It’s a few days before launch.

The IP is in order, the press release is written and the espresso machine is set to stun. You couldn’t be happier and why not?

Everything is finally working out.

There is only one nagging question left to ask before you call up the family and break out the champagne, “How in the world are we going to make money?”

Most Stores . . .

It never ceases to amaze me how many web companies set up shop without any coherent picture about how they are going to make a revenue. Worse than those are the startups that have a plan, but one that would require 100,000 users and a small cluster of consumer behavior shifts to function.

I think a part of the problem is the culture.

The classic game for the Web 2.0 set is to collect enough eyeballs to court an acquisition, which was fine when investment capital flowed like cheap wine. Unfortunately, with an uncertain economy in the horizon, purse strings have drawn closed and the usual suspects are being a lot more careful about where they are putting their investment dollars.

This probably means that the Porsche is not in your immediate financial future.

So how do you pay the bills before your rich Uncles on Sand Hill Road catch wiff of your latest project? Here are a few thoughts.

Specialized Ad Networks. Does your product target a specific demographic? If so, there is probably a botique advertising network out there that is trying to reach your audience. The benefit of signing on with a speciality network is that if you meet their traffic and quality requirements, they will almost always pay huge multiples over what a standard advertising solution would.

Data. If there is one thing more valuable than eyeballs it is data. If your system collects information that you can reasonably package into trend data, you have a great source of additional income. I am not saying to sell your users up a creek (selling “leads” is a potentially dangerous business to play around with), what I am saying is that if you can answer “who, what, where, when or why” for advertisers they will be willing to pay for it.

White Label. If you can license your software to another company, consider it. There is a huge market in creating features to plug into larger platforms. Especially if your strength is not in marketing, always consider ways to make revenue through business development.

Micro Sales. Unless you are selling something tangible, it will be difficult to get someone to pay for it online. That being said, one-time, fixed cost payments are still possible. Chances are you will still have to give away a lot to grow your user base, but a decent revenue can be made using creatively priced premium services.

Don’t Accept Bits Of String

Hoping for an acquisition is a great way to get through those bitter periods, but unfortunately hope alone does not put food on the able. So before you run up the bills too high, or bank on a model that will take ten years to be profitable you may want to sit down and give some serious thought to your short term revenue schemes.

(Image) (RSS)