Inside Out

I just stumbled upon this great study by Forum One Networks. One of their projects is the Online Community Research Network. Why didn’t I find that earlier? The study was made in October 2007… Better late than never. They also provide other interesting stuff and you can participate in their studies, which at the end of the day will be great for everybody.

Some findings they point out on page one:
- Respondents generally valued non-fiduciary dimensions of value, like loyalty over direct revenue.
- The most effective revenue generating techniques were advertising and charging for community subscription.
- A member-first attitude is needed when considering the addition of fee-based or revenue-generating services. The best way to find out what your members do or don’t want ? Ask them.

Interesting facts to me while I was reading the study were:
- More then 50% don’t get directly attributable revenue from their communities.
- Community activities like content sharing and social networks got more popular. Blogs, general discussion groups, content sharing and product support forums are the most popular.
- Highly valuable dimensions for the organizations are: member engagement, member loyalty, member satisfaction and influencer activity. This is much more customer centered than call avoidance which was rated not valuable.
- communities charge for a lot of different and specific stuff. For example: Contact members, assess to experts, Storage ad-free browsing, custom domain, enhanced game play, enhanced support, member visibility, networking, private groups, custom platforms, enhanced profiles, premium articles, custom templates, private messages, there’s no freed content on the site, premium documentation, developer version software. I’m wondering for what else you could charge: more detailed information, earlier access to information, unique Profile extensions or effects, …
- best targeted Advertising and Subscriptions but the most common ways to generate revenue from an online community. Thought leadership, lead generation, customer retention, brand loyalty are top indirect revenue sources. The study provides a list with websites that have interesting revenue approaches, which show that Advertising and Subscription generally work for every community but you need to find a specific solution that depends on your community.

Overall the best advice is to understand your community, what value do they find in interacting. Ask them what they want/ need. Which means that you add features that are valuable for the members and compliment the core features. Don’t abuse it, try advertisement or sponsorship that is that well targeted that it actually adds some value. If you want to charge for features, add something where your members think its actually worth paying for. Try to mix the parts of the different revenue models so you always use the one that suites you community the best.