AKA: Sell use of Trademark
If your brand is well-known, attractive, and legally protected (e.g., a registered Trademark), you can get paid by companies who want to use your brand to promote their own products (e.g., claiming "Based on Moodle", "ElasticSearch inside", ...) or offerings (e.g., courses with OpenOffice, about OpenSearch, etc.). The open-source software is monetized by selling a usage license - often generating one-time income with options to generate recurring revenue.
Requires:
- Legally protected brand, trademark, log, etc. that users want to associate with
- License contract describing what, when, and how the brand can be used (and the price)
Variants & Options:
- One-time use: Licensing the brand for an event or product (version).
- Prolonged use: Licensing the brand for several month or years.
- N/A
| Characteristics | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Effort to set-up | Years | Requires brand building and creation of legal documents |
| Effort to maintain | Low | Depends on the popularity and size of target group |
| Cost to set-up | Medium | Will require a lawyer to setup the license and contracts |
| Cost to maintain | Low | Will cause costs for legal or tax related stuff (but should be covered by income) |
| One-time Income | High | Depends on brand attractiveness |
| Recurring Income | High | Depends on brand attractiveness |
| Income Predictability | Medium | Might degrade if similar projects become more attractive |
| Full income Threshold | 50- | |
| Recipient | C | |
| Additional Work | Low | Usage verification and contract negotiation |
| Visibility | Medium | If competitors see brand usage they might want to license it themselves |
| Necessity to pay | Medium | Only you can license the brand but it might not be necessary / attractive to do so for the companies |
| Entry Threshold | Medium | Requires contracts |
| Countervalue | Brand | |
| Scalability | Medium | Scales with the number of companies |
| Effort for marketing | Medium | Depends on brand attractiveness |
| Competitors | None | At least not for your brand |
| Software types | Complex | Better for complex software or tools |