Outgrowing Advertising: Multimodal Business Models as a Product Strategy

There's a natural book publishing model for Substack to mirror that of QQ Reading: Start with a free newsletter. Each edition is a chapter. Readers can consume X chapters for free (high start %). Once reader gets to chapter Y, they pay to unlock ending: https://a16z.com/2018/12/07/when-advertising-isnt-enough-multimodal-business-models-product-strategy/... See more

In the past few years, startups like Substack, Patreon, and Shopify have created alternative ways for creators to build businesses online through direct transactions, rather than advertising. This shift exposed a simple fact: in an ad-driven world, creators were generally under-monetizing their audiences.

Meta makes $207 per year per user in the US and Canada, without charging them anything. That's more than many consumer subscription products (Netflix, Spotify, etc) make from their paid users.

Payment models - Free, Ad-supported, Tiered, Subscriptions(per time or volume), Free Trial, Razorblade model.