I’m in the business of writing about the travel and tourism industry. Besides creating original content, various industry PR firms send through press releases, which I publish based on their news worthiness while others I discard, because there is nothing of value for my readers.
With all these efforts, also comes a responsibility of ensuring I get the bills paid. As you can confirm to reading everything published on the blog free of charge. I’m faced with an everyday challenge of ensuring I get to sustain this blog in the long term, therefore I need to find means of generating an income around the very same content.
For now I employ two strategies of selling advertising space to tourism companies and any related service or product. I directly sell to interested parties, which is more ideal since all monies generated I get to reinvest on the blog or the network of websites that I run. At present I’m toying with a few concepts of introducing other revenue streams on the blog (however there need to add value to you the reader), as I seek to move away from depending exclusively on advertising revenue. For me the future lies on using the blog as a lead generator for other complimentary services…instead of preaching about profitable websites, I should be helping tourism businesses create profitable websites and blog about it.
Besides directly selling advertising, Google Adsense offers ongoing revenue on the blog, which always comes as a blessing in topping up my monthly income. With Google Adsense I don’t sell any advertising, but merely add Google advertisements on the blog and get an income on every click that you as the reader generates.
And I also outsource to brokers who sell advertising space on my behalf. This kind of partnership works to a point, since they have the experience in sourcing new advertisers, however the revenue gets eaten up by the commission which has to be paid to participating agents. This can be a serious pain, since it takes a huge chunk of potential income…about 25%. However there are also no guarantees that they’ll secure advertisers throughout the year, which can result in dry months.
From my experience through the ETEYA judging process last week, when going through the participant’s financial statements, quite a HUGE portion of their monthly bills goes to operating expenses and only a drop are profits. This clearly confirmed to me that though more aspirant entrepreneurs are attracted to the tourism industry based on its “perceived luxury outlook”, it requires quite a lot of money to sustain and the profits after all expenses are not that attractive.
MY QUESTION:
How do you ensure that your operation generates ongoing income, even during off-peak season and do you have plan B if plan A fails?
Blogger Muzi Mohale
I’m Muzi Mohale, based in Roodepoort (South Africa). Blogger with www.travelwires.com. Love Travelwires.com since I get to travel our beautiful country through blogging and get first hand tourism experience.
Charson, I am very impressed with your tips. Will try them out. And great posts you have on you site. Is Busta really coming to Ghana? WOW!!
.-= Edward´s last blog ..Kwame Nkrumah was not a god after all !!!!! =-.