There aren't nearly as many high profile startups that depend entirely on advertising for revenue as people seem to think. Many startups that appear to have no

There aren't nearly as many high profile startups that depend entirely on advertising for revenue as people seem to think. Many startups that appear to have no revenue model make money in ways that aren't obvious to consumers. How does del.icio.us make money? By selling marketing data compiled from tagged urls. Flickr didn't start with a clear revenue model, but they can pay most of their bills from the ~5% of users who have a paid premium account. Even craigslist, the paragon of free services, makes a significant amount of money by charging for job listings in a few select markets. Matt makes some excellent points, and I believe him that the future is probably going to be dominated by smaller companies with low profit margins as opposed to venture backed behemoths. But it doesn't change the fact that it's difficult to NOT make money with a "wildly popular" product. If you have a growing website with hundreds of thousands of happy users, you will find a way to make money. I run a website that is mildly popular on occasion and believe me, we get emails. Every few weeks someone will come to us and suggest ways that we can make more money. The more popular the website, the more opportunities you'll find to make money on it. I don't think that Mint or YouTube will close their doors any time soon. There are just too many ways in which they could build significant revenue. Right now their biggest problem is choosing and implementing the right one.