Paid In Full
A Coversation with Intranets.com's Rick Faulk
Intranets.com offers corporations and small businesses secure Web sites where they can share documents, host email and group calendars, and perform other online functions. Until recently, it was free to users; but when advertising stopped paying the bills, Intranets.com transitioned to a completely fee-based service. Now boasting over 100,000 paid subscribers at more than 6,000 businesses, it has become one of the top subscription ASPs. Web Techniques asked CEO Rick Faulk how he did it.
Web Techniques: Was a subscription service part of Intranets.com's business plan from the beginning?
Rick Faulk: Our original business plan was a model supported primarily by advertising and advertising-related products, such as sponsorships, opt-in mail, and e-commerce. We faced the same challenge as any company in the dot-com world: increase revenues or risk running out of cash.
WT: And you believe that fee-based services are the best way for companies to generate income?
RF: The dot-com boom years fostered tremendous creativity in both content and services, creating the spark for businesses and consumers to begin using the Web en masse. For the businesses producing these services to survive, of course, they must be able to generate revenue. So we have paying subscribers. This is a pretty traditional business model. We believe it's the way to go with infrastructure and services.
As companies consolidate, we may see greater viability for an advertising-supported model, particularly for content.
