Agile In Everything Web And Mobile – AgileStorm

Well, I guess the recession officially spelled the end of pure ad-supported business models (unless you already get lots of users, like myspace).

A business model like the following has been busted (especially if you want to raise VC funding):

• have a great idea
• build a nice demo, alpha version of your idea
• raise a ton of money
• get millions of users (after a couple of years)
• throw advertising around to attempt to make tons of money

However, there are tons of  business models out there.  Here are some of them:

• Freeminum – give away most of your service for free.   Charge for a few premium features.  Example: Craigslist(charge only for job posting), TaoBao(no listing/transaction fee, sellers can pay for additional services/promotion), iPhone apps, Flickr
  
• The “Woot” model with Guerrilla marketing- one kind of product  per day, limited supply.  Bag of craps. example: Woot
• “Pay what you think it’s worth” – let customers decide how much your service is worth.  Not many people/companies have been brave enough to embrace this business model.  It’s quite popular in open source software offering(you can call it “donation” as well).  Modrails currently offers Phusion Passenger Enterprise via this way.
• Open source software model: give software away for free. Charge for certification, support and service subscription
• “Pay as you go” utility model – charge customers by their usages.  They don’t need to pay when they don’t actually use your service.  Example:  Amazon Web Service
• Monthly Subscription – you charge a monthly fee for different level of services or supports.  Example: SalesForce, NetFlix
• Middle Man/Broker – You act as a middle man to facilitate a transaction between a supplier and a demand.  You take a percentage cut of a completed transaction.  Example: Google AdSenses, affiliate marketing in general
• Money printing machine – this is a dream for everyone.  eg: Google Adwords where advertisers pay for clicks/impressions/actions
• Learn from gaming industry where gamers have been willing to spend money – 29 business models for games

Other resources:

• In a battered economy, free goods and services online are more attractive than ever. So how can the suppliers make a business model out of nothing?  Wall Street Journal talks about the Economics of Giving It Away
• is the free ride for web startups is over?

Whatever business model you come up, you really need to provide values to users and work on stuff that matters.

admin Entrepreneur Advertising, Business model, Entrepreneur

Notes and thoughts from Startup-U SFO: Do It Yourself PR & Social Media for your Startup with Brian Solis, FutureWorks and CoFounder, Social Media Club on April 9th, 2009:

Brian first showed the conversation Prism, a very nice breakdown of what communities/networks/sites to engage with depending on your needs:

Traditional PR is all about getting publicity.  But now days, it’s not about publicity.  It’s about getting people to use(especially for startups.  Case in points:  even when your site gets techcrunched, you can get a spike in traffic.  But you may not get sustainable traffic or attract users to really use your site).

A couple of rules:

• become an expert on your product service and industry
• find conversations, observe, analysis
• find key influencers
• become a resource for influencers
• record and analysis

Do:

• answer questions not related to your client or company
• be proactive
• converse and comment
• Understand you are not the only story in town

How to reach non-early adopters(the world can function without Twitter or Facebook):

• understand where the community is
• Find out where they are in the conversation

Create a launch Plan

• build in a cushion, prepare for any kind of disaster
• bloggers get hammered with lots of PR pitch.  No two bloggers or journalists are created equal  Don’t just hammer them with copy-n-paste emails.  Connect with their interests in your message
• Make sure your site speaks clearly about messages, problems, solutions before launching Otherwise, people start complaining about it very early
• hold launch date

A company needs to have an incredible spokesperson. And your company blog is more powerful than you may think

Answer customer service emails and calls – FreshBook makes everyone do it to feel pain of users( I really love this approach)

My Take:  Traditional PR is dying.  Conversational marketing is on the rise.  Relate to people, understand them, be resourceful.

admin Marketing Conversational marketing, Marketing, Public relations, SVASE