Making Money from Content

For so long, ecommerce has been defined as “and soon there will be a day when you’re watching ‘Friends’ and you’ll be able to click on Jennifer Aniston’s sweater and buy it.” This idea of “buying Jennifer Aniston’s sweater” T-commerce (a.k.a. television commerce) cropped up around 2001. For some demented reason, we all thought that was the ultimate future of content and commerce. Click an item online and buy. It would be the beginning and end of monetizing content. I heard that scenario played out again and again at conferences. Why specifically Jennifer Aniston? And why her sweater? Prior to those discussions I’ve NEVER heard a single woman ever say, “I want to buy Jennifer Aniston’s sweater. Where did she get it?” Have you? If there’s never been any demand of anyone wanting to buy Jennifer Aniston’s sweater, then why were we all collectively so obsessed with that scenario?

Since then we’ve seen that content doesn’t have to be monetized so directly. That content is used to build brand, build voice, and create associations of your company’s brand with the content’s brand. And in other cases we can see that content can help us sell things directly by giving us the information we need to make a purchase. Then there are the endless variations in between. Have a favorite?