This article was authored by Jeanne Heydecker and originally published on the Woomentum network.
You have this great idea, you’ve validated your market, you’ve looked at positioning and the market potential, now you need to look at the financial.
How do you generate revenue? For all ideas, understanding what the market will bear is the first step in designing a diversified business model. “Diversified” and “recurring” are very attractive words to investors. Investigate all the ways you can monetize your product/service. Perhaps you have a web site where you can build in banner advertising. If you use Facebook, consider using instant articles and get an additional bit of income. Are you looking at all possible target audiences for your product/service? Have you explored different ways your product/service can be used? Are there add-ons you can create for those who love your basic product to customize or add features at additional cost? Can you sell through associations or groups to their members with bulk discount rates? Are there companies that could sell your product/service as part of a suite of products they’re already selling?
For example, an e-card company that features a place to list your friends emails and their birthdays could create an email service targeting real estate agents who simply upload their photos and information to send to all the people on their list for a fee. There would be other targets beyond real estate agents who could easily use this service, but it’s the same back end tech.
Put all your best people in a room and brainstorm on how you can generate revenue. Open it up and think big. Bigger. I always ask, “if money were no object, you had all the right people in place and all the time in the world, what would you do to do ‘x'”? Google wouldn’t be Google without a simple idea to use their data to match advertisers to search strings. What’s your simple idea?