1) Free Mium Model

Provide free products and services, and charge for value-added services. Most SaaS products adopt this model.

2) limited period promotion

let users try the product for a period of time for free, and then collect it after the trial period expires. For example, most products of 37 Signals have a 31-day free trial period, after which a fee will be charged. But it is difficult to control the probation period.

3) targeted advertising model

get to know users as much as possible, and then recommend advertisements related to their needs. Such as Facebook and Google.

4) sponsorship model

if your products directly provide services to important institutions such as the government, you can ask them for sponsorship. For example, the Khan organization was founded with the support of the Gates Foundation and Google.

5) Wikipedia model

You can get donations from users. Many wordpress plug-ins, open source tools and Wikipedia do this. The future newspaper industry may also make profits in this way.

6) Gillette model

Gillette sells printers and razors at a loss in order to get more profits from the sales of related products (ink and blades). The same is true on the Internet. For example, you can launch a free online document editing service and then charge for the process of exporting online documents to local devices.

7) open source model

provide free products, and then profit from the installation, maintenance and customized services of the products. Most open source software adopts this model. Usage charge model

is similar to the value-added service model, which aims to provide a free version of the product, and only charges when users use the product beyond a limited amount (but many storage devices, including Dropbox, have lost users after adopting this model).

9) Zynga model

sell products through in-app purchase, or implant product recommendation function into the game.

11) upsell/cross-sell mode

Some products are provided to consumers free of charge, and then related advanced products are sold to earn income. For example, if you run a financial website, you can provide stock market data for free, and then charge for in-depth analysis reports and financial tools of these data.

11) build a brand

build a brand through free products, and then use the brand effect to sell other related or even unrelated products.

12) Affiliate Marketing

An advertising system in which website A sets advertising buttons for website B, and then gets paid from the sales brought to website B.. Some advertisers gain market in this way.

13) Sell it to Google

Get a large number of users for your products and attract heavyweight buyers like Microsoft or Google. Companies such as Freebase and Powerset are reborn in this way.

14) Make your next company successful

If none of the above profit models are successful, you can still build a personal brand by running a successful non-profit company to attract investment for your next company.

unless you are talking about a purely altruistic company, nothing is really free. There is a good saying: "If you don't spend money, you will no longer be a consumer, but a product."