One option is to create a non-profit, community-based news organization that doesn’t rely on advertising revenue. A good example is ProPublica, which is funded by donations from its audience. The Correspondent, a new venture in the Netherlands, likewise relies on reader donations. Members of the organization pay EUR70 a year to support its journalism, and recently launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise $2.6 million for an English edition.
A structured business plan will consider the costs and feasibility of the necessary technological investments, the staff and network infrastructure, and the types of services that will be offered. No company can survive if it only depends on advertising revenue, so it must have a variety of revenue sources to support its journalism. Those who make an effort to build a subscription-based newsroom will have a sustainable business model. But there’s no “silver bullet” solution to this problem.
Despite you always can get a partnership with a PEO company that help you with all the processes when you are starting and let you focus on the core of your business.
Besides focusing on the subscription model, there are some other possible business models. Online news can provide saturation coverage. But the key to this model is continuously updating content and maximizing repeat visits. Its content and audience are the defining elements of a news organization’s value proposition. Creating a subscription model based on subscription revenue will require a high investment, but it’s certainly a viable option.
A recent search of the trade and business press yielded 300 articles from the past five years. Experts believe that an interactive model has the greatest potential to capture the majority of online news consumers. However, many observers believe that this is not enough to be successful in the long run. The next five models will be based on the various inputs used by news organizations. These models include user fees, subscriptions, placements, and registration.