How to Make Money in 2009 With Your Web Startup

How to Make Money in 2009 With Your Web Startup

by Bradley Joyce
Posted on 01/05/2009
I am about to drop a bombshell on you. The kind of secret that you only hear about on the radio associated with some weird 800 number and really bad domain name. The real good stuff... you ready? The answer to how to make money in 2009 with your web startup is.....

CHARGE PEOPLE MONEY!

Are you completely taken off guard and shocked at such advice? I wouldn't be surprised. We've been slowly conditioned over the past couple years (as consumers and as web entrepreneurs) that the products/services we use or create should be free (Twitter, Facebook, gmail, etc, etc) or at least start out that way. Let's be clear, this is a sure-fire way NOT to make money. Got it? My mantra for 2009 is "Charge Early and Charge Often." Sure you might have less users, sure the users you do have will be more demanding. But that is OK! I am completely floored everytime someone brings up the issue of monetizing Twitter (or another such 'free' service'). Ummm, charge your 1 million+ users $1/month to use the service. Even if you lost 50% of your users (highly unlikely) that is still a pretty nice chunk of change. Right? The measuring stick is no longer how many users you have and how fast your userbase is growing. It will be how quickly you're generating revenue (remember what revenue is?), and how fast your revenue is growing. This has been a lesson in common sense. Thanks for reading ;-)
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Thank For Info My favorite is backlink adn adsense

posted on 03/15/2009

[...] customers are very important people. They pay you (yes you had better be charging them!). They give you feedback. They tell their friends about your [...]

twitter could easily make $1 per user on average by injecting ads into the stream - these could be clearly labeled as ads and be occasional. nobody would mind as long as it wasn't very often. you could pay $20/year to have no ads if you wanted to. seems easy. that said, they won't do it. expect twitter to continue to be free in 2009.

posted on 01/15/2009

[...] my opinion, the movement towards charging users versus providing free service is a good one for the startup economy. It increases barriers for the competition, requires you to [...]

[...] Now, this is a book after all so buying it is not all strange, nor is the whole concept of a “beta book.” However, I think we’ll start seeing this more and more from companies releasing new products, along the lines of the advice I offered in my post on making money with your web startup. [...]

I think most people would. Twitter has recently hired a biz dev guy, so I'm sure we'll see some real monetizing efforts from Twitter in 2009.

Bradley Joyce
posted on 01/14/2009

I'd still use Twitter if they charged $1 a month

Adam Chavez
posted on 01/14/2009

Not a bad idea

crazybux
posted on 01/05/2009

I am with ya on this one.

Scot Duke
posted on 01/05/2009

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