Information is inherently a bit of an odd duck economically speaking. The fact that you're targeting the less-developed 6/7 of the world, generally, means that you're also targeting an other-than-lucrative advertising market. There's also the question of just who it is that you might attract as content promoters -- EDUs is one thing, but if it turns out that you're mostly of interest to those who've got unrest to sell -- whether it's OECD foreign / intelligence offices or third-world mercenaries, then there's a bit of an issue.
Who you accept money from matters in some ways more than what's being sold -- I'd suggest your team sit down and draw up a few short lists of groups or sources whose money you don't consider green.
A few ideas do come to mind:
1. Classifieds. You could do Craigslist to the World. Even a small fee might prove lucrative. All the better if you could target the ads to the regions where they're of most interest (geographic segregation).
2. An infrastructure for other organizations to tap into. It could be that it's the content-distribution network itself that's of value. If you've got a one-way comms channel that could be used by organizations for their own use -- encrypted transmissions (if desired) that only their own users could pick up, this could be a valuable service. Of course, there's still the chance that it's intelligence and/or terror organizations which are interested in your services. The challenge here is that if this is your paying work, it might consume your interest over the public-good components. I suspect there'a a fairly wide class of NGOs and possibly commercial interests who might be interested in such capabilities.
3. Partnering with regional governments. If it turns out that you're the best way to get information through, then (for reasonably benign governments), carrying some of their content might work.
You've got a number of partnerships with national broadcasters (I saw DW on your partners list). Carrying content from such organizations for payment might well work.
The other factor is what your own overhead is. If sufficiently low, you don't need a lot of monetization to be successful. Just enough to cover expenses.
All that said: I really like this idea, it's similar in regards to some I had years back but never really pursued.
Who you accept money from matters in some ways more than what's being sold -- I'd suggest your team sit down and draw up a few short lists of groups or sources whose money you don't consider green.
A few ideas do come to mind:
1. Classifieds. You could do Craigslist to the World. Even a small fee might prove lucrative. All the better if you could target the ads to the regions where they're of most interest (geographic segregation).
2. An infrastructure for other organizations to tap into. It could be that it's the content-distribution network itself that's of value. If you've got a one-way comms channel that could be used by organizations for their own use -- encrypted transmissions (if desired) that only their own users could pick up, this could be a valuable service. Of course, there's still the chance that it's intelligence and/or terror organizations which are interested in your services. The challenge here is that if this is your paying work, it might consume your interest over the public-good components. I suspect there'a a fairly wide class of NGOs and possibly commercial interests who might be interested in such capabilities.
3. Partnering with regional governments. If it turns out that you're the best way to get information through, then (for reasonably benign governments), carrying some of their content might work.
You've got a number of partnerships with national broadcasters (I saw DW on your partners list). Carrying content from such organizations for payment might well work.
The other factor is what your own overhead is. If sufficiently low, you don't need a lot of monetization to be successful. Just enough to cover expenses.
All that said: I really like this idea, it's similar in regards to some I had years back but never really pursued.