Yahoo 2000 Annual Report Download - page 16

Many of our premium services target highly specific mar-
kets, such as Yahoo! Careers, which serves job hunters.
Yahoo! Store is an easy-to-use commerce hosting service
for small- and medium-size merchants. For as little as $100
a month, and a two-percent share of online revenues, retail-
ers can tap into the power of the Yahoo! network and
expand their exposure and sales potential worldwide.
Additionally, we began charging for listings on Yahoo! Auc-
tions on January 10, 2001. This has significantly improved
the quality of our listings and has increased sell-through
rates. Yahoo! Auctions is a dynamic and valuable market-
place for both variable and fixed-price transactions.
Based on these positive experiences, we believe the
opportunity to expand our suite of premium services is
significant. Our plans for 2001 include the introduction of
additional premium services to meet fast-growing consumer
and business needs in a variety of areas: personal finance
and investing, communications, commerce and digital
entertainment.
By increasing the ways Yahoo! touches people’s lives —
through premium services or other initiatives — our goal is
to not only generate short-term revenues but to also build
long-term member relationships. These relationships are
our true growth engine, and they must be consistently nur-
tured to generate the greatest returns over time. We
couldn’t be more determinated to take on the challenge.
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Yahoo! has always been a healthy anomaly in the Internet
world. While other early stage companies have struggled to
merely survive, Yahoo! has recorded ten straight profitable
quarters (on a pro forma basis), ending 2000 with record
revenues and strong operating performance.
Fiscal discipline certainly has a lot to do with these results.
But so has our vision, as we have maintained a healthy bal-
ance between meeting short-term benchmarks while
investing in new products and services to fuel our growth,
and to monetize Yahoo!’s significant global assets.
Our investments in Yahoo! Everywhere typify this vision.
Demand for portable Web-enabled devices is exploding,
enabling users to access the Internet anytime and
everywhere. To date, Yahoo! has entered into more than 39
agreements with mobile carriers and manufacturers in 26
countries, giving Yahoo! the largest mobile audience on the
Web. During 2001, we intend to maintain our market leader-
ship by teaming with leading wireless companies to create
innovative services that will enable us to expand our audi-
ence and generate new revenue opportunities.
Creating new revenue streams
Premium — or “for pay” services — are also an important
part of our strategy. During 2000, for example, we introduced
a new Personal Address feature for Yahoo! Mail. The service
is available to consumers for $35 per year and includes regis-
tration of a personalized domain name and five e-mail
addresses attached to that domain name. Yahoo! Mail also
introduced extra storage. For $19.99 per year, users can
upgrade their free, six-megabyte mailbox to 25 megabytes.
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23 million
The number of mobile Internet users in the U.S. is forecast to reach 23 million in 2003, up from 2 million today, according to Forrester Research.
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Number of premium services offered for businesses and consumers alike.