One of the hardest parts of working with early stage companies and teaching entrepreneurship is to get people to reconsider their revenue model. It appears to be baked into the genetic code as the default setting that we sell a product or service for cash. One of the most effective ways to change this way of thinking is to show creative examples of doing revenue models differently.
SECInfo.com provides information filed with the SEC by publicly traded companies. This SEC info is a bountiful store of information not only on a particular company but also on industry trends, comparative analysis, KPIs, acquisition valuations, etc. SECInfo is my preferred site when I want to review a company's 10-K, 10-Q or S-1 filings. (SEC filings are explained in this file that can be downloaded. Download Edgform.)
I received the following email yesterday from SECInfo, which showcases an interesting example of a revenue model.
Thank you for using our http://www.secinfo.com service. In return for the free access you are currently receiving, we ask that you recommend SEC Info to all your friends and associates. This will benefit you, because, by increasing our user base, there will be less of a chance that we will someday ask you to pay us to continue using our site.
How does this work? The revenue to maintain and improve our site comes from our very-most-frequent users. If and when your usage pattern puts you in that category, we will ask you to subscribe. Because we measure your usage against that of all users, the more people that you can help us attract, the less the probability will be that we will consider you a frequent user and ask you to pay. But even if we don't grow fast enough and do ask you to pay, our subscription rates are less than our competitors ($10/month for individuals, and less per-user for groups).
We think this is a very fair deal, and thank you for your support.
SEC Info - Registrar
http://www.secinfo.com
If I promote the site I do not have to pay. I like this model because my incentives are aligned with the company's. I also like the clear message to explain their logic and the fact that the email was automatically generated based on my usage yesterday.
As an aside, please visit SECInfo and check out the site. If you are not familiar with SEC filings, send me an email and I will do a series of posts on the information contained in each of the major SEC filings.
Miami, FL