Where does Be Seated fit in the crowd?
As a predominately crowd-based service it is important to do some research into what other services, akin to Be Seated, use as their business models. As a site that relies on knowledge sharing and content from its users it must be located in the top left category of crowd businesses.
What model should we follow?
The website resultsfromcrowds.com provides some interesting and relevant research on what has been considered successful for other crowd-based services in the same area as Be Seated. What appears highly relevant for services in our field is advertising, subscription and content sales. Luckily it also indicates that services of the media and data ilk are likely to have high contributor quality which is a relief for a crowd-based review site!
Be Seated’s E-Commerce Revenue Models
Our site does not strictly sell any products directly or requires a subscription fee. Instead the service aims to make use of Affiliation (click-through links to buy tickets) and may also include some small advertising (but not enough to distract away from the user experience- for which Trip Advisor often gets heavily criticised for). This corresponds well with the research to suggest this could be an entirely feasible and successful form of monetisation of our website.
