The Board Of Innovation » subscription

Flattr.com – a revenue model for online creators

Nick — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:52:24 +0000

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 If executed well this system could even replace the outdated business model of ancient royalty and copyright organizations.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.

Special note to our Dutch and Belgian friends:
We are running an innovation battle at BelgieVsNederland.be and NederlandVsBelgie.nl. Get your inspiring reward with just 6 questions to answer.

Thanks! @nickdemey & @philderidder

Irehab.com: Let doctors pay to give you health care

Nick — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:06:30 +0000

The new start-up Irehab.com tries to take a different approach to health care. Patients can get free advice on how to treat specific complaints. By answering a few questions and looking at several 3D animations, these users should be able to diagnose themselves. To treat for instance ‘back pain’ they can follow step-by-step instruction videos made by physical therapists but personally selected by external doctors to fit the needs of that specific patient. The first 10 consults are free of charge, both for the patient and the doctor. On the platform itself, they will have a private area where they can keep track of the results. After the first 10 consults the doctors will have to pay $0.99 for each patient that they want to follow up in the future. For further advice the patient will have to pay a fixed nominal fee per month directly to the clinic or doctor. On average this fee will be around $9.99. The only money that Irehab.com” receives will be the $0.99 per month, so they will need a large database to make this Freemium concept profitable. Within a few years it will be common practice that people will diagnose and monitor themselves without the hassle of expensive expert consults. Many companies are looking for ways to monetize this evolution. Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault are only a few of the large group IT services that are around these days. But also beyond the normal web experience we see these experimental concepts. Recently Apple presented the Lifescan’s New Diabetes iPhone App that communicates with a seperate glucose monitoring device. The latter works similar as the VirtuaGym concept we presented earlier. There people could monitor their offline exercise habits to benchmark these with other peers online. This D.I.Y. health care market is nearly unexplored so you may expect a boom of new concepts and ideas in the coming year. Many of them will fail but some of them will change the way we look at health care forever.

Razor-blade model disrupted by Razwar’s convenient subscription service

Nick — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:04:29 +0000

The new business Razwar of the company Growth Bridge fights directly against the big boys in the razor blade market. Instead of using the traditional bait-and-hook principle as it’s being used by Gillette or Wilkinson Sword, this e-shop brings the subscription service concept to the razor blade business. After buying a start kit of € 7.50, users subscribe in order to receive razor blades on a regular basis. For the fixed annual fee of € 27.50 Razwar will deliver 30 razor blades 3 times a year. Straight-forward but innovative in its sector.

This is a good example of a so called blue ocean strategy. Instead of focusing on the traditional value parameters in this market (more blades, less irritation,…), razwar tries to change the rules of the game by focusing on convenience and price transparency. In this case, they offer a service to the client instead of regular product sales. Nowadays many commodities are being sold in a similar way. Monthly Socks, Monthly Boxers or Subscription Condoms are good examples. What other concepts do you know?

Super Chirp Launches Freemium Twitter Model

Philippe — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:25:42 +0000

Get paid to tweet! Yesterday Super Chirp was launched as a tool for twitter users to get paid for their content stream. The application allows twitter users to send direct messages to people who pay to subscribe. Adding new vocabulary, a ‘chirp’ is a direct message sent via twitter to a paying subscriber. Any twitter user can sign up for Super Chirp with his or her existing twitter account (unlike twitpub), and set a monthly price between $0.99 and $9.99. Subscribers pay the small monthly fee for a stream of information. Super Chirp keeps a cut of 30%, leaving 70% for the publisher.

We have touched upon twitter’s monetization before with 77 Ways Twitter Could Make Money. Super Chirp illustrates how 3th party apps are monetizing twitter’s free service by offering paid premiums. Why does twitter refuse to enter the arena? From a user perspective, Super Chirp is another new tool for ‘prosumers’ and organizations to earn money. Think of celebrities (f.e. Britney Spears), stock tips, “the funniest guy on twitter”, horoscopes, charity, authority bloggers, early info… Do you have something unique to sell in small messages?