Week 5
During the Lecture we looked at different income models and what they achieve for a publication, for example:
- display advertising
- classified marketing
- native advertising/advertorial
- branded media
- online programmatic ads
- external/affiliate links
- subscriptions
- memberships
- events
- merchandise/shops
Income models that could work for the Yorkie magazine:
- During the session, we went from looking at these models briefly to splitting into groups to concentrate on one specific type and provide a more detailed description and analysis of how this could work for The Yorkie. In my group, we looked at how effective Native Advertising can be.
- Native Advertising is where content is paid for by a company, business or sponsor and is completed in the publications standard editorial style. It’s effective because of this and organisations such as the Huff Post, BuzzFeed and the Guardian Lab teams make use of this technique. You get paid to create the content and as a result of this may be seen to be selling out, however, news organisations have to fund themselves as well. Native media and paid ads may work best for such a local and new magazine. As there is a clear region that the magazine is aimed at, there are numerous independent businesses or groups that could be possible avenues of income. Offering to provide native advertising would work and because this would be the first ever edition, placing this sort of ad would not upset patrons as they have no idea what yet to expect. It is such a growing market because of how flexible it can be across mediums that this would make it all the more likely an option for such a new publication.
- Another option would be to host an unveiling event for each edition of the magazine as it is released.
- Local spaces such as SPARK York fit almost perfectly to our target audience and so this could be an extremely lucrative option. This could be a time to sell subscriptions and individual copies of the publication.
- Subscriptions, where consumers pay to access content from a publication, this can be physical or digital.
- While subscriptions can be a very lucrative market, looking at magazine.co.uk there are dozens if not hundreds of titles available, it might not be effective for the Yorkie immediately. In the long run, this may be an option, however people will go for titles that they know and trust; a magazine that is just starting out will not have the luxury of being a known brand any time soon. This could be considered if the Yorkie were going forward as a magazine business.