Turning Content Into Currency: Implementing Digital Sales to Drive Revenue

We’re back with the fourth blog in our Issuu Feature Series, where we’re chatting about all things related to creating immersive content experiences with Issuu’s best features! We’ve been showcasing features one-by-one, each week, with tutorials and ideas on how you can use these features to drive your digital content marketing and publishing strategy forward. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the other helpful blogs in this series:

1. The Digital Content Revolution: Creating and Embedding Dynamic Flipbooks

2. The Power of Visual Storytelling: Promoting Content With Stories

3. Like Print, But Better: Giving Readers a Top-Notch Experience With Fullscreen Sharing

Today, we’re taking a look at one of our most powerful features — our built-in Digital Sales tool that allows users to monetize their publications. As a content creator, marketer, designer, or even small business owner, content creation is simply step one when looking to leverage content to increase revenue. The real power lies in what you do with that content, how you market it, how you share it, and how you turn it into revenue.

At Issuu, we love helping our clients turn their content into a continual revenue source, which is why we built a Digital Sales feature directly into our platform. Let’s take a look at why you should be selling your digital content, how you can implement sales to drive revenue, and how simple it is to put this feature to work. What are you waiting for? Let’s dive in!

Why You Should Sell Your Digital Content

The demand for content marketing is rapidly increasing, with projections that the market’s value will reach USD $417.85 billion by 2025, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16%. There is no question that, with this growth, there is a large amount of money to be made in digital content publishing.

Why is digital content revenue an excellent way to add to your brand’s profits? For a few key reasons:

1. Low overhead: Digital publishing is much less expensive than traditional, print publishing methods. This allows you to make the most money possible from the content you produce.

2. Customer engagement: When you create compelling content that can be monetized, you’ll build a loyal customer base that returns to you for insights, thought leadership, or even entertainment. This is a great way to turn one-time clients into long-term followers.

3. Return on investment: You’re already spending money on content creation; why not turn this into a source of money for your business? Content revenue is a great way to fund additional digital marketing efforts.

How to Monetize Your Content Efforts With Digital Sales

It’s easier than ever to monetize your content efforts with our Digital Sales feature. This feature is available with a Premium or Optimum Issuu plan, and allows you to keep all of the profits. We never take a commission on any of your sales. You simply enable the feature on your desired publication(s) and we take care of the rest. Transactions are processed through Stripe, all completely within the Issuu platform.

When we built the Digital Sales feature, we wanted to create a user-friendly tool that would help Issuu creators take their publications to new heights. When you use Digital Sales, you will enjoy all of the following:

• The ability to customize your publication: What you want to sell is entirely up to you. Any content that you host and publish on the Issuu platform can be turned into a form of digital revenue. The beauty is that the eye-catching publication design of Issuu – the flipbook that you already know and love – is simply converted into a pay-wall-protected piece of immersive content.

• The option to sell once or as an ongoing subscription fee: Depending on what type of publication you’re selling, you can either opt to sell it as a one-time purchase (think a collection of poetry, a whitepaper, or a research paper) or as an ongoing subscription (such as magazines or continual publications).

• The ability to set up a captivating preview: Through the preview feature, you can give your viewers a sneak peek at your content, which can help them decide if they’d like to make a purchase. Make sure to select the most compelling preview possible, picking the best pages for them to get a glimpse of, to help encourage purchases.

Oceanographic Magazine is a perfect example of affordable, single-issue pricing matched with incredible aesthetics and a preview that leaves you wanting to read more. Check it out.

The Benefits of Utilizing Digital Sales

Using Issuu’s Digital Sales feature unlocks a myriad of benefits for your brand. By turning your content into currency, the compelling digital articles, magazines, or other publications you work hard to create can become a continual source of revenue. Publications that are hosted for sale on Issuu are easy to promote, too, with automatically-generated sharing links to drive people to your content from social media posts, emails, texts, and more.

Combining these efforts will improve and benefit your overall omnichannel marketing strategy by making it frictionless to reach customers across channels. We know that consumers are turning to digital publications for all kinds of information, like their news, entertainment, and research – so your content must be available where your customers already are. And, last but certainly not least, interactive content is key to providing a top-notch customer experience (CX). A great design and layout, coupled with intuitive navigation on any device, Fullscreen Sharing, and banner-free reading, makes your publications on Issuu worth paying for.

Need a little help getting started? Check out our quick video tutorial and start monetizing your best content today.

Stay Tuned for One Last Feature

For more information on this feature, check out our Intro to Digital Sales Guide where our dedicated customer success team has listed their best practices for implementing Digital Sales and doing so successfully.

We’re excited to continue to share our favorite Issuu features with you. Stay tuned for our fifth and final blog in our series next week. Remember, at Issuu, our passion is helping you transform your digital publishing experience. If you’re interested in trying out any of the features we highlight, sign up and give our platform a trial run.