Many ecommerce marketplace vendors embark on entrepreneurial journey for achieving some preposterous goals. While the chain of entire ecommerce activities follows the subtleties of a pragmatic business model, generating revenue through such business activities involves a hygiene factor. This hygiene factor in ecommerce lexicon is what we call ‘Trendy business model.’ With ‘ecommerce’ becoming the buzzword of the decade and money making the ultimate pursuit of rank and file, revenue models give a window to your thought process. The following list of revenue channels set the ball rolling by structuring your monetary activities. There are no easy answers to questions concerning the concept of a best revenue model. However, I reckon that the following list of models will surely aid you in cherry-picking the best one.
Advertising Revenue Model:
This is one of the classical revenue models. This is also called ‘Online advertising revenue model.’ Organizations buy advertising space on your site. In the purchased advertising space, organizations display written messages or info-graphics thereby conveying the intended information. Organizations pay you for promoting their advertisements. Sometimes, organizations may reach a consensus and work on other schemes such as pay per click and pay per view. In pay per click scheme, you are paid a certain fixed amount every time a user clicks that particular ad. In pay per view scheme, you are paid depending on the number of views/HTTP traffic. Higher the traffic, higher the revenue.
Note: In our Online Marketplace software – you can customize two types of advertising models – One is banner advertising and the other us PPC campaign for your advertisers. You can allow them to bid on the slots available on your platform and you can run PPC network for stores connected in your platform.
Affiliate Referral System:
Consider a scenario in which XYZ is a reputed marketplace script vendor. If you own a blog and have a great crowd of admirers, you can endorse his products. To put in layman terms, you can reckon your followers to avail the services of XYZ. This reckoning is achieved by embedding a link that directs your customers to XYZ marketplace website. As an alternate action, you can request for a unique coupon code from XYZ and ask your customers to redeem the code. You are paid a fixed amount based on the number of customers who redeem a particular code.
Note: Check our Affiliate referral system model explained here.
Subscription Revenue Model:
If users wish to avail the services of a few websites, they have to pay some amount periodically. Companies run various subscription offers such as 3 months subscription plan, 6 months subscription plan, 12 months subscription plan etc. Sellers can promote their products by availing the subscription offers. For example, many popular ecommerce community forums and discussion forums provide updates on contemporary issues for premium members. Companies also charge for offering security and payment services. For example, VeriSign’s subscription model comes under this category.
Transaction Revenue Model:
eBay is known for leveraging the features of transaction revenue model. For instance, if you wish to sell a product on eBay site, you have to pay a fixed amount for listing the product. Every time a transaction happens i.e., every time eBay promotes your product through its endeavors, you have to pay a fixed transaction amount. The transaction can be anything- right from users watching video associated with your product to buying it, a certain fixed amount has to be paid.
Sales Commission Revenue Model:
The entire fraternity of wholesalers and retailers follows this model. Because of the prevailing ‘War for being the best’, sellers list their products on various sites such as Etsy, Buy.com etc. Competitive prices can be fixed. Customers can compare the prices, quality and then purchase the products. Popular shopping clubs such as brands4friends, vente-privee.com etc. come under the gamut of this model. This model encompasses popular e-tailers such as Amazon, live shopping entry points such as iBood, guut.de, woot etc. Sites like Amazon and Flipkart earn through commissions. As a matter of fact, Amazon charges a fixed annual fee to the sellers who list their products on its website.
Note: Our multi seller shopping cart uses commission model as primary source and has a robust commission tracking dashboard where you can track all the sales from diff. sellers, their revenue, commission owed to you, refunds & disputes on hold etc.
Sponsorship:
This can be illustrated with an example- Assume that you own an editorial that describes various emerging trends in ecommerce industry. The best way to aver the trends is by offering consummate exclusivity on each and every trend. A typical sponsorship package comprises promotion on leaderboard, a medium sized ad, a large sized ad etc. Advertisers can sponsor the white papers and research papers documented by your team. Whenever an e-copy of your white paper is downloaded, the email of the user is sent to the advertiser (in this case, the sponsor). Advertisers can now send e-mails targeted at such users. Similarly, you can list the names of certain sponsors in your publications’ weekly, weekly newsletters, email campaigns etc.
Content Syndication:
This is also called Web syndication. This is one of the many great SEO tactics in which content of one ecommerce marketplace script is made available on blogs, websites and news forums of third party entities. For every post/article published on blogs, websites and forums, a fixed amount of commission should be paid to the owners of these blogs and websites.
Social Data Mining revenue model:
It is all about identifying the buying patterns of customers. Also, the buyers’ preferences are taken into consideration and sales forecasting is done. For instance, during festivities and certain special occasions, customers may flock to your website and purchase certain type of products like clothes, electronic goods etc. Revenue can thus be generated by proportionately setting the prices of products. Sellers have to cautiously calculate the per unit price for which ROI seems substantial. Similarly, to prevent credit card frauds and fraudulent insurance claims, this model may come handy. Needless to say, a lot of analytics is involved in this model.
Freemium Revenue Model:
More often than not, many web services use this model. It all boils down to selling free products to as many customers as possible. For premium users, all the high-end features will be enabled. E-commerce marketplace script vendors provide free versions with limited features. Enterprise editions have all high-end features inherently enabled. Obviously, ecommerce marketplace platform owners can make a fortune by selling enterprise editions/versions.
Licensing Revenue Model:
This depends on a multitude of factors. For example, if your customer requests for an additional functional module, he has to pay a premium to integrate the desired module into his ecommerce marketplace platform. As an ecommerce marketplace script developer, it behooves on you to file a patent. Whenever a third party group accosts you for your product’s configuration, he has to pay to obtain the required licenses/permits. Whenever licenses expire, the third party guy has to renew by paying some amount.
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