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.