How to Generate Revenue With Your Content

Want to make money from your content?

Wondering how a loyal audience can create business opportunities?

To explore business models that help publishers generate revenue, I interview Joe Pulizzi.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and Content Marketing World. He's written five books including Epic Content Marketing and Content Inc. His newest book is called Killing Marketing: How Innovative Businesses Are Turning Marketing Cost Into Profit.

Joe explains how high-quality content can transform marketing from a cost center into a profit center.

You'll discover the different ways you can monetize your content.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
How to Generate Revenue With Your Content
Why Joe Wrote Killing Marketing

Joe and co-author Robert Rose work mostly with large businesses. They've been seeing a trend where businesses are viewing marketing as a profit center rather than a cost center.

Only a few companies are currently doing things this way. However, Joe believes that over the next 5 or 10 years, marketing as a profit center will be the rule, not the exception. The premise of the book (and the philosophy) is to create trusted relationships with your audience and monetize that relationship by doing more than selling products. You can monetize your business in 10 different ways.

Joe says the biggest mistake people make with their marketing is they set up their marketing department wrong. They seek opportunities for the sales team and don't see all of the potential in what their companies can be and sell.

Any business that has lasted 10 or 15 years has evolved over time. Yes, selling products is important but you can't lead product-first anymore. The only competitive advantage people have today is communication. Everything else can be duplicated.

Marketers need to be refocusing on making markets and creating opportunities for organizations; however, many have lost sight of those objectives. When the focus is on people, not necessarily products, companies can sell all kinds of things they never thought about before.

Listen to the show to discover how marketers typically view marketing.

Companies Embracing This Premise

BabyCenter.com, owned by Johnson & Johnson, is one of the largest sites dedicated to mothers. Eight out of 10 mothers use the site, which is a stellar resource for research and development. Johnson & Johnson monetizes the site directly and launches new products from it.

Red Bull Media House is judged as a profit center and media company. Although they're the marketing arm of Red Bull (and want to sell more product), their revenue comes from advertising and content syndication. They package and sell their videos to companies like The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. They also sell subscriptions (The Red Bulletin Magazine has two million subscribers).

One of Joe's favorite examples is Arrow Electronics, which is the 118th company on the Fortune 500 list. They're like the Amazon.com for electronics equipment and they target electrical engineers. Two years ago, they went to Hearst and UBM (Content Marketing Institute's parent company) and bought 51 media properties, including EE Product News.

Now, Arrow Electronics is the largest media company in the electronics industry. Although the media division is a marketing arm for the company, the media division is also extremely profitable. Plus, it helps the company sell more products and services.

In most cases, marketers simply target customers or prospects with the goal of getting t...