Why do you rule out depending on advertising? :/ Is income from advertising not real money?...
FWIW Mibbit makes real money, all from advertising at the moment. Premium paid accounts are planned, but it's a lot more work than just putting some useful adverts up.
advertising seems more stable than subscription based. At least according to the Economist, advertising spend changes little during recessionary periods.
What sort of advertising? I can see "brand awareness" advertising being reduced, but why reduce any 'results based' advertising? There's not real reason to reduce advertising that yields a positive ROI - which is easily measurable these days usually.
I'm not sure if advertising is stable or not, but there's been a lot of talk about how it's going to collapse (and how Google is going to be worth $2/share, doom-and-gloom). I think that's the reason for this guy's question.
FWIW Mibbit makes real money, all from advertising at the moment. Premium paid accounts are planned, but it's a lot more work than just putting some useful adverts up.