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<html>
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  <title>Model 3: Web Service</title>
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    <td align="left"><h2>Model 3: Web Service</h2></td>
    <td align="right"><a href="slide-6.html">Prev</a> | <a href="slide-8.html">Next</a></td>
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  <img src="img/business-3.gif" />
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<blockquote>

While E-Commerce has proven itself to be something of a shakey
business model for most organizations it is still an extremely popular
form of Web Service.  More and more money is being spent on the web,
and more people are turning to it to do things from <a
href="some-link.html">paying the bills</a> to <a
href="http://remindme.com/">remembering their mother's birthday</a>.
While many people are trying to make money via very conventional <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/">brick and mortar methods</a> (usually
with a little web twist), other people are more clever.  They give you
a service for free, sell ads which are targeted at your needs (since
they know all about you from your habits on the site), and sometimes
they sell statistics about you the consumer.  It does sound a little
big-brother-esque, but since the advent of targeted marketing
everything about you is observed as closely as possible.  Is this
model profitable?

<ul>

  <li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/">Amazon.com</a>: The veritable
      poster boy of e-commerce, this company lost money at a rate that
      any dot-bomb would envy.  Just recently they decided to "do the
      right thing", raise their prices to the point where they were
      making money, and try and turn a profit.  Their years of loss
      paid off and they are now a profitable company.  What is their
      secret, besides some very savvy business planning?  They built a
      genuinely useful site.  The amount of content on a site aimed to
      sell you stuff is amazing.  While they do have professional
      reviewers and editors much of their content comes from users.
      Want to know how good the latest John Grisham is?  Well check
      out the user and editor's reviews.  Looking for a new Rock CD?
      Check out the Best of 2002 list.  They carefully track your
      clicks and are constantly advertising other products for you to
      buy.  Their database of information on users and their buying
      habits is probably a marketeers dream.  I don't know if they
      sell that information, but if they want to really demonstrate
      themselves to be a soulless corporation they should get to it.</li>

  <li><a href="http://www.cars.com/">Cars.com</a>: In the United
      States owning a car is one of the signs of citizenship.  The
      only way it could be more important is if the government took
      away your right to vote if you didn't have a vehicle registered
      under your name.  Cars.com, while having lots of information
      about your favorite car, and hosting the website of those Public
      Radio celebs from Car Talk, also provides a great service for
      finding your dream car.  If you want a Standard BMW 850 (like I
      do), you can go to their website, enter the model, your zip
      code, and a radius from where you live in which to look.  You
      can then sort the results by distance, price, whatever, and see
      if there are any BMW 850's for sale near you.  Unfortunately
      they are all out of my price range, and are usually automatics,
      but a boy can dream.  The benefits of their service is apparent
      to anyone involved with cars.  The dealers can pay to advertise
      their supply on the site, and they can charge Pep Boys lots of
      money to advertise new gas tanks to anyone buying an old Pinto.
      While I don't know if it is profitable, it sure should be!*</li>
</ul>

<small>* Tristan Cohen is in no way affiliated with Cars.com, but if
       they could get him a good deal on a BMW 850, he would gladly
       work as a web lacky for a year</small>

</blockquote>
<hr>
<a href="tristancohen@yahoo.com">tristancohen@yahoo.com</a>
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by admin — last modified 2003-04-28 10:12
 

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