A clearinghouse is an agency charged with the responsibility of collecting and distributing goods or services in various forms. The main aim of a clearinghouse is to minimize the chances of a member organization defaulting transactional obligations. It is an intermediary between two entities such as buyers and sellers, banking, and publishing companies, among others. Let’s know How does Publishers ClearingHouse Make Money?
Publishers Clearing House (PCH) is a direct marketing company that deals with merchandise and magazine subscriptions. They also deal with sweepstakes and prize-based games. It was founded in New York, America in 1953 by Harold Mertz. It is one of the largest magazine subscription agencies in America.
Sources of Company Revenue
Sweepstakes
This is based on the sweepstakes held by Readers Digest, a consumer magazine published by Trusted Media Brands Incorporated. The magazine was first published in America in 1922. They offer mail-order products with sweepstakes. PCH sweepstakes are advertised through magazines, television, and websites. Participants do not need to purchase the sweepstakes for entry. The magazines are merely used as an advertisement method. They announce winners of the sweepstakes Grand Prize after the American Super Bowl. The amounts won by the participants are paid throughout their lifetime instead of a one-off payment. A one-off payment is made after a 30-year interval.
Magazine Subscriptions
They use sweepstakes to sell magazine subscriptions through mailings. The magazine subscription was sold at a discount. They incorporated prize patrol as a marketing and risk prevention tool. This is a publicized event where winners are surprised with a check at their home, workplace, or other physical locations. They keep seventy-five to ninety percent of subscription fees. The publishers in turn register better distribution. This improves their circulation numbers and renewal revenues.
Merchandize
They sell various consumer items such as magazine subscriptions, jewelry, media, collectibles, books, videos, music, health products, beauty products, and household products, among others. This is done using the magazines and websites at their disposal. The consumers select the items they want on the magazines they are reading or those displayed online via a website. They follow instructions related to the purchase of the items. They later make payments online using their credit or debit cards. The company then prepares the orders and facilitates delivery to the respective consumer address.
Advertising Services
This is done on both their websites and magazines. It involves promoting and creating awareness about client products and services. They handle branding and marketing strategies for their clients. They use the resources at their disposal such as magazines, online properties, mobile marketing, social media, and television. They advertise the sweepstakes, magazines, and various merchandise available for sale. The clients approach them for these advertising services and pay for them depending on airing time, type, and size of advert they want.
Online Properties
PCH has several prize-based websites. They were intended to attract the younger generation. They also use the websites to sell magazine subscriptions and merchandise online. They also offer online advertising services. The registration information submitted online by users is also used to help with their mailing lists. For example, the PCH Search and Win Website is an advertisement-supported metasearch engine also known as a search aggregator. This is an online information retrieval tool that utilizes search engine data to generate its results. It queries data entry made by a user on the internet to give desired feedback to them in a systematic order. Their other website, PCH Games is a casual game portal or site initially known as candy stand. The users visit the site to play games and win prizes. They later changed it to focus on the lottery. They have other websites.
Mobile Marketing
This has been done through its subsidiary Liquid Wireless since 2012. The company specializes in lead generation and analytics. This is beneficial to PCH since they can access mobile users and expand their target population for their sweepstakes and magazine subscriptions. Mobile marketing gives consumers real-time updates and specific information relating to goods and services. This easily prompts the user to make informed decisions about the advertisement. This type of information is user-friendly and urges the consumer to respond in one way or another. This gives PCH access to consumers via electronic devices. In this way, advertising services can be provided via Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Message Services (MMS), mobile application, social media platforms, and electronic mail.
Sweepstakes Scams
Unfortunately with any noble activity comes corruption. Like all organizations, PCH has not been exempted from this. Criminals would want to take advantage of the entire sweepstakes process merely because money is exchanging hands. Although PCH is not in control of such occurrences, the participants and general public can protect themselves from such scams.
PCH does not contact winners over any form of media. They will physically locate the person and the event will be recorded and televised. Alternatively, they will use postal mail. They don’t request any form of payment or additional action for you to receive the prize you have won. Even their sweepstakes tickets are not for sale. They come with magazine subscriptions. They also do not ask for private financial details such as bank details or social security numbers.
Conclusion
The publisher’s clearinghouse was established to improve magazine subscriptions. It incorporated other marketing techniques to get this job done. They use sweepstakes to increase magazine subscriptions. They developed online properties to reach the younger generation through prize-based websites. They established mobile marketing systems to reach consumers through mobile applications and other electronic devices. They also offer advertising services to clients. These impressive marketing strategies have made them one of the largest and most successful magazine subscription agencies in the United States of America.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What are some of the websites for PCH?
Two of their websites include “PCH lottery” and “PCH search and win”.
- What does PCH stand for?
These are abbreviations for the publisher’s clearinghouse.
- How does PCH make money?
Their source of company revenue comes from sweepstakes, magazine subscriptions, merchandising, online properties, and mobile marketing.
