Hopefully the title got your attention and you thought that this kid must clearly not be able to type.  Many of you are probably aware of the underground world of websites that broadcast sports games online for free; many of you probably think that those websites have similar addresses to the one in this blog post’s title.

These websites’ business models bring into question the ethics of internet entrepreneurship.  Surely these sites fill a great need: fans want to watch their teams and don’t have cable, or don’t want to pay for streaming services online.  Nonetheless, it’s clearly an illegal operation.  Keep the legality of your service in consideration.  I assume most people will not try to run a brothel from a website, but make sure to clear things up with the people in charge if you are unsure of the legal aspects of your business.

I admittedly used to love Farmville.  First semester sophomore year, I filled my study breaks with Farmville.  I also filled my studying with Farmville.  It was very entertaining to watch my little farm grow because of the work I put into it.  I justified my perfected time-wasting by pretending that the economics were completely accurate and that the game was a good portrayal of real life.

Then I bought a tractor and Farmville informed me that, to fuel the tractor, I had to spend money on the game.  Real money.  What a joke.  I could not possibly sit still long enough to run my farm without a tractor.  I quit playing Farmville.

I think Farmville’s business model is lame.  I will call it the bottle rocket business model.  It preys on users that are obsessed with their product for a short time and spend some money on it.  Even the product itself is only a fad.  This business is purely to make money through a fad.

The problem is, they’re making money.  That says something about us.  We’re lame too.

Hulu is a great model for internet entrepreneurship.  Target customers desire the ability to watch television shows for free at a convenient time.  Hulu grants this ability with their services.  The website fills a niche that is left open by other online video websites.  It is preferable to NetFlix for many users because there is no subscription required.  It is also preferable to YouTube because it offers a lot of premium content for viewing, whereas YouTube is centered around user-made videos.  Hulu generates revenue through commercial advertisements where normal commercials would exist in the shows.  Users are willing to watch these advertisements because the service, bar the ads, is free and convenient.

Pandora Radio provides a brand new way to discover new music with the Music Genome Project.  Music professionals classify songs according to 400 musical attributes in an effort to link similar songs in a way never before done.  They succeed, and the Pandora project works very well.   From a monetary perspective, Pandora survives through advertisements.  Initially, the station only had visual advertisements, but in 2009 the station implemented audio ads sporadically during the listening experience.  While it may not be the “cool” thing to do, the radio cannot survive without the ads because of the licensing fees.

Pandora is an excellent example of an online business entity that does not use a conventional blog-form and advertising website setup.  The creators saw a need for an innovative way to discover new music and capitalized on it: the result was Pandora.

In 2007, Eric Nakagawa and his girlfriend started the icanhascheezburger.com website.  Within a year, the website was getting as many as 2 million hits per day according to Wikipedia.  The site is a WordPress blog that features funny pictures of cats with intentionally misspelled humorous captions.  There are often recurring themes in these captions, such as the caption “oh hai.”  The site fosters a community feel through interaction via a rating system, which uses a scale of 1 to 5 cheeseburgers.  Users also have the option to make their own LOL by uploading a picture (or selecting a previous one) and giving it a caption.  Ultimately, the creators of the website sold the blog for 2 million dollars.