I used to get asked all the time, "How is ActiveRain going to make money?". However, since the HouseValues investment things have slightly changed; now everyone is eager to tell me how ActiveRain is going to make money.
The funny thing is that most people's understanding of ActiveRain's value proposition is wrong. Most people tell me that the value of ActiveRain is in our member's content. That is false. Although the content on ActiveRain is valuable to it's members, I do not view it as a primary value to ActiveRain Corp. At least in the sense that none of our planned revenue models are dependent on utilizing our members content to make money.
Seth Godin published a post today that explains ActiveRain's business strategy perfectly, so I am going to leave you with a portion of his post instead of trying to paraphrase what he said.
"...the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build isn't an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.
It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about...
Everything the organization does is to feed and grow and satisfy the tribe. Instead of looking for customers for your products, you seek out products (and services) for the tribe."
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