GigaOM

WIRED Editor Chris Anderson, who is also author of the best-selling book, The Long Tail,
recently published a blog post listing various new media b-models, a.k.a, “long tail” b-models where, generally, the content you’re “selling” is free or almost free — and you make money off something else, such as banner ads.

Chris’s point, this time, is that there are now many revenue models for you to consider besides old-school banner ads.

“Think of all the various ways that an audience that is paying attention to your service can be paid for by companies and people who want some of that attention,” he writes, quoting the prolific VC-blogger, Fred Wilson.

Then Anderson lists several of these monetization alternatives. We encourage you to review them — there are lots of opportunities here for enhancing your “operational flexibility” as you prepare your startup for the economy’s downturn.

Think: affiliate revenues (Amazon Associates); of renting your subscriber list; of licensing your brand; even, of so-called “alternate outputs,” like print-on-demand PDFs and web books. And then there is Found|READ’s choice:

Getting the users to create something of value for free and applying any of the above to monetize it. (Like Digg or our own Reddit.)

Then today Wilson chimed in with his own post extending Anderson’s list. Fred’s b-models include “cost-per-install” (think Facebook apps) and API fees, where 3rd parties are charged to access your API.

Together with the reader comments, the two lists make for a very nice crib sheet. Anderson’s is here Wilson’s is here.

Do you have a monetization model to share? Both lists stand open, so chime in!