When looking to enter the realm of internet entrepreneurship, there are a multitude of possible options for entering the web space. How do you model your business? How do you want your customers to use your site? How does your company best sell online? What works in an online platform? These are all viable questions business owners should ask themselves before delving into this area. Before you can begin to execute building your online platform, it is vitally important to decide what type of online business model you are looking to create. By first scoping out other similar businesses and their business models online, it becomes more clear what works and how you can differentiate yourself from your competition. Deciding on an online business model is an important part of strategy, and can make or break your business. Below are a few examples of business models that tend to work fairly well online.
- An E-commerce Site- An e commerce site is the classic online business model. This is designed to sell products and is a fairly straight forward way for your business to make money. Customers can go to your site directly online and simply add items to their shopping cart.
- A Sales Letter E-commerce website- This type of online business model is fairly similar to the last however the home page of the site focuses more on pitching the company to the buyer. It does not roll directly into sales but rather uses the home page to sell the company before selling the product. This page can be filled with testimonials and other interesting information to hook the customers interest.
- A Blog- Blogs are great for sharing tips and thoughts, but can also be a great way to make money through the web. Within posts you can set ads for your products, or can even get customers to subscribe to your site. This is a great way to sell products and helpful or informative information to your customers.
- A Service Based Site- A service based site is great for selling an alternative type of product. This is a place that is great for putting your portfolio and examples of your work to help you sell your services to customers. You can have your customers review your services here to help future and potential customers to make their decision whether to hire.
These are only a few basic successful online business models, but there are many more out there that also work well! Before starting your online company, make sure to further research these and others to find the best fit for your company. Below is the link to an online article that dives deeper into the models stated above as well as a few more.
To read more about other successful online business models, click here.
These business models are a great place to start for a young entrepreneur. Just like you mentioned, knowing which route to take is all a part of a business’s strategy and can make or break the company. Knowing the target market and demographics of the product/service users would be a very important factor in determining which business model to use.
Grace,
In your research for this post, did you happen to come across any evidence that advocated for a sales-letter e-commerce website over a traditional e-commerce site? Was there a use for one over the other when it came to product or service? I can definitely see the use of A Sales-letter website, but in my own experience they seem to be the minority.