By Tosca Santoso, MDIF coach
Someone once said it was impossible for Myanmar media to expect revenue from digital platforms. Not only is Myanmar’s domestic audience excluded from advertising opportunities, but social media algorithms frequently change at the whim of their owners. Revenue from digital platforms is generally volatile and difficult to rely on. However, People’s Spring’s experience proves otherwise. During the first three quarters of 2025, the media outlet managed to cover 35% of its operating costs with digital revenue, solely from social media platforms.
People’s Spring is a new media outlet, emerging after the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. Although its management had experience leading national media during the democratic era, they had to start from scratch in exile. The transformation was huge and was certainly not easy. But People’s Spring’s founders have successfully laid an organizational foundation that allows the outlet to operate effectively, despite the multiple pressures of running a media in exile while maintaining editorial quality.
People’s Spring chose to focus its coverage and to target its audience on the Anya region of Upper and Central Myanmar. This differentiates it from other established exile media outlets that focus on other parts of the country or on specific ethnic groups or communities. This new outlet relies solely on digital platforms for distribution of its content. The website, https://ludunwayoo.com, serves as its primary home. However, its largest distribution network is on social media: Facebook, YouTube and recently TikTok. Through these social media channels, People’s Spring has attracted nearly 4 million subscribers and followers and records approximately 250 million views each month. This is an impressive achievement for a media organization that is only four years old and operates in exile.
“The growth has been very rapid over the past year,” said the Editor-in-Chief. He cited the example of YouTube subscribers, which reached 540,000 last September, a threefold increase in just one year. He explained that a key factor in this increase is the creativity of the newsroom. They train themselves to create journalism products that their audiences need and present them in engaging video formats.
Despite working under the shadow of concerns for the safety of their team, People’s Spring’s management remains undeterred and continues to focus on the sustainability of their outlet. That’s why the management, led by the Managing Editor, is focusing on generating revenue. They are targeting various revenue streams, one of which is via its digital platforms. While YouTube and Facebook contributed a third of People’s Spring’s revenue from January to September 2025, in September alone digital revenue covered half of the media’s operational costs. This indicates a continuing upward trend in digital revenue which People’s Spring wishes to maximize, while recognizing that the trend could decline just as quickly should social media platforms’ algorithms suddenly change.
A key to this is flexibility. “We are seriously monitoring revenue from digital platforms and discussing it with the newsroom,” the Managing Editor said. They hold weekly editorial meetings, where they discuss the news agenda and the newsroom’s performance in generating revenue. They analyze Facebook and YouTube data together. For example, what news stories resonate with audiences and generate the most revenue? Is that news still viable? What formats are suitable for specific digital platforms? How important is the presenter’s role in enhancing the performance of audio-visual products? The People’s Spring team is very responsive to any findings or policy changes on their social media platforms. But they are also careful not to let revenue opportunities eclipse editorial priorities. Generating income is important but producing reliable and relevant information is at the heart of what they do, and that is what guides their work.
“We’re fortunate that our editorial colleagues are aligned with management and recognize the need to continuously increase revenue from digital platforms but without compromising our editorial ethics,”the Managing Editor added. This understanding is crucial, considering that as a new media outlet, People’s Spring doesn’t easily find donors willing to share grants. Furthermore, seeing the dwindling number of donors to Myanmar media outlets, People’s Spring has been motivated to focus on securing revenue from social media platforms. While TikTok has been slow to generate revenue, People’s Spring is now exploring revenue by participating in affiliate programs.
Digital platforms also provide ways to attract financial support from audiences. People’s Spring, for example, utilizes Facebook’s membership facility to manage audience revenue. This facility is easy to use, eliminating the need for the media to create a membership system or find payment methods, which are often cumbersome for Myanmar media outlets in exile. People’s Spring simply activates the facility button, sets a membership fee and promotes the program in Facebook posts. By the end of 2025, it is estimated that there will be 300 members, each paying $3 per month. This is a good additional revenue stream, without the hassle of setting up a membership system. The same facility will be used on the YouTube platform.
Of course, digital revenue isn’t the only source of income. People’s Spring is also developing businesses such as producing Public Service Announcements and managing content analysis services for its clients. However, revenue from social media platforms is clearly becoming increasingly important, especially as donor grants become ever more difficult to obtain.
In 2025, People’s Spring had managed to generate enough self-made revenue to cover around 55% of its operating costs — a remarkable outcome for a Myanmar media outlet in exile. For media operating outside the country, commercial opportunities are limited, donor funding is unpredictable and audience behaviour is shaped by platform constraints. People’s Spring navigated this by combining revenue from Facebook and YouTube, Public Service Announcement collaborations with local and international NGOs, and from its membership program. The result suggests that diversification can be a viable path to sustainability, even in exile.
Names of staff members have been kept out of the article to ensure their safety.
This essay is part of a series highlighting the journeys of independent media organizations supported through MDIF’s media business capacity-building program across South and Southeast Asia, as they experiment with business models, strengthen resilience, and adapt to challenging environments. Together, these stories contribute to a broader exploration of sustainability and innovation in independent media, which will be compiled into a full report following the release of the series.