Before we start talking about business models, it is important to know what a business model is. According to our text book, “a business model is how a company makes money or a non-profit organization achieves its revenue objectives, how an entity sustains itself”. The most common way for a website to generate revenue is to sell goods or services. Non-profit organizations can raise revenue through donations.
Making money on the internet seems easy, but it is not. Even successful companies have a hard time expanding to the internet, especially when trying to engage with social media. As a business owner who operates solely on the internet, I can assure that it is a competitive, aggressive and hard-to-understand market. But, once tamed, it can also be very profitable and fun – especially when you, just like me, play videogames for a living.
The basic web business models described on our text book have both B2C and B2B applications, a few have non-profit applications, and are the following:
1)Brokerage Model: brings buyers and sellers together.
2)Advertising Model: displays advertisements during navigation.
3)Infomediary Model: resells useful information.
4)Merchant Model: provides good and services.
5)Manufacturer Model: takes place when a manufacturer reaches buyers directly
6)Affiliate Model: offers incentives to partner sites.
7)Community Model: connects individuals and groups.
8)Subscription Model: delivers services and content for a fee.
9)Utility Model: delivers services and content on a paid base.
![]() |
Machinima Logo |
I can also, on my own, sell ad placements on my Youtube channel (on my channel’s background or on videos), which is shown below, and promote products, brands and services on Twitter and Facebook, which I use to better engage with my audience but which also work as a form of promotion for me and / or for other companies businesswise.
![]() |
BRKsEDU Youtube Channel - 288,240 subscribers - 32,338,072 total views |