I am making my way through the book Simply Seven, which claims that there are only 7 types of internet business models - hence the name.

I encourage you to visit the Simply Seven website to learn more about the seven internet business models they discuss:

1. Service Sales
2. Subscriptions
3. Retail
4. Commissions
5. Advertising
6. License Sales
7. Financial Risk

In my opinion, the main reason why this is a useful book to read has to do with their comparative analysis of the relative strengths and weaknesses of each business model. They discuss what makes each business model work well and what factors inhibit it or make it fail. They discuss which business models tend to be more profitable. They also do case studies for each business model showcasing a company that is an internet leader in exploiting the business model. They also discuss companies that have fallen from grace trying to exploit the same business model (e.g., AOL and subscriptions).

You can read some of the reviews on this book and in general they tend to be fairly positive. The website for the book has a weblog that was more active during the writing of the book and which covers some of the same ground as the book so you can get a feel for the books content by reading some of their blog postings.

Factoid from book: Skype was turned down by 13 investor groups before they found an investor. This was in part due to the fact that they originally developed the peer-to-peer file sharing service Kazaa that ran into legal difficulties. The Angel Investor who first invested in the company recognized the advantage of peer-to-peer technology in scaling phone services relative to other approaches to providing phone services. Skype is now the largest phone company in the world.