AKA: Pay for Data, Virtual Goods, Service Enabler
While the OSS is free of cost, the content or data presented or used in it is sold. Content can be, for example, news feeds, stock ticker, virtual goods, designs, clipart, etc. Often leads to recurring payments for data streams but can also be a singular payment for content.
Requires:
- Setup of a data / content hosting platform (hosted of self-hosted)
- Integration of payment mechanism
- Setup of a legal entity to accept the payments
Variants & Options:
- Freemium Data: A useful portion of content is free but premium content / data can be bought.
- In-Stream Advertisements: A content stream is "enriched" with ads, which can be turned off for a fee.
- Revenue Share: Data to be paid is provided by a third-party, but an integration is supported and the third party pays for it (e.g., maintainers get some percentage / kickback of what users pay)
- Data resale: Data to be paid is bought from a third-party and resold to the users with a margin
| Characteristics | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Effort to set-up | Weeks | Free data hosting probably exists but paid data hosting need to be implemented |
| Effort to maintain | Medium | Premium data/content has to come from somewhere |
| Cost to set-up | Low | Maybe for hosted content but probably percentage based |
| Cost to maintain | Low | Platform used to host & pay for data might cost |
| One-time Income | Medium | If content is bought one-time (e.g., designs) |
| Recurring Income | Low | Depends on value of premium streams (e.g., stock data) |
| Income Predictability | Medium | Client might go back to free |
| Full income Threshold | ?1000+ | Depends heavily on the data/content value |
| Recipient | C | Each maintainer might offer a personal data stream |
| Additional Work | Low | Extra work to create data / content |
| Visibility | Low | Easy to overlook by users except for ads |
| Necessity to pay | Medium | A free version has probably everything necessary. Premium content could be inserted but disabled/blured. |
| Entry Threshold | Low | Premium data could be offered and bought in-app |
| Countervalue | Premium | User pays for premium data |
| Scalability | High | Scales with the number of end-users and content streams |
| Effort for marketing | Medium | If free data is already usefull buyers have to be convinced |
| Competitors | O | Everybody could offer data / content but integration might be constricted by maintainers |
| Software types | Special | Best for apps with news streams or templates |