational costs and the cost of implementing growth plans and expansions, thus, media brands in this region remain tasked with discovering and implementing monetization strategies that are sustainable and deliver higher revenues.

Some monetization strategies successfully implemented by brands in North America and Europe like the introduction of quarterly or yearly subscriptions plans and ‘locked/exclusive’ content for website content consumers may not work in the region as most people have little to no residual income to consider investing in premium content on the internet.

In addition, performance/affiliate marketing which works so well for content brands in North America does not deliver similar results for brands in sub-Saharan Africa as most platforms, brands, and advertisers in the region lack the tools/expertise to implement highly successful performance marketing campaigns that leverage the website traffic from the media platforms.

The Untapped Goldmine of Information Marketing:

An untapped revenue and monetization strategy that holds great promise for brands in the sub-Saharan region is information marketing. A lot of information is sought on the internet daily to solve specific problems, and for problems with complex solutions, most of the solutions available for free on several web pages are far from the solutions, blueprints, and guides being sought after. Thus, brands with niche platforms can leverage this monetization plan by packaging, selling, and delivering proven solutions to major problems their audience/readers face. These solutions can be packaged and sold in the form of ebooks, video courses, templates, industry reports, insights, predictions, etc. 

Provided the materials being sold are well/reasonably priced, this strategy is bound to deliver outstanding results as people are always in search of blueprints and proven templates to improve their lives or solve various pressing problems.

Conclusion:

Monetizing a media brand, content or news website may seem daunting for starters, but having multiple solid strategies remains important for sustainability. Currently, content brands need to deprioritize display advertisements in their list of monetization plans and strategies, as not only is the earned revenue dwindling, but users are also increasingly getting uncomfortable with them.