Fact-Based Perspective On Web Entrepreneurship


Stats-based web success

Who doesn’t want to run a business from their home and wear a bathrobe to virtual business meetings? Since those heady days of the dotcom boom circa 1995, the ideal of starting an online business has drawn many to try their business legs in the challenges of online commerce. And indeed, the statistics were attractive back in 2009 during which time, over fifty-five percent of American households are wired for the Web, and over a third, or 32 percent have made a purchase online, according to the US Census Bureau. Today that number has increased to approximately seventy-five percent.

Also, according to InternetRetailer.com, “U.S. e-commerce sales totaled $165.4 billion in 2010, up 14.8% from $144.1 billion in 2009, according to non-adjusted estimates released today by the U.S. Commerce Department. The numbers also show that e-commerce is taking a bigger slice of the overall retail sales pie and is growing at a much faster pace than retail sales. 4.2% of total retail spending took place online during 2010, up from 3.9% in 2009, according to Commerce Department estimates.

When excluding sales in categories not commonly bought online — automobiles, fuel, grocery and food service sales — Internet Retailer calculates that e-commerce accounted for 7.6% of total retail sales during the year, up from 7.0% in 2009. Total retail sales, which includes e-commerce sales, increased 7.0% in 2010 and totaled $3.92 trillion.”

The Web: A blender of success?

So yes, there are buckets of money being made online, but who’s making it and who’s not? When some folks think of “making money online,” or Web Entrepreneurship, they create an image of simply turning on a computer and getting money out of it, as if it were an ATM machine. In fact, the Web, and all the commercial features of it, are merely tools in the entrepreneur’s toolbox that should be used alongside other, more traditional tools.

When you’re building a house, for example, sometimes that high-tech, laser pointing thingamabob is great; but sometimes you just need a nail and hammer. And so it is with online business, and supplementing all the high-tech with old-fashioned business, or in many cases, supplementing old-fashioned business with some high-tech, is what it takes to be successful. Success online comes not in replacing the old with the new, but blending them together.

Remember the old Yahoo!?

With a few high-profile exceptions, most businesses that “make money online” successfully aren’t exclusive virtual sales companies, but instead, they use the Web as just one of several sales channels. While people are buying things online, they enjoy having the Web as an option, but don’t want it to be their only option. More often than not, the Web is used as a vehicle for researching products that will actually be bought in an actual brick-and-mortar store.

Creating a virtual business doesn’t mean that it should be exclusively virtual. The most successful online businesses are those that have promoted themselves offline as well as on, through traditional media such as television and newspapers plus “click-throughs” and email advertising. Yahoo!, in its early days, was an excellent example of a fabulously successful online company, but what do many of us remember most when we think of Yahoo! these days? The silly yodel from their olod television commercials.

The online-offline strategy

Perhaps one of the most important things to remember when starting an online business, is not to get lost in the online mystique. The Web revolution has brought, and continues to bring, us all manner of useful tools and techniques for commerce, but if you want to get customers to visit your new online boutique, it’s a good idea to actually change out of your bathrobe, get out of your den, and actually talk to some people face-to-face, or at least, send out a few traditional newsletters that includes your online store information.

Entrepreneurs Making Millions On The Web – Hype or Fact?


The hype or fact equation

How much money can you, the entrepreneur, make on the Web? Are there really entrepreneurs making millions on the Web? Can it be both hype AND fact that entrepreneurs are making millions on the Web? All these questions have been asked and answered many times by entrepreneurs who did their due diligence in researching the possibilities of making money on the Web over the last 20 to 30 years. However, we will take another look at this topic.

First and foremost let’s talk about the “hype or fact” element. Of course there are entrepreneurs making millions on the Web! And it is certainly reasonable to believe that you can be one of them. However, you should not allow any hype surrounding the emergence of opportunities cause you to lose your common sense.

Entrepreneurs become millionaires by effectively assessing the needs of a market and having a product or service that addresses those needs. There is a lot of hype surrounding the issue of making money on the Web, but as was stated earlier, entrepreneurs can make millions on the Web.

Before and after the Web

The Web can greatly expand your methods of selling products and/or services, as well as the market to which you sell them. Some entrepreneurs have been able to use this marketplace to make a lot of money. Some companies that operate only on the Web have made Web millionaires of their entrepreneurial founders. There is probably little doubt that Google founder Larry Page and Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg were young entrepreneurs who aspired to be millionaires before they actually became Web millionaires.

Let’s look at it this way. Before the Web there were auctions, but no eBay. With thousands of items sold daily, each one making a profit for eBay, there is no doubt that the founders must be entrepreneurs who had an idea for eBay – or something like it – and are now Web millionaires. And before the Web there were bookstores, but no Amazon.com. Today Amazon is outdoing traditional bookstores. Don’t you wish you were the entrepreneur who founded Amazon.com? Or, at least, one of the founding entrepreneurs?

An idea and a belief in self

Web entrepreneurs who become millionaires start with an idea and a belief in themselves. They find a way to set themselves apart from the rest. Like real world millionaires, they often have enough faith in their ideas that they risk their own money and even seek additional funding elsewhere. Once they get started, they make themselves big enough that the other competition does not threaten them.

Entrepreneurs who become millionaires on the Web, start early in the game. For example, now that we have eBay, people often forget that there are other auctions. The only real competition Amazon.com has today is the traditional bookstores that were always there and since Amazon.com has expanded into several other product lines it is somewhat of and overstatement to refer to traditional bookstores as competition.

When optimism outweighs pessimism

If you, the entrepreneur, want to be a Web millionaire, think of a need that is still largely unfulfilled or a market that is largely untapped. After that, you will have to believe in your idea enough to take some financial risks. If it doesn’t work, you lose your investment. If it does however, you might join the ranks of entrepreneurs who became millionaires on the Web.

In conclusion, let me pose this question: If you have what you think is a great idea, and you believe in it, wouldn’t your optimism that it WILL work outweigh your pessimism that it won’t? If your answer is yes, it follows then that although the risk of financial lost is real and you have taken that risk into consideration, it does not outweigh the prospects of success for your idea. If you agree with this conclusion, then you truly are an entrepreneur at heart!

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