business models of websites

The purpose of every big website is to earn money. Of course, we do not tend to pay attention to this aspect on the spot. The first thing a user does is looking at the content in which he/she is interested. Some people never ask themselves a question why a particular page is created. It is mainly because the answer is quite simple as money play the crucial role in today's world. But there is also another question to be asked - how do they earn money? It is definitely more absorbing one as the way is not always clearly visible. I want to differentiate three most popular techniques that the websited use to pay for themselves.

1) Advertising.

 One can encounter ads almost everywhere. It is the easiest way to support a website with the money coming from it. There is a number of examples, such as Facebook and Youtube. Ads may be frustrating especially when they are designed to our needs. Cooperating with other sites, Facebook can get data from them and display the ads suiting to a given user. And it is not only the Facebook that can do it. For example, when you searched for the shoes that you really like but they are too expensive and you cannot buy them, you will be seeing their picture at almost every website you go. It is quite disturbing if you ask me. Of course, one can add AdBlock to their browser and get rid of the ads in that way. But there are some websites that will not show you the content unless you disable it (kurnik.pl or any page with the sport coverage). It is like that because showing ads is the only source of their profit and they expect some kind of contribution from you.

2) Subscription option.

It is a business model that is based on paying money in order to get to the content of a website. This type of maintaining the websites is taken from the newspaper and magazine subscription. It became popular before the Internet era. One could pay for a year up front and then receive the magazine every month or so. Nowadays, the on-demand Internet streaming services, such as Netflix, are using it. One must pay an ordered amount of money to be able to watch their favorite TV shows. In this way the corporation gains profit and the user gets access to what he/she wants without ads.

3) Selling services.

Dropbox and iCloud can serve as the best examples here. These websites are platforms on which we can keep our files. They are some kind of a virtual place of storage. We can access our data there whenever we want as long as we have access to the Internet. Such websites are also connected with paying for the space. Often the access if free up to some gigabytes and if we want to upload more content we need to pay.

One of the websites I visit the most is Youtube. It uses the advertising business model. The ads are often displayed before a particular video that we want to see. Also there are propositions designed for every user individually. They are based on the history of films you watched before. It also may be counted as a way to gain profit as someone who was supposed to leave the site stays longer because the proposed video gained his/her interest. What is more, Youtube recently introduced Youtube Red which is some kind of a licence. As in the case of Netflix, one would have to pay some amount of money in order to watch some content. Of course, the option of free videos still remains but some others are to be introduced and be only available after payment. Lack of adertisemtns or the possibility to download a video on your mobile device are among other commodities coming from subscription option.