Tag: business model

Ilya Lichtenstein on the Fear of Money:

Their fear is justified, because the second you start charging for a product, all of the bubbly bullshit falls away. The market is cold, rational, and effective. It doesn’t care about your lean startup methods, your rockstar team, or your fawning tech press. All of your assumptions, vision, business plans and pitches are irrelevant.

You’ve either built something worth paying money for, or you haven’t.

Don’t Be A Free User

What if a little site you love doesn’t have a business model? Yell at the developers! Explain that you are tired of good projects folding and are willing to pay cash American dollar to prevent that from happening. It doesn’t take prohibitive per-user revenue to put a project in the black. It just requires a number greater than zero.

maciej – Don’t Be A Free User.

Ethical Coffee Chain. A coffee company that’s different. You’re investing in a specific farmer and can even buy early shares in the company. Interesting concept.

Failing at a business model for news

There was hubbub a couple of days ago when Zite, the new personalized magazine app for iPads, was sent a cease and desist letter by a who’s who of media companies.

Techdirt published a strongly worded condemnation, including this gem:

And, honestly, if creating an app that makes it easier to read your content is a threat to your business, you’re doing business wrong. 1

Part of the problem for the media companies was that Zite was making content readable removing ads and, thus, cutting off a revenue stream for the content producers.

It’s too bad media companies viewed this as a reason to send a cease and desist letter. Instead they could have read it for what it was: a statement that people hate the ads on news sites. It could have given media some data for improving advertising. Oh well, opportunity lost.

News advertising should take a hint from software developers. Include ads that your users want enabled and will miss when they are gone.

Don’t think that possible? Check out the response when Tweetie/Twitter for Mac dropped Fusion ads last year.

Notes:

  1. via @ryanpitts