Ideas for New digg Revenues
Hey, digg, I know you're looking for a Business Development Manager. You have my resume, but I thought I would lay out a few ideas to generate new revenues and extend the digg brand. If you like them, hire me.
1.digg Music – Record labels and artists would upload their own works to be streamed, commented on, dugg/buried, same as it ever was. But the agreements we put in place would allow digg users to download the tracks, DRM free of course, for a price set by the artists/labels themselves. We take a %, they take a %. It's an entirely new revenue stream for digg. Granted, a few of these sites exist already, but I have been severely unimpressed with what they have done. Plus, with the built in audience of digg, those sites would immediately become irrelevant. I believe digg could become a premier destination for music on the web because community promotion offers a huge differentiator that many music sites have been struggling to find, the filtering factor;
From here; Aside from price cuts, one factor can help determine which company will emerge as the market leader -- I'd call it the filtering factor. It's not enough to simply throw all your songs onto a site and expect users to find them, you need to have reviews and recommendations to help them out.
2.Tighter partnerships with movie/TV studios – Doesn't the idea of seeing the digg guy with an Indiana Jones hat and a whip instead of a shovel put a smile on your face? The digg community is always on top of every tidbit of info for new movies, we played the Batman Comic-Con game together, we ate up every morsel of Cloverfield viral marketing, we watch every new trailer posted anywhere on the web. Well, why isn't that big square ad on the homepage a video trailer for whatever flick is being released this Friday? How come when I go to Myspace (yes, I admit it, I still go to Myspace) the homepage is themed with some new movie/TV show but when I go to digg it's an ad for pimple cream? We are the juiciest target market for advertisers, we're employed young males with plenty of disposable income because apparently none of us have ever spoken with a girl. How about some fun easter eggs that take you to a micro-site for a new movie? You're telling me NBC doesn't want to have a Quarterlife video on the homepage of digg in the days before it premiers?
3.Selling the digg system to local news sites – I live in Miami, everyday I read the Miami Herald's site. Via digg, I wind up looking at many other local news sites. Each and every one of them have a 'most popular' or 'most read' section. Why not offer to manage a mini-digg like site for these local papers and their local readers. Let's face it, the newspapers are scrambling to figure out new ways to attract eyeballs online as they slash their print staff. But they have spent the last several decades in a different medium and still haven't learned how to adapt to the new news. Show them how they can dominate the local web by implementing a digg system for their site that they don't even have to manage or know how to program. It's another entirely new revenue stream for digg. You could possibly even integrate it with digg itself, perhaps a digg-local section.
4.digg Beer – just kidding. But hey, if you're going to hire me, I need to show I mesh with the company culture, right?
5.More effort placed on direct ad sales – Keywords are nice, Adwords is nice, but anyone that has been in advertising long enough will tell you that the most profitable way to sell ads is person to person. Why is digg not offering sectional sponsorship on a daily/weekly/monthly basis? I could see Obama or Clinton or McCain wanting to buy up space in Elections 2008. I could see Dell buying up the hardware section. I could see Chevy buying up the cars section, and so on. And everything on digg should be sold on a CPM basis, forget CPA or CPC. Again, digg has an extremely desirable userbase that marketers are constantly trying to reach, but digg needs to spend some time reaching out to them. Someone (me) needs to be banging phones on a regular basis.
6. digg Deals – Form partnerships with companies, let them put coupons/deals in an upcoming sections, let the digg community do what it does. Digg is now getting paid to let these companies submit items, a whole new revenue stream. $20 off at your favorite store, who doesn't give that a digg and print it out? The companies get a quantifiable ROI since each coupon could carry the digg logo, users get discounts, participating companies get new sales, new customers, and better brand enhancement. I hate to use the phrase, but that's win-win-win.
These are just a few ideas, some are probably better than others, and they were all conjured up in one brainstorming session (except for the music one). But this should give you an indication of what I could bring in and how I could help make you some more money. I've given you options for 3 new revenue streams and more effective ways to foster relationships with advertisers. And I might just be saving the best idea for my first day on the job.
