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Already from the visual appearance of this model you’ll notice that Flattr tries to work in different way. Lots of us are enjoying all the free content brought to us by all the individual online publishers. Sometimes you would feel the urge to support these people. To do so you could make use of donate buttons, but still this process takes some effort. That’s where Flattr comes in with their structured approach to micro-donations. As a Flattr client you set your own monthly subscription fee. Then, while browsing/consuming online content, you are able to select your favorite publications. You can ‘flattr’ any type of content. At the end of the month your subscription fee will be distributed over all the people that you tagged (flattred) during that period. Initially Flattr.com will take a 10% commission but they are working hard to bring this number down.

Just like Hollr and Oronjo, this service is looking for a way to help people create their own micro-revenue model. If executed well this system could even replace the outdated business model of ancient royalty and copyright organizations. Without the need for complex distribution algorithms consumers can now pay creative creators directly for the work they consume online. You, and not a centralized monitoring organization, decides where your money goes to. I can’t wait for that day to come.

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You might be one of those people that walks around with a marvelous idea but never found an incentive (or pile of money) to start your project. But what if you could find a small crowd of people that could back your idea. A crowd that doesn’t only give you the needed support but that will actually co-found your dream. That’s exactly what Kickstarter has to offer. First, submit your idea and set a target goal. (e.g. 10.000 dollar). Next you need to convince people to donate a part of your funding. To do this you make a few promises. For instance: You wish to roll out a scarcely-dressed-ladies-sketch-club and you need 3000 dollar. Those who donate 10 dollar will receive a handwritten postcard. But those that donate 1000 dollar will get life-time access to all sketch events. And so on. Make the experience as personal and exclusive as possible. But be careful. If you don’t offer enough value for money to those who pledge, you might not reach your goal within the 1-90 day time limit. Once reached, Kickstarter will pay out the funding and will take 5% commission. Secondly they will earn on the cash that’s been in their possession for a few months*. If the target isn’t reached, the project will be canceled and people will get their money back*. Interesting revenue model isn’t it?
Kickstarter democratizes the funding business. Instead of strolling between friends, family and fools you can now reach out to the masses. Secondly the business model of Kickstarter truly embraces the business building blocks ‘experience’ and ‘exposure’. Paying backers with personalized products and services is a remarkable strategy. A third important aspect is the fact that Kickstarter helps their members to fully reach the different segments within a crowd of funders. Many people will pledge a few dollars while only few want to donate a large sum. This optimization of funding is what makes Kickstarter truly unique. Keep an eye on this start-up because they could really boom in 2010.

* update Feb 10: Andy Baio (CTO Kickstarter) points out in the comments that Amazon takes care of the payments. Thereby nobody is charged upfront so Kickstarter won’t earn on the few month of cash as mentioned above. It’s worth noting that some other companies that focus on selling voucher do strongly rely on these upfront payments. The Belgian company Bongo is such an example.

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Ello Mobile gives 100% of its profits to charity. A “profit for non-profit” business model. The Belgian mobile operator is purely web-based and aims to attract 1% of the Belgian market by 2014, thereby gathering minimum 6.2M euro per annum for charity. Projects are selected by an independant jury, and support initiatives in Sumatra’s rainforest and Mobile schools in South-America. Similar, the Dutch Call4Care donates 10% of your phone costs to charity.  TOMMY Telecom used to reward customers for sponsoring causes, but it is unclear if this is still the case after integrating with Nederland Mobiel. Ello Mobile and Call4Care’s “profit for non-profit” model offers people a convenient opportunity to support a good cause without any complexity or price premium attached to it; charity without a hassle or price tag.

Charity Upgrading – upgrading your product or service by systematic donation to charity – is applied outside the telecom sector as well, for example in gambling and waste handling. Bet2Give is a real-money prediction market where participants invest in predictions about the future, and give their winnings away to non-profit organizations of their choice. College Hunks Hauling Junk donates a portion of its revenue to College Bound, a non-profit scholarship program. Do you know other examples? Can you upgrade your product or service by supporting charity? Or can you link your good cause to a “no hassle” product or service offer?

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The business concept of Nexicon is quite exceptional. Their monitoring service tracks down IP’s of illegal content distributors on bittorent and other peer-to-peer networks. I suppose that this service towards copyright owners like movie studies and record labels can be bought with a some form of subscription. Once identified Nexicon’s system will automatically send out a settlement agreement to the ISP who has to forward it to his own client. In such a letter Nexicon threats with legal action if this distributor doesn’t choose to settle within 10 days by paying 10 dollar per illegally shared item. Nexicon will take a commission on each transaction. Although 10 dollar is far less then normally asked in settlement agreements it can generate an reasonable profit for Nexicon if they are able to track down these p2p-users in large amounts.

‘Experiences’ as we use it in our business model framework are characterized by the emotional impact on a user. Contrary to other ‘experience’ sellers Nexicons tries to offer such a negative experience (fear) that will convince a user to pay a small amount of money. An example of the opposite would be a pay-what-you-want restaurant that tries to offer such a pleasant experience in order to receive a reasonable payment from each client. In the end this shows that you as company should take control over the experience of your customer, even when this is a negative one.

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TruGenetics understands that the value of genetic profile analysis lies in the combined data of a large group of people. Therefore they decided not to charge their users for individual genome reports in contrast to several competitors. During the first phase of their business, the company will offer this service for free to at least 10.000 users. These people will be asked to send TruGenetics detailed profile information together with a salvia (spit) sample. In exchange for their support, users will receive a service in return in the form of a detailed personal genome report. For Truegenetics all this data will hopefully lead to new findings in phenotypes that could be used to patent new products. Such products can then be sold to biotech, pharma and medical companies. If nothing comes out of this expensive research, they could still sell the data, but this will not be the main goal of the company.

This is a good example of a free business concept that doesn’t rely on advertising or charging premium users. By means of crowdsourcing, they build up the true value of the company. The service for service transaction in their system is also remarkable. The service Trugenetics offers to its users is so personalised (what is more personalised then your own DNA?) that more then enough value is created to encourage people to participate. For many it will even be an unique experience to be part of this global research program that could be beneficial for society one day. Overall this concept shows us once again how consumers are evolving when it comes to privacy and how this creates potential to all sorts of health 2.0 businesses.

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As previously described on In-Game Selling, companies are moving from advertisement based revenue models to in-app commerce or in-product selling. Timebridge.com is an excellent example of the same principle. Timebridge offers a scheduling service enabling people to collaboratively determine when to meet, also on mobile. Their actual revenue model is the resale of online and phone meeting services. This is not a freemium model, as Timebridge does not sell a premium of its own product. It is not an advertising business model either, since Timebridge is not earning on selling its users’ attention to advertisers. Timebridge’s business model consists of offering its users a free service that serves as broker platform to resell 3th party (meeting) services with commission.

A lot of free products and services go with a freemium or advertising strategy, but advertising is not sustainable for a number of reasons. In-app commerce, or broader, in-product selling is there to challenge advertising. Micro-payments will be a crucial facilitator in getting consumers to actually paying for content again, in times where people are used to free and ad-supported. Like Timebridge, in-game selling, blogs with jobs/widgets/affiliate programs… can your product or service offer a channel to sell and buy things? Sales people earn more than advertisers, don’t they?