We browse through an enormous amount of free content every day on the Internet. The global average time spent browsing the internet on a smartphone is currently at 2 hours and 35 minutes. A majority of content that the average internet user consumes is free. In today’s digital economy, content publishers who provide exceptional content and who have websites that generate high traffic have the opportunity to monetize their content, be it directly or indirectly.
The Concept behind Monetization
As a general rule, when a website or web service is not selling something directly to the viewer, it sells advertising space to advertisers. This is how most websites are monetized. It is a way for publishers to generate income passively. In Mauritius, for the moment, it is complicated to generate passive income through valuable content published on websites. In some ways, like with the YouTube Partners Program, it is currently impossible. This is because Mauritius is not yet eligible as a country for the YouTube Partners Program.
Common Content Monetization Methods
Monetizing a high traffic website in Mauritius can be a challenge. This is due to the small size of the local market. However, there are several strategies that website owners and content creators are currently using in Mauritius. Let’s take a look at the methods currently being used in Mauritius:
- E-commerce
E-commerce is the most direct way to monetize a website’s content. If you have digital products catering to a specific niche of online customers, for example presets for software in the Adobe Suite, going the E-commerce way is a sure way to monetize your website. Of course, you can also sell physical products, like our friends at Priceguru do. Still under the umbrella of e-commerce is the, selling tutorials and courses. Content creators can develop tutorials to sell through their own digital ecosystem. Such creators may also rely on third-party services such as Skillshare or Udemy.
- Direct Selling of Digital Content
A tried-and-tested monetization method for content creators to make a revenue is to work with clients directly. This can be seen with the popularization of influencer marketing. When we take into account the potential of a truly integrated digital economy’s revenue-creating capacity, direct selling of content is not always an effective modus operandi in the long run. For the content creator, there is the risk of having their intellectual property devalued, or misappropriated. Suffice to say that the return on investment for content creation is not at its optimum in our current local digital economy.
- Banner Advertising
High traffic websites are like high traffic roads. They can be used as billboards. Website owners can sell advertising space to local businesses and corporations. This can include banner ads and other sponsored content such as native advertising. Such a method can be used as a strategy for a website to generate passive income. One of the most popular tools that allows this is Google AdSense. That being said, this service is far from being adequate for our local market. Revenues that are generated by Google AdSense are paltry, if not laughable. Furthermore, AdSense has its share of quirks with which publishers may not wish to deal. There is a definite monetization gap when it comes to banner advertising on our local market. Filling this gap is a core mission of Digitalgo.
- Affiliate Marketing
Partnering up with a particular brand to promote their products on your website is a monetization tactic that is available to high traffic websites. Evidently, this involves setting up an affiliate tag on the advertiser’s website. In Affiliate Marketing scenarios, website owners who advertise products usually earn a commission for every sale made through a unique affiliate link.
- Subscription Model
Premium content and services enable content creators to monetize their website. This model is used by media outlets such as The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, and Le Figaro. Subscribers can usually pay monthly or annually. There are many websites that offer videos, podcasts, and other types of content that are locked behind what is colloquially now known as a paywall. The subscription model is also popular with Software as a Service (SaaS) companies such as Adobe.
- Sponsored Content
Any content creator that has a significant following can guest-publish on a website to monetize their content. Guest blogging is a great example through which influential writers and content creators monetize their opinions. This model is often used by the most prolific Social Media Influencers, who use their following to represent brands with which they identify.
The Monetization Gap to be bridged in Mauritius
There is a definite gap to be bridged in the realm of content monetization in Mauritius. For the moment, the only thing that content creators can focus on is building an identity. With the planned investments that are being made in the digitalization of Mauritius, it is only a matter of time before passive income methods become a staple for Mauritian content creators. Monetization strategies usually depend on the audience of a website.
Any website owner who wishes to monetize publications should ideally have a good understanding of the type of audience they are entertaining, and their niche market. When this type of information is correlated with local market conditions, it is possible to start forecasting income that can be generated through content monetization. Currently, the demand for digital content is at an all-time-high. As proposed in our Overview of the Digital Industry in Mauritius 2023, the digital industry has become a socioeconomic pillar. In 2023, digital creators have a potential reach of 878,700 digital consumers. The offer from digital services, however, can be considered as quite low. This is where a service like ours at Digitalgo can level the playing-field.
The Digitalgo Method
We operate on a closed ecosystem. This means that Digitalgo is in a position to equalize the real-time bidding environment. Our ecosystem to scale the offer proportionally to the demand. What this basically means is that websites with better traffic will receive higher revenue, proportional to the Mauritian market: the Cost per Mile (CPM) will be more aligned with our local market.