Somebody Else Pays — 50 Business Models Where Your Customer Never Sees the Bill

Every time something arrives free, a bill has been paid by someone who is not you.

The newspaper on the train. The phone that came with the contract. The free till on the café counter. The water cooler nobody bought. The alarm system that was "installed free". Each one has an invoice behind it, settled by an advertiser, an insurer, a landlord, a manufacturer or a customer who paid early. Most people never ask who. The people who build durable businesses ask nothing else.

Somebody Else Pays is a catalogue of their answers: fifty ways to arrange a business so that the person using the product is not the person paying for it, or pays later, or pays for something adjacent, and is glad to. It is written by a business advisor who has spent twenty-five years starting, buying and selling companies, and who kept meeting the same owner: one product, one price, one customer, margin squeezed from both sides. The owners who prospered had moved the bill. This book shows you fifty ways they did it.

HOW EVERY CHAPTER WORKS

• The model in a paragraph, with a company you will recognise using it in public: Costco, Keurig, ADT, Sunrun, ClassPass, Square, Faire, Rakuten, Naked Wines, Carvertise, Sola Salons, Harvest Hosts and more.

• A worked example in US dollars, so you can watch the money move and check whether it would move for you.

• THE BILL, a three-line box: what the customer sees, who actually pays, and where your margin lives.

• Where it breaks, because every one of them does.

• Do this now: three things to do this week.

WHAT'S INSIDE

Part I · The thing is free. The refill pays. Razor and blades. A royalty on every cup. Free box, monthly bill. Paid out of the savings. The machine in somebody else's basement. Free labour, paid for by the materials. Oil changes for life. Make the product the gift and sell the programme.

Part II · A bank, an insurer or an advertiser pays. The gadget the insurer buys you. The bank buys the gift. Free to the reader, paid for by the vendor. Free Wi-Fi, invoiced to the advertiser. The car that pays its owner. Your building is a billboard and a mast. Earn the miles; the restaurant pays. The gift that costs a third of its price.

Part III · The customer pays first, and gladly. Sell the season before the snow. Collect the orders, then make the goods. Let the customers fund the vintage. Adopt the tree. Dining bonds. Sell the membership, not the goods. The perks card. Points that are worth more somewhere else.

Part IV · Give away the tools, take a slice of the money. Rent the chair. Give away the till. Free software, paid for by the transaction. The wholesaler who runs your shop for nothing. Pay the salesforce only when it sells. Cash back that the merchant funds. Charge for the result.

Part V · Own none of it, sell all of it. The dispatcher. Own no gyms, sell every gym. Give away the advice, sell the inputs. Own the asset, hire the operator. Rent the gaps. The farm stay that sells the farm. Rent out what you already own.

Part VI · Somebody else's space, somebody else's customers. A counter in somebody else's shop. Borrow a channel that already has your customer. The hotel room is the showroom. Your customer's living room is the showroom. Idle capacity, given to somebody else's best customers. The shop with nobody in it. Sell the meal to the gym's member.

Part VII · Space, people and what you know. Cut the space smaller and the rent goes up. The landlord who takes a percentage. Free training, paid for by the employer who needs you. The user is not the buyer. Turn your trade into a classroom.

Appendices. The model chooser: your three chapters by what you already have and by your biggest constraint. The one-page unit economics: cost to give one away, back-end margin, payback in months, the partner's side of the deal. Seven tests before you give anything away, with a checklist. The ninety-day launch: the paper, the partner, the ten customers, the numbers.

WHAT IT LEAVES OUT

The introduction names the models this book refuses: spend-it-all-and-get-it-back rebates, deposits with a restaurant at thirty percent a year, gadget-for-"investment" rebates, guaranteed-profit franchise deposits, and rebate ladders you climb by recruiting your friends. In each of them the payer is the next customer, and when the next customer stops arriving the last one is left holding the loss. Every model inside has a payer who receives something real.

WHO IT IS FOR

Owners of small and mid-sized businesses whose margin is being squeezed. Founders choosing a model before they build. Advisors who need a plain vocabulary for "how does this make money". Anyone who has looked at a free product and wondered who is paying. No finance background needed; the arithmetic is on the page.

THE DETAILS

• 132 pages, A4, PDF. Typeset to read on a tablet or to print.

• 50 models in 7 parts, each with a worked example, The bill, where it breaks, and three things to do. 4 appendices.

• Examples from the United States, Canada, Britain and Europe; prices in US dollars as worked examples. Small businesses described are composites, not real companies.

• Instant download after payment.

SEVEN-DAY GUARANTEE

If the first ten chapters don't change how you look at your own business, reply to the delivery email within seven days and the price is refunded. Keep the PDF.