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Online Business Models
Web-Based Business Strategies and Monetization Models
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Audioboo Tries Making Money With Freemium Model And Paid Audiobooks

Audioboo Tries Making Money With Freemium Model And Paid Audiobooks | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

Audioboo - in which Channel 4, UBC Media and Imagination Technologies have invested - launched a Pro service aimed at media clients like radio stations a while ago, but it gained little take-up.


The new effort is a more substantial revenue plan. Now it is throttling its core free service a bit to find a choke point at which users might pay, as well s trying to mobilise some content worth paying for.


Audioboo is facing growing competition from SoundCloud, but Rock differentiates the two. “We’re all about real-time spoken word, they’re about music,” Rock says. “They don’t do real-time particularly well. Our content is about trying to find clips pretty quickly.”

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Aligning with the Consumer Journey - Harvard Business Review

Aligning with the Consumer Journey - Harvard Business Review | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

In my December 2010 article "Branding in the Digital Age," I discussed how consumers today connect with brands in fundamentally new ways, often through media channels that are beyond manufacturers' and retailers' control.


Traditional marketing strategies fall short in this new world. Marketers need to drop the funnel metaphor to describe consumer touch points and instead study the evolving and increasingly digital consumer decision journey (CDJ).


The CDJ illustrates how consumers add and subtract brands from a group under consideration during an extended evaluation phase. And purchase is no longer the end of the relationship. Now consumers often enter into an ongoing relationship with the brand during which they enjoy, advocate for and bond with it.


The article sparked a lot of discussion with HBR readers, who were eager to apply the CDJ approach to their organizations. They wanted to know how.

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SurveyMonkey Turns Online Surveys into a Hot Business - Fortune Tech

SurveyMonkey Turns Online Surveys into a Hot Business - Fortune Tech | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

Dave Goldberg, a pioneering Internet music entrepreneur, used to have a glamorous job as vice president of music at Yahoo (YHOO), which bought his startup Launch Media for $12 million.


Now, as CEO of Palo Alto-based SurveyMonkey, he peddles online survey tools to corporations, schools, and community groups. "A lot of people ask me, 'Really? Surveys?'" says Goldberg.


Really. It turns out that those prosaic online polls are a tidy business, thanks in part to a management and technology upgrade instituted by Goldberg -- who is married to Sheryl Sandberg, the ultraconnected and savvy operating chief of Facebook.


Since becoming SurveyMonkey's CEO two years ago, he's tripled the company's registered users to 8.5 million, more than four times that of its nearest competitor, Zoomerang.

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A New Way To Sell Your Goods and Services Online? Zaarly Thinks So

A New Way To Sell Your Goods and Services Online? Zaarly Thinks So | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

Technology is helping cut transaction costs in many domains.


Want to rent a movie? Forget the old days of driving 10 minutes to Blockbuster and spending 30 minutes arguing with your significant other about popcorn flick versus art house. Netflix will have a few hours entertainment downloaded in a matter of minutes and even help the indecisive with suggestions.


But is what’s true for procuring movies soon to be true for procuring services as well?


Start-up Zaarly hopes so.


The app aims to bring local buyers and sellers of both goods and services together easily, taking the hassle out of errands and odd jobs.


Where once you might have cruised Craigslist or called around to friends to find a man with a van or an Ikea assembly genius, now you pop your request and what you’re willing to pay onto Zaarly and local folks bid for the job and fulfill your request without stress.

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The Freemium flaw: The challenges faced by digital’s default business model

The Freemium flaw: The challenges faced by digital’s default business model | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

Close your eyes, and cast your mind back to the first dotcom boom in the late 90s/early 00s. What’s your overriding memory of that whole crazy period?

 

Or if you’re too young to really remember, what do you immediately think of when you hear dotcom bubble or dotcom boom mentioned in relation to Silicon Valley at the turn of the millennium?

 

I’m going to take a stab and guess that it has something to do with over-inflated valuations of ill-conceived, kooky ideas. 

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To Paywall Or Not? Monetizing News in the Digital Era

To Paywall Or Not? Monetizing News in the Digital Era | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

The transition from print to web-based publishing has been rocky for many traditional newspaper and magazine publishers.

 

While online readership has soared, online advertising revenue is a fraction of what print ads once brought in. Print remains profitable, but hard-copy circulation has continued to shrink.

 

Those scary trend lines have forced publishers to rethink their approach to doing business online, and that includes erecting subscription paywalls.

 

Simply trying to replicate the old print subscription model online by asking readers to pay a single price for unlimited access may not be the optimal approach to monetizing content online.

 

Rather, publishers need more flexible paywalls that support multiple payment options and multiple content configurations.

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13 Ways for Bloggers to Make Money with Advertising

13 Ways for Bloggers to Make Money with Advertising | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

Recently, I posted my “How bloggers make money MindMap” on Google+.

 

I’ve had a few people ask for clarification around the Advertising section, and what all the options there mean. 

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The Complete Guide To The Freemium Online Business Model

The Complete Guide To The Freemium Online Business Model | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

The idea of offering your product or a version of it for free has been a source of much debate.

Pricing is always tricky.

 

Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs don’t give it enough thought. They will often copy the pricing strategy of similar products, base their decisions on pompous statements made by “experts” or rely on broken rationale (we worked hard so we should charge $X).

 

Free is even trickier and with so many opinions about it, we thought it would be refreshing to take a critical approach and dive deep into why some companies are very successful at employing the model while other companies fail.

 

We’ve looked into economics academic papers, behavioral psychology books and strategies that worked for companies to come up with the key concepts below.

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Great Entrepreneurs Always Have a Plan B

Great Entrepreneurs Always Have a Plan B | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

"Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth." (Mike Tyson) Or as Steve Blank puts it: "Great entrepreneurs don’t just have a Plan B, they have Plans B through infinity"


Via Cédric Giorgi
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29 Alternative Revenue Streams for Musicians | Future of Music Coalition

29 Alternative Revenue Streams for Musicians | Future of Music Coalition | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

Here at FMC, we tend to think a lot about changing business models for musicians. Certainly, many artists are still making the majority of their money from selling CDs, merch or playing gigs.

 

Yet we’ve come to realize that musicians’ access to potential revenue — especially in today’s digital landscape — expands far beyond that.

 

Recently, FMC started ponder all this in a more organized fashion: just how many different ways are there for musicians to earn money? We’ve come up with 29 so far, which we list below.

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Amazon.com: Free: The Future of a Radical Price: Chris Anderson: Books

Free: The Future of a Radical Price

~ Chris Anderson (author)More about this product
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In the digital marketplace, the most effective price is no price at all, argues Anderson (The Long Tail).

 

He illustrates how savvy businesses are raking it in with indirect routes from product to revenue with such models as cross-subsidies (giving away a DVR to sell cable service) and freemiums (offering Flickr for free while selling the superior FlickrPro to serious users).

 

New media models have allowed successes like Obama's campaign billboards on Xbox Live, Webkinz dolls and Radiohead's name-your-own-price experiment with its latest album.

 

A generational and global shift is at play—those below 30 won't pay for information, knowing it will be available somewhere for free, and in China, piracy accounts for about 95% of music consumption—to the delight of artists and labels, who profit off free publicity through concerts and merchandising.

Anderson provides a thorough overview of the history of pricing and commerce, the mental transaction costs that differentiate zero and any other price into two entirely different markets, the psychology of digital piracy and the open-source war between Microsoft and Linux.

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Can Free and "Curated Content" Transform Your Online Business Model?

Can Free and "Curated Content" Transform Your Online Business Model? | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

There are numerous examples of companies prospering by giving away their product for free.

 

Can a free business model transform your business?

 

In a world of information overload, quality curated content is highly needed. Can you create evergreen content that your customers will search for and bookmark?

 

Trendwatching has an amazingly comprehensive page called Free Love with dozens of examples of business models where the main product is given away for free.

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Newspaper Paywall Success Stories: How Three Papers Are Using the Metered Model

Newspaper Paywall Success Stories: How Three Papers Are Using the Metered Model | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

About a month ago we looked at traffic numbers from newspapers that put up paywalls in the last year.

 

Despite the general assumption that charging for digital content will cause a drop in traffic, it's not always the case.

 

How did some local news sites actually attract more pageviews after charging for content, and, more importantly, did those visitors also translate into more revenue?

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Gamification Is In The Future of Business | VentureBeat

Gamification Is In The Future of Business | VentureBeat | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

A recent Gartner report predicts that by 2014, a gamified service for consumer goods, marketing, and customer retention will become as important as Facebook, eBay or Amazon, and more than 70 percent of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified application.


Companies and brands need to rethink how they will help their mobile customers search, stream, shop and share. They need to create a new generation of applications that use rich media, user generated content, and location-based services to engage and serve consumers on the go wherever their busy lives might take them.

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"Totally Customer Centric" - The New Startup Model: Nail It Then Scale It

"Totally Customer Centric" - The New Startup Model: Nail It Then Scale It | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

Great piece, excellent advice and strategy!

 

"I see more and more entrepreneurs who seem to have everything going for them – vision, motivation, passion, even a good business plan, product, and money, and yet they can’t close customers."

 

Here's the bottomline:

 

At the heart of it, to be a successful entrepreneur you have to be totally customer centric, and learn to change and adapt as fast as the market. The pace of change in the marketplace is escalating, so entrepreneurs have to improve their ability to deal with change.

 

At the same time, more entrepreneurs are jumping into the fray, and less money is available from investors. It’s time for a new startup model. In my view, savvy “super angel” investors such as Mike Maples, Jr., and leading incubators such as Y Combinator, are already on this one. How far behind is your startup?

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/martinzwilling/2011/09/18/adopt-the-new-startup-model-nail-it-then-scale-it/


Via janlgordon, Tom George
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Mobile e-Commerce Takes Comparison Shopping to a New Level | MarketingProfs

Mobile e-Commerce Takes Comparison Shopping to a New Level | MarketingProfs | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

Mobile commerce has become widespread in the US: 80% of smartphone owners say they have used their devices to help make buying decisions in the past year and two-thirds have made a purchase with their phone, according to [pdf] a study by LEK Consulting.


Moreover, mobile shopping apps are giving on-the-go consumers new ways to compare prices across stores and channels—and the added impetus to seek out the best deals.


Here, additional findings from LEK's report titled "The Marketplace of the Mobile Consumer: What to Expect," based on a survey of 1,600 US consumers.

Read more: 

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Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide

Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

Web 2.0 makes headlines, but how does it make money?


This concise guide explains what's different about Web 2.0 and how those differences can improve your company's bottom line.


Whether you're an executive plotting the next move, a small business owner looking to expand, or an entrepreneur planning a startup, Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide illustrates through real-life examples how businesses, large and small, are creating new opportunities on today's Web.


This book is about strategy. Rather than focus on the technology, the examples concentrate on its effect. 

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Updated: As Print Book Revenues Plunge, E-Books Aren’t Making It Up

Updated: As Print Book Revenues Plunge, E-Books Aren’t Making It Up | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

Looking at book publishing statistics and noting huge e-book growth is fun—but not in the case of the new statistics released by the Association of American Publishers, which show print book revenues substantially down and the 161 percent growth in e-book revenues in the first six months of the year unable to make up for that loss.

 

The AAP’s monthly reports represent sales figures from 79 publishers reporting data in four markets (trade, K-12, higher education and professional/scholarly publishing). 15 of those publishers also provided data on e-books.

 

These stats are less comprehensive than those provided by BookStats, the AAP’s joint venture with the Book Industry Study Group, which launched last month and includes data from nearly 2,000 publishers. Early BookStats reports showed that book sales grew between 2008 and 2010.

 

The AAP’s new stats refer to trade books:

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What Publishers Can Learn From Online Retailers

What Publishers Can Learn From Online Retailers | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

What does content mean for online retailers, and how can publishers successfully work commerce into their websites? Those were the questions discussed at a Financial Times panel in NYC last night.

 

“There are lots of things that merge between media businesses and 2.0 commerce,” said Susan Lyne, chairman of Gilt Groupe. “We’re all competition for each other in that we’ve got limited time to spend on something besides work and family.”

 

Rob Grimshaw, managing director of FT.com, alluded to the challenges that lie ahead for publishers: “Just because we’ve opened a shop doesn’t mean we’ve become retailers.”

 

Some takeaways:

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Three More Papers Put Up Paywalls, With Some New Twists

Three More Papers Put Up Paywalls, With Some New Twists | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

As more newspapers roll out paywalls, they are looking for new types of content and services to entice readers, and are also turning to new types of technology to power the payment platforms themselves.

 

New London, Conn.‘s The Day is promoting its new paywall as a “membership program,” with benefits beyond online content.

 

And the Southeast Missourian and Richmond Times-Dispatch appear to be the first two newspapers to use Google (NSDQ: GOOG) One Pass technology, which the company rolled out in February.

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Startup-Strategy’s 15 Principles of Success

Startup-Strategy’s 15 Principles of Success | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

1. Keep Answers Simple:
The more obvious the answer, the more powerful it is in the marketplace.

2. Never trust anything (or anyone) your “common sense” doesn’t support: Common Sense always appears as suddenly self-evident truth to a previously confused audience.

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How To Sell Your Company

How To Sell Your Company | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

I’m a pretty good salesman, but I’m the worst negotiator. If I say, “buy my car for $10,000” and someone says “$8,000,” I’d just shrug my shoulders and say “ok”.

 

In fact, that happened.

Some people could be good at both. But I think it’s very hard. By definition. When you’re a salesman you want the other guy to say “yes.”

 

When you’re a negotiator you have to be willing to say “no”, regardless of what the other side says.

 

So although they aren’t total opposites, the goals are completely different. But big picture:

Negotiation is worthless. Sales is everything.

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If Your Business Sucks, Don’t Blame the Market

If Your Business Sucks, Don’t Blame the Market | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

Market's don't turn businesses bad, failure to respond to markets does... 

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Giving It Out for Free: Why Zero Price Is the Future of Business

Giving It Out for Free: Why Zero Price Is the Future of Business | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

Razors were bundled with everything from Wrigley's gum to packets of coffee, tea, spices, and marshmallows.

 

The freebies helped to sell those products, but the tactic helped Gillette even more. By giving away the razors, which were useless by themselves, he was creating demand for disposable blades.

 

A few billion blades later, this business model is now the foundation of entire industries: Give away the cell phone, sell the monthly plan; make the videogame console cheap and sell expensive games; install fancy coffeemakers in offices at no charge so you can sell managers expensive coffee sachets.

bktivylkg's comment September 3, 2011 3:10 AM
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Startups: A Deep Dive Into The Anatomy Of Premature Scaling [New Infographic] - Startup Genome

Startups: A Deep Dive Into The Anatomy Of Premature Scaling [New Infographic] - Startup Genome | Online Business Models | Scoop.it

Three days ago we launched the Startup Genome Compass, a benchmarking tool for startups and our new research on the primary cause of failure for startups: premature scaling.


There's been some confusion about exactly what we mean by premature scaling and we wanted to respond to the feedback we've received and elaborate on the findings from our research. To make it clearer, we need to go a little bit deeper into the theory and methodology.

 

Since February we've amassed a dataset of over 3200 high growth technology startups. Our latest research found that the primary cause of failure is premature scaling, an affliction that 70% of startups in our dataset possess.

 

The difference in performance between startups that scale prematurely and startups that scale properly is pretty striking. We found that:

 

- No startup that scaled prematurely passed the 100,000 user mark.

 

- 93% of startups that scale prematurely never break the $100k revenue per month threshold.

 

- Startups that scale properly grow about 20 times faster than startups that scale prematurely.

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