Overview
Praise for The Social Network Business Plan
"As the leading provider of 'white label' social networks, we use David's book as a conceptual blueprint for designing revenue applications into our software. We agree completely that traditional advertising is dead and social advertising is the future. David's book gives you a blueprint for succeeding in the future."
—Bob Crull, founder and CEO, OneSite.com
"Online communities win when they figure out ways to collaborate with their fans to create products that can be produced and sold with mutual benefits. David Silver simply and clearly explains how social networks can do this. You'll also learn how this helps companies stay lean by generating cash through multiple channels. This is how great ideas turn small companies into fast selling companies."
—Patrick Dillon, cofounder and President, CollarFree.com
"I've started, built, and sold several web app companies, but social networks have web app companies beat. They cost less than $500,000 to launch, and if you get decent revenue growth, social networks can be sold for twenty times trailing revenues or more. No new industry has ever had these two characteristics that I'm aware of. David explains how to bring in revenue quickly through up to eighteen novel revenue channels. It's a good read."
—Robin D. Richards, founder and CEO, Notification Technologies, Inc.
"For anyone interested in developing, building, and operating a social network, you need David Silver's book as a flight instruction manual. David brings his wealth of experience in online marketing, technology, and finance to you through the pages of this essential book."
—Eric Targan, founder and CEO, BTC Interactive, "the Internet's first viral marketer"
Synopsis
Do you read the advertisements that appear on the social networking web sites you visit? Neither does anyone else! So, why do such hugely successful online communities as MySpace and Facebook rely solely on advertising to produce revenue and how long can they survive? Isn't there any other way for online communities to make money? Actually, there are eighteen other ways!
In The Social Network Business Plan, venture capital guru and Smart Start-Ups author David Silver reveals eighteen cutting-edge methods for generating income from social networking web sites—none of which involve advertising, and all of which really work.
Silver's premise is simple: There is a lot of money to be made by getting smart people talking about something that has commercial value and then selling their anonymized conversations to vendors. He goes on to reveal how all parties benefit from these arrangements, who gets paid and how much, how you get these smart people to start talking, and why vendors will pay to overhear these conversations.
At the core of each winning business model is the recommender online community, arguably the most powerful and disruptive force to emerge in the information age. These groups have already begun shaking up the advertising, marketing, sales, and public relations industries, and their influence is growing. Social networks are having a tectonic effect on several industries by shifting the power from the producer to the customer, or what is known as oligopsony power. Any savvy entrepreneur or investor who wants to get a jump on this emerging trend needs to understand the power of these groups and discover ways to tap it. This revolutionary guide helps you do just that. You'll discover how to:
- Create an elegant online recommender community
- Demonstrate your community's value to vendors
- Make your enterprise a substitute for all the others
- Operate multiple online recommender communities
- Inspire passion and loyalty in your communities
- Maximize your selling price
Online recommender communities are more than nice little businesses; they are poised to start filling Fortune 500 slots very, very soon. Read The Social Network Business Plan, and get in on the action before it's too late.