After feedback from a post recently on virtual world business models I’ve put together a new list of virtual world business model elements. I suppose I should really call these revenue models, but the term business model is used generically (including by me) to describe these, so there you go. Thanks to the many commenters in that thread. It’s had the most responses of any post on the Forge. After I feel reasonably confident the list is full, I’ll create a permanent page with a taxonomy on it.

I broke these down into Direct and Indirect revenue methods, relative to the player (in Indirect, the player is giving something, usually money or attention, to someone else, who pays you in return). I also opted to try to list individual elements rather than potential combinations, since most of them can be used in conjunction with each other. Please suggest clarifications, additions, and so on. Thanks!

DIRECT

  1. Upfront Cost
    1. Box Purchase (Everquest, etc)
    2. Activation Fee (often used for downloadable or web-accessible worlds)
  2. Metered
    1. Monthly (see below for more subscription info)
    2. By the Minute (Not widely used since AOL went flat-rate.)
    3. By Resource Use
      1. By Bandwidth (I have no examples of this.)
      2. By CPU Cycle (Second Life land?)
      3. By Admin Time (Paying for admin-assisted roleplaying plots.)
  3. One-time membership fee, unlocking options. (Threshold does this I believe.)
  4. Virtual Asset Sales
    1. Permanent Items (Like our artifacts.)
    2. Custom Items (See the Cherry Pie post recently.)
    3. Limited-use items
      1. By Number of Uses
      2. By Time (decaying items) (I know Puzzle Pirates has real-money-purchased decaying items.)
    4. Items w/o hardwired functionality (Most of Habbo’s furniture)
    5. Items with hardwired functionality (Like our artifacts)
    6. Personal spaces (We sell very customizable houses for credits. Selling something like a ship or spaceship for real money would seem to me to be the same thing.)
    7. Selling Recognition (A hobbyist text MUD named Carrion Fields sold characters a permanent ‘tombstone’ in their forums.)
  5. Subscriptions
    1. Single subscription level (WoW, etc)
    2. Multiple subscription levels (For instance, more expensive subscriptions for better CS, access to premium servers, etc.)
    3. Optional subscriptions (Runescape)
  6. Transactional
    1. Cut of RMT (SOE’s Station Exchange)
    2. Cut of gambling/tournament fees (No examples that I know of.)
  7. Merchandising (WoW’s Trading Card Game, figurines, t-shirts, etc)
  8. Donations (A variety of hobbyist and small virtual worlds.)

Indirect

  1. Advertising
    1. Website (Many virtual worlds)
    2. In-Client/Around Game (Many virtual worlds)
    3. In-Game (Anarchy Online)
  2. Affiliate programs (Not aware of any offhand, but am sure they exist.)

So what am I missing?