$ Profit $

...so you launch a service that does not ask for an up-front fee, has few strings attached and has little in the way of actual authentication (as in if you can type in a name and make up a password, you cna be that person) ... where is the sense in that from a business perspective?

Profit is what companies exist for. COMPANY, not NPO. Money is necessary for many things ( Click "HERE" to transfer funds via PayFriend ®) so what is in it for a business?

Why do we need to talk about Money?

Not a trivial question as it turns out. Often asked however by those of us without any business accumen - information wants to be free, after all.

Physical infrastructure costs money - servers, network connections, traffic, hosting locations, electricity, aircon, caffeine and chocolate for the techy geeks who keep it running, red-bull and WAGES for the employees who create and manage content (can we say "loser interface" people), management and strong people to carry the profits to the bank.

A "startup" costs <insert researched amount here> and that money must be recouped manyfold for the service to even consider remaining a service. Contrary to popular misconception, systems require constant maintenance, data repositories require management, the "cloud" is not magic, smoke and mirrors - it is PEOPLE and THINGS working hard and seamlessly in the background - this all costs money.

What does it take to make money online? How do you fleece (err... take your share) of the financial soup that is online e-business?

Getting Rich 1

ONE approach is to SELL membership - offer free (but slightly knobbled/disabled) service for free (to get users hooked) and then sell "premium" service that has other features. this is ok, isn't it?

Members, Subscribers and Guests are not part of any "class" hierarchy, layers of membership have no extra "rights" and "responsibilities", surely?

Getting Rich 2

Another approach is to SELL advertising - inflict (er .. sorry, blesss) your users to a relentless and unavoidable array of avertisements with click-through profit sharing, brand awareness and "special offers".

Blanket advertising is a common approach but targetting ads to particular users requires a different trick (see "Getting Rich 3")

Getting Rich 3

Data Mining is a HUGE business. Collecting information about your users, on-selling it to advertising agencies in return for PROFIT and targetted advertising is a win-win solution for everyone - or is it?

Why should we care about our personal information? Should what we say and do in a social networking application be able to be used commercially?

Whilst this is verging on a "social and ethical" issue, it is also bound up in value-adding the service and in business terms it is absolutely necessary to explore how you can make money from the users' core activities.

...help me out here please, got any good issues that need discussion or points of view you want to share? Share and Enjoy