Doing business online: why it definitely wins today

In recent decades we have witnessed a true digital revolution that has transferred many aspects of our daily lives from the real world to the Internet. One of the areas that has been most affected by the change is precisely business and entrepreneurship.

More and more people are deciding to do business online and take advantage of the World Wide Web to open and run their businesses successfully. In today’s article we look at what are the three main benefits of doing business online along with some tips for making the most of them.

Lower initial investment and greater accessibility

Without getting too philosophical, we can say that the main advantage of doing business online is related to the fact that the Internet world is intangible and, as a result, requires significantly less investment to access it.

Imagine that you want to open a physical clothing store in your town; you will have to pay at least the rent for the premises, the electricity bills, the cash register, the clerks, the cleaning fees, and, of course, the merchandise. Depending on the area you open in, you may find yourself paying as much as 2,000 or 3,000 a month just to run the business.

Opening a clothing e-commerce, on the other hand, is much less costly. The purchase of a domain (the site address) and hosting (the “space” on the Internet) for a site amounts to about 100 euros per year; e-commerce services such as Shopify cost around 25 euros per month. The most expensive expense would be the one-time expense of creating the website, in case you can’t do it yourself on WordPress (which is free).

Alternatively, you can seek assistance from industry experts such as Millionairejob, which is gearing up to provide all-around assistance to those who wish to start an online business. Clearly, advertising and marketing expenses remain to bring traffic to the site, but they can be replaced by a promotion strategy based on social networks that are free.

The advent of the digital age has made life easier even for those who do not sell goods, but services. Social media and platforms such as Freelancer and Upwork make it possible to promote one’s talents and connect with potential clients from a computer or smartphone, reducing the investment to a few tens of euros per month for an Internet connection.

In short, we can say that doing business online eliminates all the expenses associated with using and consuming physical goods, leaving only those associated with buying (or creating) and storing goods to sell. But is this really the case?

On-demand and dropshipping services

Still on the subject of revolutions, a number of services have appeared over the past few years that have changed the retail and publishing industries forever.

So-called “print on demand” service providers, for example, allow you to completely eliminate printing and warehousing expenses. Imagine you have written a book: at one time, in order to sell it, you would have had to print so many copies to send to bookstores or end buyers. Now, thanks to services such as Amazon KDP and StreetLib, your manuscript is printed on the spot, only after it has been purchased by a reader or retailer.

Same goes for clothing and accessories or the production of souvenirs and branded items. With Printful and Printify, you can choose from a vast number of products that you can customize, put up for sale, and pay for only when you are the one selling them on your website, or on platforms such as Etsy.

A similar principle applies to another increasingly used strategy for doing business online: dropshipping. This is a business model under which a solopreneur sells products through its Internet site without physically owning them in its warehouse. Through this scheme, the seller receives part of the payment, while the remainder is sent to the manufacturer who takes care of wrapping and shipping the product to the buyer.

Doing business online without borders

So far we have focused on how doing business online allows you to carry on a business while minimizing your initial investment and expenses. In reality, however, the Internet also helps us increase sales because it allows us to reach a much wider audience.

An e-commerce store, in fact, is not limited to one street, neighborhood, or city: orders can come in from all over the country, and thanks to the mail and couriers who now offer packages tailored to online sellers, it is now convenient to get the goods to their destination.

In addition, on the Internet, simply adding a language to your site, translating content and doing localized advertising can open your business to a whole new audience. Of course, in these cases it is good to rely on professional translators and content localization experts, but it is an all in all small investment compared to the potential revenue due to entering a new market.

In conclusion, we can say that doing business online has made it easier to start your own business by reducing “physical” costs and allowing you to reach a much wider audience than any local store or service provider.

If you have an online business idea and want to turn it into reality, trust the professionals at Millionairejob!