Monetize a local audience with a discovery pass

Who pays, and for what

With a discovery pass, your audience pays: it buys the pass once and gets offers at the businesses you recommend. You collect the money and decide whether a share goes back to the businesses.

The Pass Holder buys the pass once. Until the expiry date, they get offers at the participating businesses. You collect the money. The business gives its offer and gets new customers. You then decide whether a share of sales goes back to it. The model is laid out in the article on how a discovery pass works.

What separates this from a sponsored post is who pays. A sponsorship is negotiated one business at a time and ends with the post. A pass is a product you sell to your readers all year, and every place you feature promotes it.

The model already exists. In France, a paid deals app relies on one Instagram account per city to promote its partner venues. Among pass platforms, Bandwango and Proxi serve destination marketing organizations and chambers of commerce, according to their websites (see the comparison). Arsom Pass also works for one person with an audience.

Creator, media outlet, guide publisher: three starting points

A content creator sells the pass through a link in their bio, a local media outlet sells it to readers, and a guide publisher sells it with the guide, possibly as a printed card.

You are a local content creator

Your followers come for your picks, and they are already on their phones when they watch you. Sales happen online: a link in your bio, repeated each time you feature a participating business. The pass is then added to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, with no app to download. Each visit you film works twice, as content and as promotion for the pass.

You run a local media outlet

You have readers, a newsletter and people on staff who already know the business owners because they sell them advertising. You can add a second channel to online sales: participating businesses sell the pass themselves, with a counter display and a promotional QR code. Every sale is credited to the business that brought it in, with or without a commission depending on what you agreed. You can also run several programs, one per district for example, each with its own visual identity.

You publish a guide

The selection is done, and you know how to work with a printer. The pass can take the form of a numbered card, illustrated by your artist, with a single-use QR code that unlocks the pass on the phone. The codes reach you as print-ready files. The card sells where your guide already sells.

What you do, what Arsom does

You choose the businesses, set the price and expiry date, sell the pass and promote it. Arsom runs the technology: the Wallet pass, online sales, redemption at the businesses and the dashboard.

Your side is sales and promotion. You pick the businesses, set the price and the expiry date, sell the pass and promote it. That is what you already do for your content, with one more product.

Arsom runs the technology:

• the passes in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, with your artist’s illustration;
• online sales, through your Stripe account or through Arsom’s, which pays the funds out to you;
• a separate redemption login for each business, on any phone or computer;
• a dashboard with sales per program and per business, activations, redemptions, and an export for commission payouts.

You can export your Pass Holder data at any time. For someone whose audience depends on a social network, that is a list they own.

On billing, Arsom charges an annual subscription that covers the platform, maintenance and support, plus a small commission on each paid pass sold. Pricing is by quote. You get a dedicated account manager, and we build what operators ask for, so their requests shape the product.

What it could earn: the math to run

What a pass could earn comes from one calculation: the size of your audience, times the share that buys, times the price of the pass. Payouts, commissions and fees come out of those gross sales.

The math is one multiplication: the size of your audience, times the share that buys, times the price of the pass. Replace each assumption with your own.

Both percentages were picked for the example. Neither is based on real data. From those gross sales, subtract any share you pass on to participating businesses, reseller commissions, and the platform and payment fees. The article on costs and revenue covers those lines. Amounts are in dollars for illustration; the reasoning is the same in euros.

To replace the assumption with a number, ask your audience. A poll in your stories or an email sign-up list, opened before you sign the first business, will tell you how many people raise their hand.

What to settle before you sell

Before you sell, set and announce the rule that protects your independence (who chooses the businesses, and whether money moves between them and you), then see an advisor about local rules.

The first point is your independence. Your audience follows you because you choose your places. If a business could pay to be in the pass, your recommendation would be worth less. Set the rule before you approach anyone, and state it publicly: who chooses the businesses, and whether money moves between them and you.

Questions to take to an advisor

Four topics depend on the country, state or province where you sell, and a blog article cannot settle any of them.

• Disclosure. You recommend businesses you have a commercial relationship with. Rules on disclosing that relationship vary by place.
• Expiry and refunds. Rules on prepaid cards differ from one jurisdiction to the next, and how a pass is classified depends on what it gives.
• Taxes. They are calculated at checkout, but you are the one who has to know which apply and who remits them.
• Personal data. You hold your Pass Holders' contact details. What you may do with them, such as emailing them, is regulated.

A legal advisor and an accountant in your region can tell you what applies to you.

Where to start

Start small: one program, one expiry date, one price, and the businesses you’ve already covered first.

Start small: one program, one expiry date, one price. For businesses, begin with the ones you have already covered. They already know you, which shortens the first conversation. Question 7 of the guide describes how to run those conversations.

Adding a business or a second program later is a settings change. The Start your own page follows the path for one person, and the 20-question guide covers pricing, selling and choosing a platform.

Frequently asked questions