Some people have discovered great ways to make money in the past year. Some are so trivial that we are forced to think – “ Oh ! Why didn’t I think of something so easy ?[/b]” others belie more complexity – or the way we are accustomed to : “more brain more gain”[/b]. In 2010-11 many promising concepts have sprung up and amongst them a lot have reached the threshold. In this feature we take a brief look at the business models that did wonders.
1. [/b]PatientsLikeMe.com[/b]
It started off as a community platform for patients suffering from various ailments, both petty and severe. The team behind in inscrutably observed that people are sharing more information than ever before, even their medical records.
With the due permission of the user, PatientsLikeMe garners data that can be auctioned off for humongous sums to their Patrons who comprise the likes of pharmaceutical giants. Keeping it painstakingly simple vis-à-vis envisioning a marvellous scheme; paid dividends.
Physicians and researchers can also access the site, enabling them to find out what treatments its patients have tried and how successful the outcomes of the treatments were.
In the time since its launch, the company has successfully diversified to nine disease categories, with plans to expand to many more. The company was duly named as one of the "15 Companies that Will Change the World" by Business 2.0 and CNN Money
2. [/b]Flattr.com [/b]
When Paypal, Mastercard and others blocked Wikileaks, the Swedish Flattr donation system kept Wikileaks’ income stream a?oat. One Wikileaks article led to more than 3500 donations, so they had their hands full.
It is service to structure donations for content. You decide what fee you give monthly to Flattr.com. Every month, Flattr splits your fee evenly over all creators and takes a 10% commission from it to keep the cogs running. aAn innovation aimed to structure donations for content ; it involuntarily integrated Online readers who consume tons of content on monthly basis. The methodology is also quite simple. You just push a “flattr” button by the article and it is included to the list of writers you keep an eye on.
As the service relies on network effect to prove useful, it is necessary that users join and have the opportunity to flattr and be flattr-ed. A wide number of platforms are supported including WordPress, Blogger, and Jooomla among many others
3. [/b]Groupon.com[/b]
Groupon.com is a state of the art - broker platform with exclusive discounts. The most radical feature of their portfolio is the use of a no cure no pay stratagem. They strive to guarantee that a minimum number of clients will take the discount that is communicated by the clientele through their forum. This is on the lines of hedging at grassroots-level.
Whenever an adequate number of netizens take the massive discount, the deals is repealed. Groupon takes 50% of the revenue resulting from this if the promotion is a success- which by no means can be said to be a meagre amount.
Groupon also owns several international operations, all of which were originally deal-of-the-day services similar to it, but then re-branded under the Groupon name after acquisition; these have included the European-based MyCityDeal ,the latin ClanDescuento , the Singaporean Beeconomic.com, the Japanese Qpod.jp, Russian Darberry.ru .Groupon has recently even acquired the Indian deal-of-the-day website SoSasta.com and it is in the process of being modulated to meet the global standards. They are indeed growing in leaps and bounds—in the true sense of the phrase.
4. [/b]Spotify.com[/b]
Spotify.com an adhoc free servicing model The basic music streaming service is offered for free to music fans. It is the Advertisers who pay to cover the recurring costs to the media houses and record-labels.
Music can be browsed by artist, album, record label, genre or playlist as well as by direct searches. On desktop clients a link allows the listener to purchase selected material via partner retailers. Users can register either for free accounts supported by visual and radio-style advertising or for paid subscriptions without ads and with a range of extra features such as higher bit rate streams and offline access to music.
5. [/b]PayWithaTweet.com[/b]
Pay with a Tweet is a social media marketing system that lets content creators give away access to their content in exchange for a promotional message in form of a tweet on Twitter or a wall post on Facebook. It formally launched and debuted in June, 2010 with the release of their book "oh my god what should I do?" that people were able to download for free, if they were willing to promote it on their facebook page or just with a single twitter entry.
It is a relatively libertine concept and will take some time before it actually sets the stage on fire but nevertheless it can be a good platform for developers who are eager to test the beta-version of their software or any artist wishing to lure in some onlookers and patrons. Social media is the viaduct between the affluent and the ones with a craft (or so to speak) – in such scenarios perpetuated by this venture.