No one can undermine the emergence and the innovation of an online radio stations. All over the internet, we have hundreds if not thousands of online radio owners, with creative online radio DJs and OAPs. And this has tremendously draw the attention of millions of internet users, who are basically radio lovers and those who love music, to dedicate their time in following the programmes schedule on daily basis. But, do you know that you too can make a lot of money running an online radio station? How much can you make with your online radio station?
It is a general phenomenal that most conventional radio owners (religious, music, broadcasting, etc), hardly make money through their stations due to serious charges placed on them. Are you thinking of starting an online radio station? Then you need to know the rudiments of building an online target audience for yourself.
 
Depending on the type of radio show you are running; talk, news/documentary, music, etc, you can truly get in touch with your target audience and affect them in a way that will make them stick to your station alone and become loyal to you.

Have A Target Market/Audience

The most disastrous case is creating a business without a target market or customer. Let’s say your format is a talk show, you should target grown ups. Whereas if it is a music show, your target audience will be basically the youth (though this depends on the type music anyway). You must try to define your audience in essence so as to focus on the traffic they are going to generate afterwards for you. It is always good to target a wide range of audience in running an online radio.

Have A Specific Niche

The next thing you must do after creating a target audience is to create a niche. An area of concentration in that your radio station should be clearly stated and determined, so as to make sure you have your audience behind you always. Niche is the product/service or unique topic you are offering to an audience. You must understand the following when creating a niche–Your message or vision, type of music you want to play, geographic area you are covering, age bracket of the listeners and of cause, listeners’ interests.

Do A Thorough Marketing Of The Station

Marketing is a means of creating awareness for your product/service by resourcing your target client/customers or end users/advertisers that the product or service is meant for, for the sole purpose of generating revenue for yourself. As an online radio owner, you must have a concrete marketing plan for your online business that will help you in gaining audience and ultimately make you generate a lot of income. It all starts from your marketing strategy.

Drive Traffic To Your Radio Station

The fastest way to gain a large audience following your programmes on online radio station is to drive traffic to your website. Internet radio can only be heard by internet users, hence, internet radio station owners should be able to create dedicated online presence by generating audience traffic through social media, search engine optimization (SEO), online fora, etc. With this, your intending audience will see your site and like it and eventually stick to it. So get yourself the popularity and create your audience awareness.

Get Revenue Through Advertising

The more popular you are, the more advertisers you will get and the more they will spend. Advertisers pay to have their ad in a banner on the stations website or to be heard on the station through On-Air Personality, commercials or live reads. But firstly, you need be heard by advertising yourself, before you can really create interesting audience and make substantial amount of money. Also, advertisers can sponsor events organized and hosted by the station that will not only bring you revenue, but also awareness for your own projects! You can offer to put up their banners, even hand out flyers promoting your online radio station and its shows or events. When you reserve a spot for your advertisers these flyers pay for themselves.
 Another way to get money is through endorsement, press conference/briefing, product launch and event coverage. All these will generate money for your station. Hence, your radio station must have some level of popularity and you should create advert format before it can generate the desired income or ROI.

Get Money Through Promotional Stuffs

You can also make money by selling your promotional stuffs like books, handouts, creative ideas, through the help of your online store. You can also help people promote their market through your own online store which you can create with ebay.com.

Easy Access To Your Webpage

One truth about end users is that, they do not like to troubleshoot on websites before they can get the service or product they need. Your webpage should be designed in such a way that it will be easy for your audience to access. Access to your website is essential, this way, a listener can simply click and access your station content without any technical hassles.
So, it is important to have these different players available on site since text files (notepad text files) has a “.txt” extension, this will need to be changed to match each media player’s corresponding extension, file extensions like– .pls for Winamp and ITunes, .qtl or QuickTime, .ram for RealPlayer or .asx for Windows Media Player.

Create Sweepers, Promos and Jingles For Your Station

These areas typically play after every two or three songs. The benefit in using each format offers ways to keep the name and style of the station always on the listener’s mind. These above three formats serve the following purposes: Sweepers announce the station’s name, frequency and domain name address, promos announce upcoming station events along with the station name, frequency and domain info and jingles use sound effects, music and turns of expression to sell the station’s brand in a clever way.

Creating Listeners’ Interaction And Feedback

Talking with listeners all the time is a way of getting their attention to stick with you. With internet radio, listeners interactions can happen on multiple fronts, some of which include – On-air, Social media networks, Skype, Over the phone, Text messages, Chat room, Google voice etc. Listener interactions also provide an easy way to get feedback and find new ideas for growing the listening audience.

Include Celebrities Or Guests ‘Talk Show’ In Your Program

Lastly, one of the ways of which your station can get cheap and quick popularity with large audience and revenue base is by inviting celebrities or well known people to your program In this way, your audience will join you in celebrating successful figures in the society by listening to what they have to pass across to them in that particular show.
The guests could be local musicians whose songs get regular airplay. They could be artists or bloggers from your area,  as long as they can offer insight on current news or the state of music trend.
To cap it, creating and managing an online radio station can be time consuming and capital intensive, but please be assured that if you can do all aforesaid, you can rake in millions of dollars from your internet radio station.