March 29, 2006

The Importance of Generating Online Revenue

According to an article in today's New York Times, "3 Out of 4 Visitors to the Met Never Make it to the Front Door," by Carol Vogel, many millions more people interact with the Metropolitan Museum's website than step foot into the Met's building on 5th Avenue. 15 million people per year visit this museum's website and 4.5 million visit the physical museum.

While I would think that the ratio would be much higher - that say for every one museum visitor, there would be something like 15 to 20 website visitors - the point of the article is that the Met generates significant revenue through its website. According to the NY Time's article, $6.5 million is generated online through the sale of memberships, merchandise sales and fundraising.

While a certain percentage of this total online revenue would have been generated whether or not it was processed through the museum's website, the main point is that this website and the websites for more and more museums represent significant sources of revenue for these arts institutions.

In the dance world, unfortunately, dance companies - from large to small - have not yet taken any meaningful steps to generate revenue from their web presence. I think that this situation should be rectified. For starters, dance companies, like most artists and arts organizations, need to generate more revenue. But most importantly there are practical steps that dance companies can take today that will help them generate additional sources of revenue by exploiting the opportunities offered by the online world. Digital content can be sold in the form of videos, online fundraising campaigns can be launched and larger audiences can be attracted to upcoming performances.

I'll continue to write about these various online revenue generating opportunities for dancers and dance companies in upcoming posts.

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