If you are looking for ways to make money on the internet, you may want to consider the benefits of engaging in E-commerce on the web.  Here is an overview of just what E-commerce represents.  This may be just the opportunity you’ve been looking for.

Wikipedia’s Definition:

“The meaning of electronic commerce has changed over the last 30 years. Originally, electronic commerce meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). These were both introduced in the late 1970s, allowing businesses to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically. The growth and acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking in the 1980s were also forms of electronic commerce. Another form of e-commerce was the airline reservation system typified by Sabre in the USA and Travicom in the UK. Online shopping was invented in the UK in 1979 by Michael Aldrich[citation needed] and during the 1980s it was used extensively particularly by auto manufacturers such as Ford, Peugeot-Talbot, General Motors and Nissan. From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.

Forms
Contemporary electronic commerce involves everything from ordering “digital” content for immediate online consumption, to ordering conventional goods and services, to “meta” services to facilitate other types of electronic commerce.

On the consumer level, electronic commerce is mostly conducted on the World Wide Web. An individual can go online to purchase anything from books or groceries, to expensive items like real estate. Another example would be online banking, i.e. online bill payments, buying stocks, transferring funds from one account to another, and initiating wire payment to another country. All of these activities can be done with a few strokes of the keyboard.”

The question you may be asking yourself is: how can I make this platform work for me in making money on the internet?  Great question!

There are four (4) components to E-commerce:

• B2B – This is where companies do business with each other.  Manufacturer’s sell to wholesalers or distributors, who in turn market to retailers.
• B2C – This is where businesses deal or sell directly to the public.  Familiar sources of this kind of business would be catalog sales.  Now much of this type of business, but not exclusively, is done via the internet.  This is often referred to as E-tailing or “The Virtual Storefront and the Virtual Mall” form of business.
• C2B – This is where a customer or consumer places a project online with businesses responding in providing bids for the project or business.  The customer then selects the bidder they want to do their job.
• C2C – eBay is the best example of this form of e-business transaction.  This is where consumer deal directly with one another.  There may or may not be a “middle man” involved in the transaction–however, outlets such as Amazon.com, eBay and Yahoo provide these auction type services.

The form or model of e-business you choose to engage in most likely will be the B2C or C2C .  If you already have a business, you could equally be involved in B2B, but most of us will take on the prior two.  There are basically five primary B2C revenue models:

1. Advertising – Revenue or fees come from advertisers like Google’s Adsense, Yahoo.com or Amazon.com.
2. Subscription – Revenue or fees come from offering users a subscription to some form of content (newsletter, e-zine, etc.) or a service.
3. Transaction Fee – Revenue or fees come from allowing and/or accommodating the execution of a transaction.  eBay and E-Trade offer such plans.
4. Sales – Revenue or fees come from product, service or information sales.  All catalog sales fall into this category, as would eBay for the seller.
5. Affiliate – Revenue or fees come from directing customers to advertisers.

Which model you prefer is predicated on various factors, but you should be able to determine which most likely suits your needs and desire.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 11th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under E-Commerce & Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.