Digital revenue models for planning income in 2012

1. Free in the wild hope that it will all be alright in the end

2. Selling data about users or providing access to your users

Selling profiled data about your users

3. Revenue from CPM display advertising on site

Ads served by the site owners (own or third-party ad network service) Income from number of ads severed on the basis of “cost per thousand”

4. Revenue from CPC advertising on site (pay per click text ads)

Advertisers are charged according to the number of times they are clicked.

5. Revenue from Sponsorship

Someone may wish to pay to advertise

6. Affiliate revenue (CPA, but could be CPC)

Commission revenue, paid on the basis that someone comes via you to buy a service and you get a cut - Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

7. Selling data about users or providing access to your users

Selling profiled data about your users (check the terms first)

8. Subscription (access to content)

            Simple and easy if you have something of unique value or brand

9. Revenue from Pay Per View access to document (DRM and lots of management – hard)

10. Mark-Up (transaction)

            Sell something for more than you buy it (don’t forget overheads)

11. Running the platform

            Build something that makes the other models easier to run

12. Paying users for their data (arbitrage)  

            Instead of selling customer data to third parties and keeping all the value – you pass some back

13. Less than Free – paying customers to use your service :)