E-Commerce Update for Entrepreneurs
Trends in Ecommerce are important as billions of electronic dollars build upon themselves year after year - making numerous budding entrepreneurs more money than they ever dreamt they would see! Companies like Facebook, said to be valued at fourteen billion dollars only four years in operation. And yes, that is billion - with a B.
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Other companies, like YouTube - might only fetch a mere billion dollars. While many companies still go the traditional route of selling products and services online, and doing quite well judging from the massive increases in online sales, other companies sell nothing at all! They simply invite people to come and share some E-time with their site and collect advertising revenue in the process. Sites like Facebook have people willingly putting their demographic info into computer systems that allow advertisers to target a specific group of people. Want only women age 25-34 who are single Moms and work? How tough is it to hit that exact group with television advertising? But with online databases where people sign up so they can post and share their pictures, stories and even videos, the advertisers know exactly who they are reaching!
There are a million and one ways to make money on the Internet. And more and more would be entrepreneurs are discovering this and cashing in! Take a look at some figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce:
While total commerce went up less than nine percent from 2004 to 2005, E-Commerce, or those little electronic dollars went flying around cyberspace at almost twice that rate, or just under seventeen percent! The most notable number in Business to Business was the manufacturing sector. Up only 9.9% year over year as a whole, E-Commerce manufacturing was up a whopping 27.1%!
But if you think that is something, take a look at the Business to Consumer Retail figure! As a whole retail eeked out a less than six and a half percent gain. But E-Commerce retail was up 22.2 percent! While total retail sales struggled compared to most other sectors, E-Commerce went through the roof!
These figures seem to make it clear that people have become quite content to shop online. But surely there is a preliminary report that would show us how we fare in 2007? Indeed there is, and the numbers continue to amaze:
We can again see that while the total retail sales may only be sloughing along at three to six percent as we compare current quarters to the year ago quarters (last two columns) we see that the E-Commerce retail figures continue well into the double digits, with most of the listed quarters reporting gains of more than twenty percent!
The United States, indeed the world is now embracing all forms of E-Commerce and there doesn't appear to be any indication of that trend reversing anytime soon. For people thinking about becoming an online Entrepreneur the challenges are certainly present. But one would be hard pressed to name a better time to face these challenges!
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Information in this report was obtained from the United States Department of Commerce - Census Bureau. Some figures may be preliminary figures. The data is believed to be accurate but is not guaranteed. Readers are encouraged to visit the Department of Commerce - CB and read the reports in their entirety. Any projections made in this report are only an opinion.
http://www.datachoices.com/public/Ecommerce2007.html