Aku selalu tertanya kadangkala dengan bagaimana mereka ini beri free service pada people dan masih lagi buat duit? Bukan senang tau, pasal mereka terpaksa approach rich business company lain untuk invest pada service mereka provide, just for getting people’s to know their brand. So aku search dalam Google, mencari jalan bagaimana mereka semua ini buat duit. Dan based pada apa aku baca yang tertulis, konsepnya adalah lebih kurang sama dengan advertisers makes money.

So aku gather only service yang matters to me dan selalu aku guna, antaranya adalah Facebook, Twitter, UStream.TV, Google, WordPress, Firefox, Digg dan StumbleUpon. Let us semua belajar dari professional, dan deploy untuk web service kita akan datang pada mereka yang ingin lakukan.

Facebook

Social-networking Web site Facebook Inc. is quietly working on a new advertising system that would let marketers target users with ads based on the massive amounts of information people reveal on the site about themselves. . . .

The new service would let advertisers visit a Web site to choose a much wider array of characteristics for the users who should see their ads — based not only on age, gender and location, but also on details such as favorite activities and preferred music, people familiar with the matter say. Facebook would use its technology to point the ads to the selected groups of people without exposing their personal information to the advertisers.

Source: Facebook Really Does Make Money [Marketing Pilgrim]

Twitter

According to Winer, Twitter has a number of potential business models, all of which rely on the service acquiring a large enough user base in the first place.

• Become a distributor of third-party apps and services that use Twitter and take a cut in return.
• Design and sell hardware such as a cellphone with “Twitter baked in”.
• Or, better still, partner with mobile device makers and carriers to offer superior Twitter integration.
• And finally, sell the service to a carrier.

The first and third suggestion seem the most viable. Setting up a Twitter products and services store would be similar to Skype’s shop that sells USB phones and other products that utilize Skype’s API. And partnering with mobile carriers seems a “no brainer” and might provide a way to reduce SMS costs. Although, as Winer also points out, making Twitter more stable should be a first priority.

Source: How will Twitter make money? (A web 2.0 conundrum) [ZDNet.com]

UStream.TV

Google Adsense, pre-roll video ads, paid membership, plus more. Anyone who says that they know exactly what will happen in this industry is either deluded or lying. Ustream plans to experiment with a variety of different models, ranging from advertising-supported to pay-per-view.

Source: UStream.TV interview with angel investor Chris Yeh [WebTVwire]

Google

Google makes money through Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites generated revenues of $2.28 billion, or 62% of total revenues, in the first quarter of 2007. This represents a 76% increase over first quarter 2006 revenues of $1.30 billion and a 15% increase over fourth quarter 2006 revenues of $1.98 billion.

Google makes money through Network Revenues – Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $1.35 billion, or 37% of total revenues, in the first quarter of 2007. This represents a 45% increase over network revenues of $928 million generated in the first quarter of 2006 and a 12% increase over fourth quarter 2006 revenues of $1.20 billion.

Google makes money through International Revenues – Revenues from outside of the United States totaled $1.71 billion, representing 47% of total revenues in the first quarter of 2007, compared to 42% in the first quarter of 2006 and 44% in the fourth quarter of 2006. Had foreign exchange rates remained constant from the fourth quarter of 2006 through the first quarter of 2007, our revenues in the first quarter of 2007 would have been $23 million lower. Had foreign exchange rates remained constant from the first quarter of 2006 through the first quarter of 2007, our revenues in the first quarter of 2007 would have been $115 million lower.

Download PDF version of how Google makes money

Source: How Google Makes Money 2009 [Web Analytics World]

WordPress

1. Blog Hosting – WordPress offers blog hosting services at $500 per month to big publishers like Om Malik, All Things D and CNN’s Political Ticker among others. They use WordPress.com’s server infrastructure to host your blog and therefore the performance will obviously be great but unlike other web hosting services, WordPress VIP Hosting doesn’t accept everyone who applies so good luck.

2. Google AdSense – Free blogs hosted on WordPress.com may sometimes carry Google ads but these ads may only appear if all the following three conditions are met:

1. The visitor is not using Firefox browser.
2. He has logged out of his WordPress account, if he has one.
3. The referring source is not a WordPress powered blog. So a person reaching abc.wordpress.com from xyz.wordpress.com won’t see any Google Ads.

Even with all these conditions, the revenue generated from serving Google AdSense ads on WordPress.com hosted blog may still be significant as do around a billion page views per month.

3. Automattic Kismet – You don’t see Viagra spam in your blog posts because it all gets filtered automatically by Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short), the excellent spam protection plug-in available for WordPress.

Now Akismet spam catching technology is free for personal blogs but if you maintain a corporate blog or run a network of blogs, you are required to buy a commercial license of Akismet that starts at around $50 per month.

What may surprise you is that professional bloggers, or anyone who is making more than $500 per month in advertising revenue from a WordPress blog, also needs to pay a $5 per month fee for the Akismet license.

4. Premium Accounts – While anyone can host a blog on WordPress.com for free, they charge you a fee if you want to buy additional storage space for your multimedia files or want to use a custom web domain instead of the default wordpress.com sub-domain. These are premium features.

There’s also (unconfirmed) talk that WordPress may soon allow users to add AdSense in their free blogs for a subscription fee.

5. Web Host Referrals – WordPress.org suggests of list of third-party web hosting companies where you may self-host your WordPress blog(s) for a fee. Now all these are referral links so Automattic gets a commission per sale.

In fact, this hosting referral system may be extremely profitable for Automattic because if you search for “WordPress Hosting” on Google (a very competitive keyword phrase), the first sponsored link on the Google results page is paid by WordPress itself and it says – “Top 5 WordPress Web Hosts – Chosen by the developers of the WordPress blogging software”.

6. WordPress Support – If you need help with WordPress (or WordPress MU) but the free support forums aren’t solving the purpose, consider subscribing to the Support Network of Automattic. The WordPress development team will help you solve problems related to your WordPress system and the response time can be as low as 6 hours. This service is primarily for Enterprise users who are willing to shell out a $2.5-5k per year for support.

7. Poll Daddy – I am not sure if Matt discussed this but Automattic also provides a paid version of Poll Daddy where you can have unlimited number of questions per survey and there’s no Poll Daddy branding in your polls or surveys.

Source: How Does WordPress Make Money? [digital inspiration]

Firefox

You see that little Google search box on the upper right? If you use that box to make a search and click on one of the Google ads from the results page, Firefox gets an estimated 80% of the money. In addition to the search box, Mozilla also makes money from searches made on the Firefox start page .

The Google search box adds value and income to Firefox and that is the key to making big money on the Net. Users of Firefox don’t see the Google search box as advertising. Instead they see is as a value added service and they don’t mind that Mozilla makes money from the sponsored links. Most of them don’t even know Firefox makes money from it. I’m sure if they find out it made over $50 million in 2005, they will be shocked.

Source: Firefox – A $50+ Million Cash Cow [The Tech Zone]

Digg

Digg, and the others may also sponsor some of its web space and ad space to other sites willing to pay for it.

There are other things that will effect the way your ads attract users. For instance Google’s Ad services allow for content searching. By that I mean, the add bot scans a page for content, once a major content type is found, the google ads reflect the page content. Say the word “game” appears 30 some odd times in a page, and the word “action” appears only 15 or so; When Google scans the page, it will find games and display content relevant to games in the ads, since a genre is also specified on the page “action” you may see some ads about action games.

Site popularity comes from high ranks in search engines, and lots of users. Of course, you can’t get one with out the other. Thats why search engines like Goolge will scan sites the you link to, and find out what content they host, if its relevant your rank will get a boost, making you higher and broader on a search list. This also allows for more users, and since you’ve linked to a site with users, you’ll have some from that site as well.

There are lots of tinny things that can contribute to how well known you are on the net.

Source: Can someone explain how Digg or other related websites make money? [CodingForums.com]

StumbleUpon

SU profits in 2 ways: Sponsors, and Sponsored Stumbles. Read on to find out how each of these affects you.

Sponsors
In SU, you have the option of donating a certain amount of money (suggested $20 for a 1 year membership), and you get a cool green icon instead of a blue one next to your name. Additionally, you can start groups, get messages emailed to you, as well as turning off sponsored stumbles.

Sponsored Stumbles
How else does SU make money? Every once in a while, a site that you’re taken to is there because an advertiser paid $.05 to bring you there. This site will generally be related to your interests, and you can’t tell the difference. Generally, less than 2% of all Stumbles are sponsored.

Source: How Does StumbleUpon Make Money? [MikeBogo.com]

Flickr

In terms of advertising, it’s minimal at best. Instead, Flickr makes most of its money by selling Flickr Pro memberships for $24.95/year and offers e-commerce services through partners such as photocards, posters, frames and calendars.

Source: Is Flickr Worth $4-Billion? [Mark Evans]

PIC Source: Tomitheos [Flickr]

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