In this post we discuss how online news portals make money.
By online news portals, I mean news websites that do not have a print edition. This could include both general news portals (covering news in general) or niche specific portals (e.g. portals that exclusively disseminate business news or sports news).
The Revenue Model of Online News Portals.
Online news portals make money from the following sources:
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Advertisement Revenue:
Advertisement is the most important source of revenue for online news portals. The ads include both banner ads and ads embedded within video content.
The most common way of monetising a newly launched news website is through Google Adsense.
Adsense is an advertising platform by Google that serves contextual advertising on partner websites. The pay out is on CPC (cost per click) and CPM (Cost per thousand ad impression) basis.
Popular news portals with high traffic (visitors) also work with individual advertisers to advertise their products or services on the website. They also work with other premium ad agencies that serve higher paying ads (as compared to AdSense) but have a high minimum traffic requirement.
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Subscription Revenue:
News portals following the subscription revenue model make their content available only to paying subscribers.
Most portals however follow what is known as the freemium model (free + premium). Under this model, the general news stories are disseminated for free but content involving more in-depth research and analysis is made available only to the paying subscribers.
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Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate Marketing is a form of referral marketing wherein one earns a commission for every purchase someone makes based on his/her recommendation of the affiliate’s products or services.
You would have noticed online news portals featuring reviews of various products or services. The reviews also come with links to websites from which the products/services can be bought online.
If you follow the link and make a purchase, the news website will earn a commission based upon the value of the purchase.
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Content Syndication:
Content Syndication involves the granting of rights permitting the re-publication of content created by a particular news portal on other websites or print medium.
A news portal makes money by allowing the re-publication of their exclusive content on third-party websites or print media.
Hope you like our presentation on the revenue model of online news portals.
You might also be interested in understanding the revenue model of cash back websites.
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