Growing Your Media Content Business

Starting any business can be very daunting especially if you have to put in a lot of capital to get it started. For example starting even a small Hotdog concession stand business can cost you thousands. You have to buy the equipments, pay for the permits to operate and of course you have to buy your hotdogs and all the other necessary ingredients.

This is less true however for online media content businesses. All you need is a laptop and an internet connection and you are ready to start. The ease of entry to this business is so easy that many people around the world are doing this. This is not good news because all these people I am talking about are your competitors.

They are all your competitors in one way or another. Everyone is after a slice of the internet audience pie and unless you have a good strategy on how to proceed with your online media content business then you will not make much money at all or even nothing. Add to the fact that there are many people whose main agenda is to spread their media content and not to make money then your competition get so much tougher.

How to Begin?

So how do you begin? Like all businesses you test out the market. You can start posting or creating videos about anything that comes to your mind that interests you and you like to share. Keep doing this until you eventually get an audience response. Take note that there are people who do this step for years and still never get an audience.

This is the nature of the online media content business. There is just so much content being offered online for one subject that you could have done everything right as far as you know and still get nowhere. Take note that if your business was a Hotdog concession stand business you would have lost thousands in capital and also wasted a lot of your time as well if no one buys hotdogs.

Know What Your Clients Want

Many online media content creators just like most businesses started to succeed by using the trial and error method. When they think that their current media content is not getting any audiences for the foreseeable future they try other media content. Even big companies like Coke and McDonald use this trial and error method to gauge what their customers want.

If you just want to publish content with little regard for earning money then continue posting the content you want. But if you are in the business of online media content then you have to think like a businessman and start knowing your market. You could do market study and client interaction to know what your customers want.

You can start asking your audiences to reply back to you asking for what media content they want to see. Choose only the most popular requests to maximise the possibility of more viewership. You also need to start analysing your media content as soon as you can. If you have a website for example install Google Analytics as soon as you can. This is like running any business where one needs to check regular reports to see how the company is progressing.

Once you have determined which media content is most popular do more of it as much as you can without irritating your audiences with repetitive content. This is again a strategy which all businesses do. Rehash and/or improve products that are the most successful. If you feel like a sellout remember that offering a similar product is acceptable as long as it is better or is majorly different.

Get Client Statistics

Once you start building your client base you ultimately will know more about them and what they want from you. Do not stop however learning. You should continue to ask your clients what media content they want and continue choosing the ones with the most commercial appeal due to the number of requests.

You could also start getting statistics about your audience like asking them their age range and what occupations they have. You could ask open ended questions like “Which age range are my articles especially helpful with?”. You could conduct online polls related to your media content like “Are my articles helpful to those who use/like cars like you?”

Expand to Longer Content

From this you can start to create more articles based from these responses. Not only more articles but longer articles as well which could turn to e-books, online courses and even merchandise. For example if you have an article detailing the famous landmarks in your area you can sell physical or digital maps as well.

Cautiously Add Ads

Of course we have to speak of ads as well as many content creators promote ads to generate income. There are many online gurus on media content business that advise that you do not monetise your online media content until it has sufficient number of daily visitors. The number seems to be in the minimum of 10,000 daily visitors.

The reason they advise this is because you do not want your audience to be turned off by the ads in your media content site. You should let them build a tolerance to it as time passes by. Ads also may slow down the speed of your media content site which could also turn off your audience as well as hurt your rankings in search engines.

After you have introduced ads you can also introduce affiliate marketing as well as your direct marketing services to companies. This means you can directly approach companies and ask them if they want to advertise on your media content site for a fee. As you can see from this start you begin developing your business to the physical world.

Expand to Real World Media Content

Your e-books and other digital products can turn to real world books, magazines and other printed media content once you get in business with publishers. Next your YouTube videos will take form in real life when you begin to directly speak to your audience in person. You can offer online or phone consultations to your audiences as be some sort of a consultant.

Next comes the bigger audience. This is when you conduct seminars and other speaking engagements to give voice and a physical form to your online media content. It is no wonder that many content creators like bloggers after having started online gradually expanded to ads, then courses and books to becoming speakers in the end.

Conclusion

As can be seen the hardest part in growing your media content business is finding your specific audience. This stage can take years and many stop at this stage after seeing no results for a long time which could mean years.

Once you start amassing an audience the key is to continue refining the user experience by refining your offerings and content. You should not stop by only offering digital media content but also offer real world media content where the audience get to know you preferably on a physical face to face basis.