Web And Mobile Revenue Models

Below you will find a comprehensive list of online revenue models prepared in collaboration of high tech entrepreneurs & opinion leaders. This brilliant is page moderated by VC Fred Wilson. You can reach full list of contributors here.  Some of the revenue models listed below are not native to internet nor digital platforms such as sponsorship but digital revolution gave an unprecedented depth & meaning to these revenue models. All models are divided into nine categories.

As an avid believer of native revenue models for online products & services I have no doubt that this list may help your start-up or digital business to find & create the appropriate revenue model right from the brain storming phase. So check it out!

Advertising

• Display Ads - ex. Yahoo!

• Search Ads - ex. Google

• Text Ads - ex. Google

• Video Ads - ex. Hulu

• Audio Ads - ex. Pandora

• Promoted Content - ex. Twitter, Tumblr

• Paid content links - ex. Outbrain

• Recruitment Ads - ex. LinkedIn

• Lead Generation - ex. MoneySuperMarket, ZocDoc

• Affiliate Fees - ex. Amazon Affiliate Program

• Classifieds - ex. Craiglist

• Featured listings - e.g. Yelp, Super Pages;

• Email Ads - as done by Yahoo, MSN

• Ad Retargeting - ex. Criteo 

• Real-time Intent Ad Delivery

• Location-based offers - ex/ Foursquare

• Sponsorships / Site Takeovers -  ex. Pandora

Commerce

• Retailing - ex. Zappos

• Marketplace - ex. Etsy

• Crowdsourced Marketplace - ex. Threadless

• Excess Capacity Markets - Uber, AirBnB

• Vertically Integrated Commerce - ex. Warby Parker

• Aggregator - ex. Lastminute.com

• Flash Sales:  Gilt Groupe, Vente Privee

• Group buying - ex. Groupon

• Digital goods / downloads - ex. iTunes

• Virtual goods - ex. Zynga

• Training - ex. Cloudera (??), -> Coursera

• Pay what you want - ex. Radiohead

• Commission - ex. SharesPost

• Commission per order - ex. Seamless, GrubHub

• Auction - ex. eBay

• Reverse Auction - ex Priceline

• Barter for services ex. SwapRight

Subscription

• Software as a Service (SAAS) - ex. Salesforce

• Service as a Service - ex. Shopify

• Content as a Service - ex: Spotify, Netflix

• Infrastructure/Platform As A Service - ex. AWS

• Freemium SAAS - ex. Dropbox

• Donations - ex. Wikipedia

• Sampling - ex Birchbox

• Membership Services - ex Amazon Prime

• Support and Maintenance - ex 10gen, Red Hat

• Paywall - ex. NYTimes

• Voice and video-conferencing - ex. Uberconference

Peer to Peer

• Peer-to-Peer Lending - ex. Lending Club,

• Peer-to-Peer Gambling - ex. BetFair

• Peer-to-peer buying - ex Etsy

• Peer-to-peer insurance/home/car - ex (??)

• Peer-to-peer computing (CrasPlan storage, or SETI@home)

• Peer-to-peer service - ex. Mechanical Turk, TaskRabbit

• Peer-to-peer Mobile WiFi/Tethering - ex (??)

Transaction processing

• Merchant Acquiring - ex. PayPal (Online / Offline), Stripe (Online), Square (Offline)

• Intermediary - ex. IP Commerce (POS 2.0), CardSpring

• Acquiring Processing - ex. Paymentech

• Bank Transfer - ex. Dwolla

• Bank Depository Offering - ex. Simple, Movenbank (spread on average deposits)

• Bank Card Issuance - ex. Simple (interchange fee per transaction)

• Fullfilment - ex. Amazon

• Messaging - ex. Peer-to-Peer SMS, IM, Group Messaging

• Telephony - ex. termination/origination in public telephony networks (skype out/in)

• Telephony - ex. termination/origination within private telephony cloud (e.g. native skype)

• Payment Gateways: Mobile -ex. Braintree

• Platform Monetization ("Tax") - Facebook Credits; iO6 30% cut.

Licensing

• Per Seat License - ex. Sencha

• Per Device/Server License - ex. QlikView

• Per Application instance - ex. Adobe Photoshop

• Per Site License - ex. Private cloud on internal infrastructure

• Patent Licensing - ex. Qualcomm

• Brand Licensing - ex. Sesame Street

• Indirect Licensing - ex. Apple Volume Purchasing

Data

• User data - ex. BlueKai

• Business data - ex. Duedil

• User intelligence - ex. Yougov

• Search Data - ex. Chango

• Real-time Consumer Intent Data - ex. Yieldbot

• Benchmarking services - ex. Comscore

• Market research - ex. GLG

Mobile

• Paid App Downloads - ex. WhatsApp

• In-app purchases - ex. Zynga Poker

• In-app subscriptions - ex. NY Times app

• Advertising - ex. Flurry, AdMob

• Digital-to-physical - ex. Red Stamp, Postagram

Gaming

• Freemium - Free to play w/ virtual currency - ex. Zynga

• Subscription-  ex. World of Warcraft

• Premium - ex. xBox games

• DLC - (Downloadable Content)  - ex. Call of Duty

• Ad Supported - ex - addictinggames.com