the revenue models

At first, the idea of outlining Internet revenue models may seem impossible. After all, there are billions of web sites, and they cover the breadth of human experience. Sites take the form of stores, games, magazines, meeting places. "Content" sites alone can be splintered into a million subcategories: art exhibits, travelogues, recipe collections, and so on.

So while it's impossible to anticipate the goals of every web developer, we can outline their financial options. In observing the range of successful strategies used over the last 10 years, it's possible to categorize them into five basic revenue models, each of which have been used by a startlingly wide range of companies and individuals.

5 online revenue models:

1. Generating leads for an off-line business

2. Product sales

3. Advertising

4. Subscriptions and user fees

5. "Match-making"

See 5 online revenue models, p. 70.

Whatever your business, you'll do well to follow one of these approaches. And you'll find you have a lot in common with other, seemingly unrelated businesses in different industries that make money the same way online.

"Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make complete use of the other five."

W. Somerset Maugham