It has taken my attention that despite the exponential grow of online businesses in the last years with the Web 2.0 boom I haven’t seen any new business model to help monetize these new ventures… and practically every online business is based in one of the following -and typical- models:

  • Online Advertising: The most popular business model on the Internet, since it is quite easy to implement. It is ideal for bloggers and informative sites, that don’t provide a tangible service or product. There are many online advertising “payment modes”, like: CPM, CPC, CPA, etc. depending on the advertiser needs: exposure, traffic or conversions. There are also different channels types to distribute the content along with ads: email, rss, video, etc. In all of its variants, online advertising effectiveness is directly proportional to the site’s traffic volume: more pageviews, more visits and more clicks means more revenue.Some of the most important advertising and affiliate networks are:
  • Online Subscription: With this business model users have to pay a recurrent fee to access premium content or functionality. This is ideal for online services such as 37signals‘ Basecamp, Backpack, Campfire, etc.
  • Commission based services: This is a typical model for online stores or marketplaces that distribute other companies’ products, like ebay or Amazon. The commission charged by the site represents a percentage of the item’s price or a fixed amount that it is usually paid by the vendor.

There are also other mixed models, like domaining, or the ones mentioned in this excellent study about online business models or in this compilation of Internet business models articles.

I am sure that with the expansion of the Web -in functionality, distribution- new business models will surely emerge as a natural “consequence” of this qualitative grow.

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