Monetisation made easy…

Repackaging your evergreen content brings in bonus revenue

By John Wilpers

Co-Founder/Partner, Katahdin Media Management

At the end of the day, every publisher has the same question: “What do I need to do today to survive tomorrow?”

We all know there are no silver bullets (duh!), but there are some strategies that are quicker, easier, and better than others, at least in the short run.

And, no: NFTs, bitcoin, and AI are not among our top suggestions.

Over the next several weeks, we will look at the least expensive, quickest, easiest, highest-ROI revenue options you have to choose from to diversify your revenue and solidify your financial base.

Monetize evergreen content

We all love reusable stuff. 

Pay for it once, but use it over and over again — almost for free as it were.

As publishers, it’s a rare day when we can take a product we’ve already created and sold once, package it a little differently, and then sell it again! 

It’s a manufacturer’s dream.

But that’s the case with evergreen content. 

You’ve already spent a lot of money to create the content. Now, with a little extra work, you can make money with the same content once again by resurrecting it in a variety of forms.

(What if you don’t have evergreen content? Scroll to the bottom!)

What are the financial benefits?

Repackaged evergreen content can deliver: 

• Page views for advertisers

• Tools to attract new readers or subscribers

• Content for a new paid newsletter

• Content for a paid stand-alone special collection

• New video content to support video advertising

• Collections as a benefit of paid memberships

• And more

Beyond that, evergreen content also:

• Creates workload efficiency

• Builds your online authority

• Drives organic traffic

• Results in high search engine ranking

• Builds backlinks and reduces website bounce rates

Evergreen content already delivers

For most publishers, evergreen content is already working hard for you without any repackaging or promotion. 

At Wired, 40% of all visits are to evergreen stories: Twenty percent of visits are to stories between one week and six months old, and 20% are stories older than six months, according to the company. 

At The Atlantic, more than half of the traffic in a given month comes from content not produced in that month, MD of Editorial and Insights/Atlantic 57 Lymari Morales told What’s New in Publishing.

At B2B pubs, more than 60% of traffic comes from organic search, with evergreen content being a major driver, according to BrightEdge. 

And that’s all without active promotion or repackaging of the content.

So, not only should creating evergreen content be a regular part of your content creation process, but you should also make the marketing and monetization of it a regular part of your promotion and product development planning process.

ADVICE: One key to repackaging success is to pay attention to SEO and keywords. “Research for emerging (and related) keywords you can rank for: This will enable you to reword different chunks and include sections that cover a specific business problem,” according to Mario Peshev, founder of tech consultancy DevriX. 

CAUTION: If the content you are repackaging was created by a freelancer, make sure there are no usage rights issues.

Best examples of evergreen content

If your publishing niche is food, healthcare, wellness, fitness, gaming, sport, parenting, careers, love, travel, and finance, your content is tailor-made for evergreen monetization.

For example, The New York Times launched its NYT Cooking offering in 2014, made it a subscription service in 2017, and announced in Dec. 2021 that it had reached one million paid subscribers at US$1.25/week. The NYT Games subscription service, launched the same year, also hit one million subscribers in 2021 and charges the same rate.

So, whether you put your repackaged evergreen content in a new paid newsletter or use it as a subscription enticement or whatever, here are some of the forms repackaged evergreen content can take:

• Buying Guides

• Beginners’ Guides

• Collections (of pieces around a theme)

• Historical photo albums

• Listicles

• Insiders’ Guides

• How-To Guides

• Answer Common Questions

• “Ultimate” Guides

• Checklists

• Common Mistakes, Lessons Learned, Failures, Successes

• Case Studies

• Resources

• Glossaries

• History

But we don’t have evergreen content

Some publishers just don’t do this kind of stuff, especially smaller newspapers. If you haven’t, though, you should. Pull a writer off a story that will live once and die to work on something with a long and potential profitable afterlife. Have him or her spend time with your content analytics to get a sense of the hottest areas of interest among your readership (crime, entertainment, sports, history). Then do keyword research to see what’s hot. Use the two results to direct your evergreen content planning, and add evergreen content brainstorming to your story meetings. 

We do this kind of work with media companies all around the world and would be happy to chat with you for free about your situation. Reach out via email (john@katahdinmediamanagement) or text (+1-617-688-0137).