Affiliate activities to generate revenue
The Guardian has officially launched The Filter, a site described as offering “independent product reviews, trusted buying advice and sustainable shopping ideas”, after a months-long trial. The Guardian says The Filter is a showcase for the best consumer journalism, reviews and product recommendations that are completely independent.
According to the current trends shown in the WAN-IFRA report, most news organizations around the world believe that revenue growth from readers, product development, events and other revenue sources is the model that news organizations are and will continue to be forced to move towards. Of course, each organization needs to find its own new key directions.
This also shows that any future of journalism will have to be linked to revenue sources. Only when the economy is stable, can journalism survive and develop sustainably. And it can be predicted that although most journalism in general still relies heavily on digital advertising revenue, in the future, diversifying revenue sources is inevitable.
Back to the Guardian announcement, it stressed that all articles are free, written by writers selected for their expertise, who will research and test products in real-world situations, and that no advertisers or retailers pay to be included. The Guardian will earn a small commission if someone clicks on a link on one of the pages and goes on to make a purchase or sign up for a service.
Like many publishers, they are using Skimlinks, a tool that puts tracking code into links for publishers to use so that purchases can be properly attributed. They are also using the Amazon Associates program for links on that site. Under the byline it says: “The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.” Affiliates work to generate revenue, “based on the trust we have in the brand.”
Of course, aside from The Guardian, publishers have been developing e-commerce/affiliate services in recent years, including The New York Times and Mail Online. The Independent is among them, describing e-commerce as one of its five key strategic growth pillars and recently revealed that revenue from the business was up 26%, with highlights including Black Friday and travel content. E-commerce is also part of media group Reach’s strategy to diversify away from advertising, with the company saying these areas are seeing “promising growth”.
The latest trends and predictions report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, published in January this year, also listed e-commerce as the fifth most important source of revenue for news publishers by 2024. E-commerce is typically when websites sell products themselves, while affiliate marketing is when websites promote goods from other retailers and earn a commission when clicks are made.
Link section in the publishing subsection of Znews.
Partner with businesses to bring products to newspaper readers?
In Vietnam, this issue has been carried out by some press agencies such as Vnexpress, Thanh Nien Newspaper with reviews on real estate, technology, cars... Many press agencies also review hospitals, clinics... but most of them are in the form of a small subsection or a series of news articles. Editor-in-Chief Nguyen Van Ba shared that Vietnamnet Newspaper has not been able to do it yet because this method is associated with e-commerce and is quite complicated. What he is most concerned about is that the psychology of newspaper readers and buyers in Vietnam is also very different.
Thinking that The Guardian's idea is very good but of course it is only a "problem" for large press agencies or agencies with a large readership, Mr. Nguyen Ba Kien - Editor-in-Chief of Vietimes magazine commented that this is a form of media association to sell products but the important thing is to maintain independence and objectivity in linking and evaluating products. Of course, this trend is not currently prominent in Vietnam, partly because it depends on human resources, the customer care department has not really been invested heavily.
Furthermore, as assessed by journalist Nguyen Hoang Nhat - Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Vietnamplus Electronic Newspaper (Vietnam News Agency), many newspapers in the world have implemented this method, but in Vietnam it has not yet become a trend because it is not easy to implement in practice. Partly because the current platforms are developing strongly so there is no need for communication, and partly because the conversion rate from readers to buyers is very low. Mr. Nhat also introduced a few press agencies that have been implementing this method, including Vnexpress, Tri Thuc Magazine (Znews.vn) ...
Sharing about this issue, a representative of Tri Thuc Magazine (Znews.vn) - one of the press agencies that has been doing this for many years now, said that the most important thing is to maintain independence, objectivity, and separation between comments and reviews and simple advertising to create trust for readers. Articles analyzing and evaluating products are presented in many different formats such as text, photos, videos, and graphics. In which, there is a clear analysis of what is good and what is not good about this product, comparison with similar products... For example, in the Publishing section of Tri Thuc, there are many objective reviews and reviews of good books. At the end of each article, there is a link to the book being displayed at the online bookstore so that the public can easily order it if they find it suitable and are satisfied with the quality.
Tri Thuc also encourages readers to send their own review articles for the Editorial Board to review and post, as at the end of each article about a book, there is a message: “If you read a good book, send a review to Tri Thuc - Znews. If you read a good book, you want to share your feelings and reasons why others should read that book, write a review and send it to us. Tri Thuc - Znews opens a section called “The book I read”, which is a forum to share book reviews sent by readers via Email: [email protected]. Articles must be accompanied by a photo of the book, the author’s name, and phone number. Sincerely”.
With this approach, Tri Thuc has many partners who are publishers, book distribution companies, and trusted e-commerce platforms. They can link up to sell products, and are also willing to book advertisements in other suitable sub-categories because "the core thing is that we respect objective reviews from the public, respect the public and their experiences..." - said a representative of Tri Thuc.
It can be said that the story of increasing revenue is always hot with autonomous newsrooms, moving towards autonomy and one of the ways to increase revenue through links, e-commerce is also a direction but not easy. This has been assessed by Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Thanh Lam: "The advertising trend is currently moving to digital space, e-commerce sales methods break the traditional commercial structure, there are many other ways to sell products that do not necessarily have to go through press agencies. Businesses have been looking for more effective ways to advertise. Brands are very concerned about the actual cost to convert to a customer, creating orders at the lowest level. We cannot adapt in time, nor can we have a social network mechanism, we follow that way".
With a certain number of readers and subscribers, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Lam believes that press agencies can take advantage of resources to become channels to participate in linking and distributing other services that do not conflict with press activities. “We can combine with businesses to bring products to newspaper readers. This will require current press business people to not only create content but also have knowledge about e-commerce, advertising, revenue trends, and cash flow in cyberspace…”, the leader of the Ministry of Information and Communications once affirmed.
Ha Van
Source: https://www.congluan.vn/lien-ket-tao-doanh-thu-nhu-the-nao-post317164.html
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