The term recurring revenue comes from the way that some businesses model their business. Many large companies use this model, where they charge customers for services or products on an ongoing basis. For example, monthly phone service providers like Verizon or Netflix!
This type of income is also referred to as subscription-based revenue. This is because you are not buying the product “for now”, but instead, you are investing in the product (service) long term. In turn, these vendors try to keep you as a customer longer so you will continue to invest in the product.
There are many other types of subscriptions, such as online gaming sites that people pay monthly fees to access their account. Also, software developers often offer software that can be accessed via subscription fee.
These types of revenues are very powerful when looking at growth strategies for your business. They are stable, continuous incomes which make it easy to predict how much money you will receive each month. These are great foundations to work with if you need additional capital to grow your business.
Gaap offers both internal tools and external APIs to help entrepreneurs and small business owners find the best ways to achieve recurring revenue.
GAAP (or general accounting principles) are the standards that govern how an accountant should prepare your business’s financial statements, such as its income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement.
These standard rules include things like requiring you to allocate costs proportionally across products, departments, or areas of the company, and requiring you to assume all transactions were for good faith purposes unless there is evidence otherwise.
By sticking to these internal guidelines, accountants help ensure that their reports are free from any bias or influence. These accounts are also referred to as “commonly accepted practices” since they are used by many other similarly-structured businesses in the same industry.
GAAP was designed to be a level playing field where no one has an advantage over another due to price or market position. By using this approach, we can compare apples to apples when looking at companies’ performance.
What is gaap? The term ‘gaap’ comes from the German word Gänge, which means routes or paths. In this case, the gāp is referring to the pathways for your business to make money consistently.
Most businesses have what we call direct-revenue generating systems: products that they sell directly to customers without the help of the middle man. For example, if you are an online clothing store, you would purchase shirts direct from the manufacturer or distributor, and then list those items on Amazon or another shopping site.
These types of businesses rely heavily on indirect revenue: things like affiliate programs, advertising, or other ways to generate income for their company.
But what about all those months and even years when there isn’t enough indirect revenue to survive? What about the times when there is no direct sales at all?
That’s where recurring gaaps come in. A recurring gaap is a separate profit source that does not depend on either indirect or direct revenues but instead has an ongoing cost that is paid each time it is used.
Many small businesses use a service such as Etsy to distribute and market their goods to potential buyers. But what happens when the shop owner goes on vacation or retires?
A lot of sellers will close down their accounts, making it impossible to promote their products for sale.
Just like most major corporations, Google has many different brands that sell similar products. One of their main brands is GAP, or for short.
You may have heard of GAP before – it’s that cheap clothing store you always pass while traveling to and from work.
But what people don’t know about GAP is that they offer an additional subscription service called GAIP (for Gmail Account-based Purchases).
This feature was launched in 2016 and now there are over 1 million subscribers!
What is GAIP exactly?
It’s almost identical to Amazon Prime where you pay monthly fees for fast shipping and access to TV shows and movies. Only instead of buying things online, you buy them through your email account!
That way, you get all of the same benefits without actually leaving the house. It also helps GAP keep in touch with customers as they can stay informed via emails and newsletters.
Here’s how it works — when someone orders something from the GAP website or app, an invoice is created automatically using your credit card information. Then, one of our employees at GAP will send you an email asking you to confirm this purchase by logging into your email and confirming the transaction.
Once you do that, then everything else happens automatically! The item will be shipped directly from GAP’s warehouse to yours and if anything goes wrong, we give you a full refund.
So what is a gaap recurring revenue model, you ask? A garaap or “gap” model doesn’t have to depend on one product or source of income for success. In fact, it can stay successful without any significant additions to that mix for quite some time!
A gap model starts with giving away an item or service (the gap) in return for a small fee (the reward). This is then repeated over and over again, usually through a platform or tool where people are already spending their money.
By adding your own gap to this system, you get extra revenue while still providing something valuable to others. It’s like having a second job!
There are many ways to add a gap to your business model, but most start by offering free resources or training materials as a way to generate initial traffic and interest in your services or products.
I will go into more detail about how I designed my own gap model in my article here. Make sure to check out all of our tips if you would like to know more about running a successful business full time.
The second key component to achieving profitability with your business is what we refer to as “GROW” or growth strategies. This includes all types of marketing, promotional tactics, and customer acquisition strategies that aim to grow your online store sales.
The term GROW was coined back in 2014 by entrepreneur Sean Stephenson. According to him, this concept shifts focus away from buying and selling more products and merchandise and instead focuses on growing your online income stream through new revenue channels and sources.
He defined it as such: grow = investing in things that make money for you.
This can include anything from offering discounts or coupons, creating freebies or giveaways, outsourcing work, developing new skills or knowledge, expanding your network, etc. It really comes down to spending time and resources to create additional opportunities for success.
By investing in these growth strategies, you will achieve one of three main benefits. First, they are cost-effective ways to increase traffic and engagement to your site. Second, they're a way to improve your long-term financial health by diversifying your source of income. And third, many of them generate recurring income — which is important since you won't see the same return on investment (ROI) immediately.
The second way to earn money with Amazon is by offering and selling products or services through their platform. This is referred to as an affiliate program. In these programs, you will be compensated for referring others to purchase specified products or services.
Most online retailers have an affiliate program either at place where you can sign up or are recruited automatically when someone makes a purchase from your referrer’s account. Your compensation is typically in form of percentage points off of the sale price or per unit sales (more common with digital goods).
By making additional income streams via affiliates, you can boost your monthly paychecks immensely! And because Amazon offers such vast market exposure, you would not need very many followers or referrals to make significant revenue.
Many entrepreneurs struggle with how to manage their revenue and expenses in their business. They may not know what kind of income they have, how much it costs per month to run their company, or if they are spending too much money.
This can easily be attributed to not having done your accounting properly before. Even though you might have an idea of what accounts contribute to GAAP (General Accounting Principles), there are other ways to look at your earnings.
Non-GAAP is a way to evaluate your business using numbers that are not considered part of GAAP. These include such things as net profit, average monthly sales, return on investment and so on.
It is important to do this analysis frequently to understand whether your business is moving forward. You want to make sure you don’t spend more than you earn!
Another myth about starting a business is that you get to keep all ofthe profits for yourself. Although it is true that most hard workers will go beyond what they should to help others succeed, being rewarded for their efforts is something we take for granted.
If you want to keep your dream of owning a successful business alive, you must teach yourself basic financial literacy. This includes understanding how to calculate ROI and what constitutes a good budget.
By doing these every day, you will start to see progress towards your goal. And you will feel better about yourself because you are educating yourself about money.
Repeatability of a business model or activity comes in many forms. Most commonly, this refers to what types of services a company offers (think about how most companies offer phone services, for example).
Other examples include offering educational courses every year or hosting an event once a year. All three of these activities are considered recurring revenues as you’re always having the product available, educating people about the product, and holding an event at some time in the future.
Raising money is also considered a type of service that can be repeated over and over again. This includes asking investors for capital, telling your colleagues about your startup, and pitching to potential partners and investors in person or online.
These all require separate introductions and explanations which take time away from other things, but are still worth it because they’re guaranteed to run out eventually.