My Favorite Internet Business Models

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Internet Business Models

I love Internet Business. My favorite business models are the following:

  1. Affiliate Sites that focus on authentic product reviews – why because they are great for everyone – the people who created the site and the users who come to visit the site. For the site publisher the site will be a cash cow with very little overhead and can make money from affiliate revenue, AdSense or other ad placements. For the users the site should offer an honest review and ease their search for something they were looking for. Excellent examples using this business model are:
  2. Online SaaS (Software as a Service) Companies or Subscription-based software or publication sites – these companies sell ongoing monthly subscriptions to their publications or software online. Often the software is built with Ruby on Rails or Google Apps. This is a great business model since revenue increases monthly as new subscribers are added. Publications can be sold as a subscription using ClickBank. Software can be created and sold via a subscription model as an iPhone app, Android Marketplace app or over the web. Andriod Apps can be built using Google’s Android App Inventor. Excellent examples using this business model are:
  3. User Generated Content Sites – These sites are blog based and grow based on user generated content. They can be built using WordPress. Excellent examples using this business model are:
  4. Special Interest Information Sites – These sites focus on a subject or user group, aggregate or create content specifically of interest to the user group. An absolutely brilliant execution of this business model is MarketingSherpa.com. Marketing Sherpa specializes in Internet Marketing. They solicit for visitors who are interested in Internet Marketing to join one of their many specialized newsletter lists, then poll those same people when creating their annual best practices publications which they sell back to the same user base. They up the anti even more by producing conferences that cost several thousands of dollars per head to attend. It is a beautiful classical sales funnel. At the bottom of the funnel articles are published for free and readers are asked to join the mailing list to get more similar information for free. They are emailed links to new articles on the blog as they are written, which are free to read online for a limited time or after that time the subscriber can pay to view an individual article or become a paid site subscriber. As a subscriber they are emailed regularly with other special offers or polls on the same topics they have expressed an interest in by subscribing to those specific newsletters. Once the polls are completed “Special Reports” are published ranging from $50-$300 a pop. Those reports are sold on the site and via email. Then subjects and content with a good deal of traction are re-purposed again into a class or conference those same people can attend for $1000 to $3000.
  5. Thought Leadership Social Media (Facebook & Twitter Accounts) linked to an eCommerce Site – These are sites where someone decided to become a lifestyle thought leader promoting an image related to their subject like vintage clothing or how to be a cool auntie. They then post comments, questions, or articles related to their subject. They use Facebook and Twitter to generate traffic,  create a buzz and an opt-in subscription community base they can advertise to for free. They make money selling items or publications that relate to thier subject area. Great examples are: