What is an Internet Business?
An Internet Business is a business that drives most of its transactions through Internet.
A company can use the Internet in many ways to conduct its business, it can use email to reach clients and potential clients, it can use its own website to either acquire leads for selling products or sell the products directly on the Website. This Internet Business model is called E-Commerce and its main way of conducting the business is through a Website.
The early days of the e-commerce were held back by security concerns. Nowadays the security fears have lessened as the technology improved and people are confident when buying online. In fact buying online has become, for some people, the main way of purchasing goods.
Nowadays, if you have a good business idea or a good product to sell, opening your online business is almost trivial. You need a domain name, a security certificate, and a hosting company.
Initially the all of the Internet Businesses were hosted on the .com TLD, hence the name given to Internet Businesses – dotcoms. This has now changed and commercial organizations own several domain names on different TLDs.
What is e-commerce?
E-commerce is an acronym for Electronic Commerce and consists of the selling products and services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other types of computer networks. E-commerce also includes the process of marketing, delivering, servicing and paying using the Internet.
An e-commerce company is named e-tailer. E-tailers can be "pure-players" which means that the majority of operations are done on the Internet or, they can be “brick and click” e-tailers, which means that they have a physical storefront but use Internet to market their products and sometimes to complement the store sells with online sells.
Why is e-commerce so popular?
Buying online is very convenient; you can browse a search through products a lot easier than you do in a regular shop. It saves time, because you don’t have to go to the store. And usually the products are cheaper than in a regular store because an Internet Business has less expense associated with physical storage, salaries and other costs associated with a traditional store. These savings are reflected in the final cost of the product.
In fact nowadays, e-commerce has become so popular that we almost depend on it, and our lives would be more complicated if it didn’t exist. Virtually everyone has a computer, hence is a possible e-commerce client.
How Can You Start an Internet Business?
What if you don’t have a product to sell? You would like to start an Internet Business but you don’t have a product. In most of the cases that is not a problem, there is a niche for anybody. Many Internet Businesses actually, do not sell merchandise on Internet. They sell, e-Books, services, digital music, (iTunes and mp3), pay per view shows and movies, Domain Names, Websites, knowledge, and the list can continue. There are websites that live off of advertising only, they write good content and sell add space on their website.
When you plan your business, focus on the things you know very well and you are an expert in. Find your great business idea do a market analysis and start immediately. It is a good idea to buy the domain as soon as possible and start creating content right-away, even if your business will start later. Search engines rank websites using secret algorithms, but we know that the age of a domain name and the associated keywords are important parts of this algorithm.
Focus on Business not on Tools
Many people start an Internet business and lose the focus on the most important thing – the business. They start spending a lot of time on side tasks and most of the times it’s because they have chosen the wrong partner for their enterprise. It is important to choose wisely your online partner so you don’t waste your time assembling pieces of the puzzle from different providers. You need to choose a reliable and reputable partner, an established company that can offer you the tools and the support your business need.
How do you pick a good hosting company?
A good hosting company will provide you with all of the tools to start and not only. They know the market and they find out what tools you need before you do, and make them available to you. Having all of the tools integrated into one account make your life easier. You need to focus on developing your business and not on managing and finding tools.
