10 Ways to Make Your Live Stream Generate Income

10 Ways to Make Your Live Stream Generate Income

In our previous blog, we discussed the main COSTS of webcasting / streaming production. Those costs can be minimized if you do things “on the cheap”, but likely they will be fairly substantial if you are using professionals to get true broadcast-quality results. In this second blog post,we will cover ways to recoup your investment and hopefully generate long-term incomes to help defray the costs of webcasting.

1. Sell or Rent the video recording

The most obvious way to generate revenue is to sell the recording of the event. As long as you have a sizable enough audience who either missed the live stream or want to own a copy of it, this can be a significant source of income. There are a number of platforms to sell or rent your videos and some stream hosts offer integrated options for monetization after the event. The most common method is to offer the event recording on DVD.

2. PPV (Pay-Per-View) Fees

Another simple and obvious way to generate revenue is to charge for access to the event feed itself (a la pay-per-view TV) . Most streaming hosts allow you to set a price and collect fees right in the browser window that the viewer uses to watch the event. Unless you are offering up a Heavyweight Title Fight,  these fees should be modest to entice the largest possible audience. 1,000 viewers at $5 will bring in more money that 100 viewers at $20.

3. Mid-stream Advertisements

Just like traditional broadcast TV, you can bring in money by placing ads in the stream. While not considered the best method (and it sometimes can be a turn-off for viewers) it IS an option and is becoming more commonplace. Besides, Broadcast TV has been conditioning viewers for this for decades.

4. Channel Subscriptions

In addition to single PPV fees, an alternative is to sell subscriptions to your channel. This is only a viable method if you are a regular producer of videos but it offers a good long-term tool for keeping your streaming channel funded and your audience interested.

5. Sponsorship from Businesses

Another great way of generating income is to offer sponsorships. Businesses are always looking for more exposure, especially with video, so offering inexpensive sponsorship ads is a great way for them to target specific niche markets, locales or industries.

6. Event Admission Fees

Separate from your live stream, if the event has a live audience you could also charge admission to the event itself. This seems obvious, I know, but it is standard practice for most events so don’t overlook it. Regular services at Houses of Worship being an obvious exception.

7. Replay your event Live

If the initial streaming of your live event did not meet your financial expectations why not re-broadcast it? After the time and effort you put in to staging the initial event, you want to get the most return on your investment so re-running the event during a limited window of exposure (as opposed to making it available on-demand) is a viable option that can create excitement all over again.

8. Syndication

Another way to increase revenue is to broker deals with other businesses or streaming channels to re-stream your event in exchange for a licensing fee.

9. Sell Your Content to other channels

In addition to syndication (or as an alternative), another great source of income is to sell recordings of your previous shows to other streaming channels, television &/or radio stations, etc. for them to re-broadcast.

10. Group Discounts

Offer Schools, Churches, Businesses, Governments and other large institutions group discounts for subscriptions, video purchases or rentals, PPV access and more.

So there you have it, 10 bonafide ways to generate income from your stream to help offset the costs of webcasting. Now go out there and CREATE!