Yesterday Natalie had us identify the various ways that we might earn revenue in our on-line business.  Today she takes it a bit further and asks us to consider potential business models.  She breaks the concept of a business model down in to two dimensions.  The first is “type of product” with alternatives being “yourself” or “other people’s stuff” and the second be “type of revenue stream” with the alternatives being “active” or “residual”.  It’s a nice schema — kind of like Covey’s urgency versus importance 2 x 2 grid.  Today’s prompt is:

• Which business model is best for you and what one revenue stream is most feasible?

First, I’m going to go a bit esoteric / draw a parallel to Covey.  I think the “quadrant 2” equivalent for the entrepreneur is “yourself” and “residual”.  As with Covey, if we focus on this quadrant, long term we’re going to have a lot more success.  Side note here — Covey suggests that focusing on non-urgent, important tasks (quadrant 2 as he calls them) is the key to success.  I agree totally.

So what’s feasible for me.  Well certainly I’m 100% on board with the idea of selling “me” versus “other people’s stuff”.  The big challenge is on the active versus residual.  The temptation is going to be to go after the active items.  Unfortunately that’s not the best long term solution — long term I need to get to the residual streams.  Fortunately as I evaluate the products I flagged yesterday (e-books, e-courses, coaching, keynote addresses, and cross marketing) there’s a high “residual” content.  The key’s going to be “keeping the end in mind” (Covey again) and making sure that at each step of the process the long term, residual income potential is evaluated and the immediate/active income producing activity is structured to convert to the long term/residual.  A good principle to follow in my mind!

If you want some more information on the challenge, check out the post on day eleven at:

http://suitcaseentrepreneur.com/blogchallenge/blog-challenge-day11