Hisham Sarwar
The way of doing business has changed and the new model is largely attributed to the emergence of the internet and social media. The world is changing fast and businesses are quickly adapting to the pace of ease of doing business on the internet.
Have you ever wondered why Google, Facebook services are free for end users?.
The reason why I have mentioned these two giants out of millions of other businesses is how easily they were able to upscale their business and topple over their competitors.
Facebook is free for users. You can make friends, upload unlimited pictures, videos on your profile without worrying about the data storage limitation. You can also use other Facebook-owned companies such as WhatsApp, Instagram free.
On WhatsApp, you can make unlimited video calls without worrying about data price or paying WhatsApp. On Instagram, you can upload your pictures, put filters on them and look cool. You can also upload videos on Instagram.
Google is a great facility. It lets you make free searches and reach out to any potential business online with a click of a button.
Why are these services free for the end-user?
The answer lies to one word “Scalability“, attributed to one approach “High-End Business” and is dependent on one business model “Advertisement“.
The advertisers pay huge costs for your data on Google and Facebook. While you are searching on Google, the search engine is keeping a track of your activity and gives your information to a potential advertiser who may be looking to pay Google and get listed for that business-related keyword.
Facebook is free for every user but at the cost of the data.
Advertisers pay premium money to reach out to their potential customers based on their activity, interest and geographical presence. Remember there was a huge fuss over Cambridge Analytica data leak where sensitive information about Facebook users was leaked. Although Facebook paid a huge penalty for this massive oversight, the truth is the fine imposed does not even come close to the advertisement revenue.
The advertisement revenue is scaled to go higher in the future as the number of users on the Facebook rise. Mark Zuckerberg is already working on providing internet connection to lesser-privileged countries so Facebook’s user-base can be increased and advertisers can reach out to that un-capped potential market.
If you want to scale-up your business model to the next level. The secret of success lies in the empowerment of the people. If you can facilitate users and empower them without charging a dime, you are on your way of self-empowerment and strengthening your business operations that can only be scaled higher and grow in the future.
Jack Ma did this using the internet in the late ’90s. His business model was focused around empowering small businesses using Alibaba’s website and the rest is history. Today, Jack is the richest man in China and has already retired from the company within 3 decades of its operations.
The future is the internet, It is here to stay. If you can use it to your advantage by empowering people and with an ability to scale up the business operations, you are into a gold mine already.
Remember, Data is the new oil.
