How Technically Media makes money [CHART] 6.29.11 0
by Sean Blanda in Case Study

At Technically Media, we strongly believe in pushing the journalism conversation forward, especially concerning the sustainability of content online.

When we launched Technically Media with our first property, Technically Philly, in 2009, we knew traditional display advertising was not a realistic means of funding content. So we staked out to try and experiment with a handful of revenue sources. The experiment is still on-going, but we’d like share our results thus far. That is, we’d like to share the sources of the revenue that makes us a profitable business.

The charts below illustrate revenue earned in 2010 and 2011. The charts were created and compiled by TM co-founder Brian James Kirk for Rowan professor Mark Berkey-Gerard who spent a week at our offices conducting academic research about how we operate. The charts were made to help Mark better understand our business and had the side effect of forcing us to evaluate where we receive our revenue.

Some notes:

• “TM Consulting” is the editorial strategy services that we offer businesses and non-profits. For our clients, we are tasked with building an audience to be converted into supporters, donors or customers. For more information on our consultancy, be sure to read our services page or drop us a line or page through our PowerPoint presentation on the subject.
• Many of the Technically Philly grants expire before the end of 2011, so in future years that slice of the pie may look much different, but we continue to pursue new grant opportunities.
• Technically Philly’s advertising doesn’t pull in much revenue. However, we do not spend nearly as many hours on advertising as we do for events or consulting business development. Advertising is often combined with some other type of sponsorship. Were we to have a dedicated sales person, this chart may look much different.
• Philly Tech Week, a large part of our event revenue income, was in its first year in 2010.

Technically Media is profitable and supports three full-time employees: myself, Brian James Kirk and Christopher Wink. We’re each co-founders of the business and joined full-time in June 2010, December 2010 and May 2011, respectively.

We view this company as an ongoing experiment, and we are proud of our first two-and-a-half years. We hope that insight into our internal revenue can help inspire or educate other content creators who share our vision of creating sustainable editorial properties.