Calendar Not Found: The requested calendar URL was not found. Please contact the website owner. Monetization - Parmis Design

Monetization

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1. Charge via the Post Your Event button – EventPromote

Learn how to Set up EventPromote here.

You are providing the service of promotion. People are spending their time to post their events to your site – it is the perfect time to ask them to pay for additional services to get their event seen by more people.

Some Hubs also hide the front-end posting button behind password/member protected walls and they charge an annual fee to have access to posting to their site.

Other sites allow front-end posting to be free, but charge to subscribe to a feed (saving the business from manually posting to their site).

And I’ve also seen other sites that allow both front-end posting & feeds for free – but only to current advertisers.. reducing advertising/sponsorship churn and strengthening the arrow in their advertising sales team’s quiver.

2. Advertising

A traditional vertical array of businesses paying to be seen by your users.

Step 1: Have a signup page showing exactly how their ads will be seen

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Step 2: Advertise that a spot is available

There should be a link on the ad to your advertising signup page.

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Step 3: Provide a media kit

Whose your audience, what is your traffic, growth, etc. This is your opportunity to brag. If you’re just getting going, sell your vision and growth numbers.

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Step 4: Include testimonials

Potential advertisers love hearing that it’s working for others.

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Step 5: Give weekly or monthly stats

Advertisers need to know that their money is being well spent. Remember that their marketing budget is constantly being competed for. Send out a regular update showing them that you’re the best bet in driving their business forward.

 

Step 6: Provide a discounted renewal option

Reduce your churn. It is more cost effective for a customer to renew than to acquire a new one… and existing customers like to feel they’re being treated better than the average bear.

 

Google AdSense


If you have open spots you just can’t fill.. AdSense is a free, simple way to earn money by placing ads on your website. I recommend going this route as a last resort – revenue is generally slim, ads aren’t usually local, and you aren’t building any relationships with your advertisers/sponsors.

3. Sponsorship

Businesses prefer to be called sponsors, partners or featured, rather than advertisers.
(the Advertiser steps above still apply)

Step 1: Get more creative in how you promote them

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Step 2: Scale – Landing pages for more calendars

When speaking at the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies conference, I was poised with the remark “I can only charge $50/mo per ad on my calendar page, and I can only fit 4 ads.”

My response – “You’re making $200/mo, then have more calendars.”

Consider landing pages based on location/neighbourhood, topic, audience, etc.. each can have it’s own style and sponsorship opportunities. Use the Widget Creator to embed only those relevant events on those respective pages.

Best practices have shown that a toy store is much more likely to advertise on the Parenting calendar page, or a restaurant on their Neighbourhood calendar page.

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4. Landing pages for services & venues

Business directories can rock – if you do them well.

Here’s how:

  • Keep them standardized
  • Keep a clean look
  • Use images/pictures
  • Keep people on your site, retain the value. Only provide url links if the business has paid you for that privilege
  • Have an easy signup & edit system for businesses to create their pages and make changes as needed. Automate the process
  • Embed the business’ upcoming events in their landing page as an automated way to keep their page fresh

Have a general listing page (some Hubs do this for free to entice businesses to pay for a linking, individualized page)

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Which links to their individualized page. Notice the beginning of the calendar embed at the bottom

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5. Promotional Services

Slightly more laborious than other revenue strategies. Here’s a few ways you can promote a business or their events… though you can tie these into your EventPromote (see #1 above)

Featured events

You can embed featured events either above your main calendar, on your homepage, or anywhere else you choose.
Note: putting the featured events widget on your homepage and your full calendar on another drives more value for featured events

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Newsletter

Automate this process by using the MailChimp integration. Every Sunday, it will distribute what’s happening that week to your email list.

Other ideas to either:

  1. Get weekly/monthly newsletter sponsors.
  2. ie. What’s happening this week brought to you by….
  3. Only include events that are paying you, with a link to your full calendar.
  4. ie. Here’s the Top 10 thing happening this week <list events>. For a full listing, click here <link to calendar>.

Coming Soon:

6. Affiliate commissions

Earn a % of every new Timely subscription that comes from your site. Build revenue while you’re also building your network.
If you’re interested in joining the beta program – please reply.

7. Share on ticketing commission/fees

Earn a share of commission/fees from tickets or registration bought for events on your site.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][/vc_section]


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