A powerful way to think about this comes from Adam Ryan, who argued on Ecommerce Conversations that ecommerce firms should operate like media companies. The core idea is to stop viewing content as a marketing expense line and start thinking of it as an asset with its own potential for generating value. This reframes your entire archive of intellectual property from a sunk cost into commercial inventory.
The first step is to apply what Marshall Morris, on Ecommerce Playbook, calls finding your “hidden assets.” This means conducting a thorough audit of everything you've ever created. This includes old blog posts, evergreen guides, user-generated content, all of your product photography and videography, customer testimonials, and even anonymized data trends. As the hosts of the EcomCrew Ecommerce Podcast consistently argue, this library of content is a massive, long-term competitive advantage that you can draw from again and again.
Once you’ve cataloged your assets, the next step is repurposing them. The goal is to take a single large piece of content and atomize it into dozens of smaller pieces for different channels. An old, comprehensive blog post can become a series of tweets, an infographic, a short video script, several email newsletter sections, and a carousel for Instagram. Product photography isn't just for your PDP, it can become part of your email templates or social media backgrounds. You can take existing assets and reformat them specifically for channel-based opportunities, like turning your best content into what David Wilson described as Enhanced Brand Content for your Amazon listings.
With your assets organized, you can pursue two forms of monetization. The indirect route is the most familiar: using content to fuel your SEO, build your email list, and establish brand authority. You're not selling the content itself, but using it to attract an audience that you then sell your products to. This is the foundation of a solid content strategy.
The direct route is where the media company mindset really clicks. Here, the content itself becomes the product. Could an archive of your 50 best articles be compiled into a paid ebook? Could your expertise be packaged into a short course? In its most extreme form, as Adam Ryan pointed out, your content operation could become so valuable that it’s an acquisition target on its own, completely separate from your physical product business. This is the ultimate form of Revenue stream diversification.
Where does this framework break down? It requires a genuine commitment to content that many product-focused entrepreneurs don't have. It demands different skills, resources, and workflows. As Marcel Hollerbach explained on the Retail Remix episode “Tackling Content Complexity,” scaling content introduces significant challenges in brand safety and consistency, often requiring dedicated systems like a Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform. If you don't have the passion or the resources to truly become a publisher, you risk building a mediocre content engine that drains resources without ever producing a real return.