Here is a new unique monetization model for your website which results in a win-win situation. It involves syndicating the latest news to your website in the form of video and other media and getting paid for it!
You are able to select news feeds from certain relevant categories and have these video news releases synidicated to your site and get paid for showing them on a CPM basis!
This is a great form of advertising that can really add value to your visitors.
Where to get Video News Feeds that Pay
If you are writing a news-based blog, or simply
want to comment on some aspect of current affairs, the ability to
quickly find relevant video, audio, images and even text-based press
releases may well prove a very useful resource. It is one thing to
write about something, and another to be able to illustrate your points
with video footage, whether a live report from the scene, or a product
demonstration.
But quality video clips can sometimes be hard to come by. In my previous review of the excellent News Market
I discussed one very useful resource for those seeking out news media
to syndicate. Well, now there is another great contender. The NewsRoom is a must-see for anyone looking to get hold of up-to-the-minute video clips and more.
This easy-to-use syndication service is a one-stop shop for
news-hunters, thanks to a newly rolled out set of features, that
include custom news-feed creation, monetization, and the addition of a great many news corporations to an already impressive roster of content providers.
If you are looking to not only find relevant,
timely news media to embed into your website and blog, and to be paid
while you do so, you owe it to yourself to check out this well-featured
service.
Here’s why:
The NewsRoom – Overview
The NewsRoom is a news content syndication market, free for anyone to sign up
to, which provides you with an intuitive interface to search for and
embed video, audio, images and press releases directly into your blog
or website.
This content has been sourced from vast range of providers, including both international agencies such as Reuters and Associated Press, and niche online publishers including HowStuffWorks and Insider Medicine,
with plenty in between. This gives you a good range of content to
select from, and saves you having to look for media direct from each of
the numerous sources.
In addition to making this content freely available, The NewsRoom
also operates a monetization scheme, by which you are compensated both
for featuring syndicated media files on your website or blog, and also
for enabling others to do so.
Searching for Content
With a vast range of content providers and a number of categories to choose from, most popular niche-themes will be well catered to by the content featured on The NewsRoom. The news categories available are:
- U.S.
- Local
- World
- Business
- Politics
- Health
- Science
- Entertainment
- Sports
- Life
- Press Releases
- Reference
While that is an impressive range, I would
personally like to see the addition of a tech category, given the
popularity of such subject matter within the blogosphere that The NewsRoom
is ostensibly reaching out to. This is one area that the site currently
seems somewhat lacking in content for, as compared to its nearest
competitor The News Market.
That small point aside, the breadth of content is impressive, and I
was particularly impressed by the inclusion of a reference section,
comprised of “how to” type videos that might prove to be very popular
over time.
Categories aside, which you can access from a navigation-bar along the top of the screen, the search features of The NewsRoom
are excellent. In addition to a basic search, whereby you can search by
keyword, there is also an advanced search option, which helps you to
filter down your selection significantly:
As you can see, you can narrow your search not only
by category, but by content provider, media-type and date-range, which
should give you all you need to home in on the exact type of news
content that you are looking for.
I would recommend making use of this feature right from the off,
unless you are looking to browse aimlessly for a significant amount of
time. As The NewsRoom is far from short of content, this could save you from wasting several hours poring over the options.
Content is certainly easy to navigate and scroll through, however, with an impressive amount of videos and press releases summarized on the average single page.
Each media-type has its own icon – a small TV for
video, a document for press releases – along with a brief summary.
Furthermore it is possible to both bookmark content direct from the
summaries – for later consumption – or indeed get the embed information
so that you can transfer the media to your blog instantaneously,
without so much as a preview.
While I personally prefer to check what I’m getting first, this is a
nice feature that enables quick and easy content sharing. If you see
something that looks ideal, or that you want to check back on at a
later date, these features will save you a lot of time.
Clicking on the title of a news item will take you through to a full
description, along with a preview of the video or other media file as
it will look within your website.
Once you have made your selection you are ready to embed the content into your blog or website, which is a very straightforward process.
Embedding Syndicated Content
Throughout The NewsRoom website, wherever there is content, you will see a small button, marked with an ‘M‘ for mash. Mashing content is how The NewsRoom
describes the syndication process – you are taking one media source,
and mixing it in with another, just as musicians, video-makers and
programmers do in their respective circles to create a Mash-up.
Clicking on this button, wherever you see it, will open up a small
dialogue 
box through which you can get the relevant information for
plugging content into the pages of your blog or website. From here you
are initially required to agree to some terms of service, before being
able to choose the size of media player that you would like to use.
Once you have selected which option is most suitable for you, you are then given an embed code, similar to that you will see on any web widget, YouTube video or in the countless other places around the web where media sharing is enabled.
Basically, you copy the code given, and then paste it into the body
of your blog, or the HTML code of your website. It will then display
the media content wherever you have placed the code.
While The NewsRoom does feature audio and image
files, the vast majority of the content I found available was either in
text-based press release form, or video format.
I imagine that the videos will be most popular, especially given
that the text files are embedded in such a way that you can neither
highlight or copy and paste the contents. This also means that any
text-based content that you embed into your site will not be
acknowledged by either the search engines or your contextual
advertising program. For me, this is a problem, and I would much rather
reword or copy and paste press releases than embed them in their
entirety, but this is a personal preference.
What is nice about the text reader is that files
are paginated, and can be browsed without scrolling, which will suit
the layout of some websites and prove to be of real use.
Video files use a simple, minimal player that can
be embedded either with a full-text description beneath, as in the
example below, or else with a single line of description under the
title in a slightly more compact version. The difference is quite
minimal.
I found the videos to play remarkably quickly, even on an old
machine, which is a welcome break from the more laggy experience of
YouTube, which seems to vary greatly in its performance. That said, it
must be noted that there is a significant difference in audience
figures between the two sites. Nevertheless, by making a simple but
effective video player that just works, The NewsRoom have done well. See for yourself:
Playlists and Feeds
You are not limited to embedding single items, however. Two features add a lot to the sharing equation: playlists and feeds.
As I mentioned previously, as you browse through video files you
have both the capacity to instantly embed your findings, or else save
them for later use by clicking on a ‘bookmark‘ button, which looks like the one below:
Every time you bookmark a new item it will appear in a sidebar to
the left of the screen. Then, if you click through to the playlists
page, you are presented with the opportunity to either delete or add
your tagged items to a media playlist, which you can then embed into
your website. This gives you the power to mix and match content to suit
your own agenda, and is a pared-down version of the sort of features
you can find in the Splashcast media platform.
To add a video to your current playlist, you simply click on an
arrow icon, and is transported to the list for you to further edit:
From the main playlist itself, you can create a
name for your collection, change the sequence of the videos by moving
them up or down the playlist with more arrow icons, or – should you
change your mind – send the video back to your tagged items list for
use at a later date.
This makes putting together a playlist very straightforward. A lot more so than other video sharing sites, including YouTube, which has a glitchy, somewhat unpleasant approach to stringing videos together.
In addition to playlists you can also create
dynamic news feeds. The difference here is that where a playlist will
always display the same videos, regardless of how fresh or dated they
are, a feed will automatically update content within parameters that
you choose.
The simplest type of video feed available is a category-based feed.
This feed will automatically display a list of videos from whichever
category you select, giving your site visitors the latest sports or
health news for instance.
More exacting users might want to take advantage of
a more advanced new feature – the custom feed. Here you have the chance
to further hone the content that will be featured in your line-up.
As you can see for yourself, there are an impressive range of
parameters that allow you to limit the content served by category,
media-type, provider and most importantly keyword search terms. You can
also determine how many items will be displayed in your feed, and set a
relevancy level to control how strict or lax the system is with your
search terms.
At the time of writing this feature is only
available for video files, but as this relatively new service evolves,
the ability to include different media types in your feed is promised.
Again, I imagine the outcome to be a pared-down version of the
mixed-media capabilities on show in Splashcast, albeit with the benefit of a news-only focus.
Monetization
Finally, it is worth discussing monetization, which is a very welcome addition. Essentially, monetization works on the basis of a CPM – cost per mille
– model, meaning that you receive payment for every thousand ad
impressions. Regardless of whether your audience clicks on the ad, or
ignores it entirely, you will receive your payment. That’s the good
news.
The bad news is that unless you command considerable web traffic,
you are unlikely to see any enormous revenues coming your way. The NewsRoom
pays out in two ways – for content on your own site, and for content
that has been embedded elsewhere due to its existence on your site.
The payouts look like this:
As you can see, you stand to make more from video
than you do with text or images, and the highest payer of all is a
video feed, given that it serves up multiple news items rather than
just one. While the maximum of $4.00 might mean it could take a while
before smaller websites see a weighty check being delivered to their
door, ad impressions could well build over time.
As I said, you aren’t going to get rich quick this way, but the
addition of monetization to the media-sharing mix is a great idea, and
is a vast improvement on the $0.00 you will receive for embedding the
majority of web video.
Conclusions
The NewsRoom is an
invaluable media resource for those looking to locate high-quality,
professional video and other media content to use in their blogs or
websites. Whether you are writing a niche-news blog, or want to add
your commentary on the latest current affairs, it’s great that you can
now get well-made media clips to complement your work.
What’s even better is the fact that you will actually get paid for
not only embedding this content into your blog, but also for anyone
else that chooses to do so after finding it on your website. If I find
a great video clip while reading your blog, and decide I want to use it
in my own post, I can easily get the embed code to do so. Meanwhile,
you will be paid for every thousand people that view the media clip on
my site, not just your own.
Okay, unless you bring in a lot of traffic it is
unlikely that you are going to make a killing from the $0.50 to $4.00
CPM you will receive, but nevertheless, it’s a nice idea to reward you
twice – once with content you can use without having to fear a
take-down order, and once with modest but fair compensation for
syndicating the news content.
The NewsRoom has a great
range of categories, and more content providers than I could list here.
As such, it shouldn’t be too hard to find media that you can easily
syndicate and use to enhance your own grassroots media.
The service is 100% free to use, and makes finding news items easy,
given that you don’t have to filter through reams of user-generated
content as you might at YouTube.
In short if you are looking for an easy way to enhance your existing content with professional grade corporate news, The NewsRoom is well worth checking out.
[Originally written by Michael Pick for Master New Media and originally published as: “Video News Releases That Pay: Syndicate The Latest News Clips And Monetize Your Blog“ under Creative Commons]
