Careers That Don’t Suck Profile: Director of Monetization

Job Title: Director of Monetization
AKA: Director of Search Optimization, Director of Commercialization or Commercial Development, Business Development, other job titles that include references to product management, advertising, sales and monetization

What is it?

A Director of Monetization is responsible for finding ways to get more money or other benefits out of something you already own, whether it’s a piece of land, a business, a brand or advertising space on a blog.

What does a Director of Monetization do?

Directors of Monetization spend their time figuring out ways to make owning an asset as beneficial as possible. This means that s/he studies their employer or clients’ portfolios, looking at how much it costs to maintain that asset and the possible ways to get more benefits (lower insurance or tax costs, more income, more customers, etc) out of owning it.

Let’s say that you own a second home in Miami, and that you bought this home for $300,000 a few years ago. Let’s say it costs you $3000 per month to maintain this house, and that you only use the house 1-2 times per year. That means that you are paying a lot to use the house a little. So what do you do? You don’t want to give up your vacation house, right? Nope. You need to figure out how to monetize it to get it to pay for itself, or at least to cost you less money to own/maintain.

How do you monetize your vacation house? You can either (1) Rent it out when you are not using it, or (2) Sell partial ownership to someone else (get a partner to split the costs). Using it more is not a good monetization strategy because you would actually increase the cost of owning it by spending money on travel between your two homes.

This is a simple example, but if you can imagine that businesses own multiple assets that cost far more to own/maintain. These assets might include a business, domain names, web sites, a popular brand, stock in another company, technology, a patent or real estate.

A Director of Monetization would take those assets and figure out not only the number of ways the business could lower the cost and raise the benefits of owning the asset, but also to tell the business owners which way is best and why. The Director of Monetization is also responsible for developing a plan to carry out the strategy s/he recommends.

Monetization strategies:
Example 1: Your assets are domain names
Monetization Strategies: Create websites or blogs for all domain names, sell the domain names, or park the domain names until you can figure out what to do with them

Example 2: Your assets are web pages and blogs
Monetization Strategies: Improve your webpages to attract more visitors, advertise more, or sell advertising on your sites

Example 3: Your asset is a manufacturing plant (costs lots to maintain, produces one product in your product line)

Monetization Strategies: Sell the plant and be done with it, sell partial ownership in the plant and split the cost with another company that can use it to produce its products, or sell the plant but add a condition that the new owner must produce your product for you at a lower cost (on the condition that you’ll give them a good deal)

Who might like this job?

Anybody who likes to develop strategy

Anybody who likes to figure out ways to make money

Anybody who likes to work with a team to structure a (sometimes) complex deal

What does this pay?
$200k+ bonuses

To break in you’ll need…

If working in the Web or technology field, you’ll need at least a BA, plus extensive experience in sales and marketing (5 years+), and making money out of domain names, web sites, advertising and the like (3-5 years)

You’ll need an MBA (or an MA in Finance) in most other situations because the Director of Monetization will need to understand marketing, finance and other business specialties

You’ll also need to some expertise in whatever industry you go to work in. For example, if you go to work for a real estate development company or an investment firm or a web development company, you’ll need to know something about how each of those businesses work, how they make money, how they operate, who the players are, etc.

Key Skills

Analytical problem-solving

Research and analysis

Quantitative/financial modeling

Strategic thinking

So, who would you work for?
Most Directors of Monetization will work for Web development or publishing, search marketing or optimization, advertising and interactive and traditional media firms.

However, Directors of Monetization (by this and other names) exist within a variety of types of businesses, basically any business that owns assets that they need to monetize–consumer products (P&G, for example), pharmaceutical companies, research and development firms, patent holders, major shareholders or venture capitalists, and big conglomerates with varied holdings (GE).

To find current openings…

More information?

Search monetization to learn about monetization of government debt, in charitable organizations and in the Web industry.

What about this career doesnâ€™t suck?

Sexy deal-maker job that uses every bit of your brain–from creativity to number cruncher

Usually reports directly to CEO or top execs, so it’s high-profile

Can work for cool and/or big name firms of any size–startup to behemoth

Big bucks!

WorkYourWay Index (The Good Life Meter)

This job scored 100% on our WorkYourWay Index. That’s 55 out of 55. Discounted for stress-related to the high-stakes decision-making; medium-high barriers to entry–need at least a Masters, or significant, high-profile work experience and travel and working hours that can get heavy in the midst of the deal. Scores high marks for interesting, even cool work environment, high-profile, high pay, big bonuses, good benefits and definite path to the top!

Still want more?