Advantages of Expanding Your Business on the Internet

Are you currently running your own small business in your country?

Think about the worries you face everyday when you manage your business. Natural disasters might occur such as floods and huricanes that can destroy your office or factory. Your country might face a huge economic downturn and you'll lose revenue as a result. You might also find it hard to reach out to more customers. There's also the rent, business expenses, payment to employees to think about and so on. But what if there's a simple solution that will dramatically lessen the worries about your business?

I'm talking about the online business industry on the Internet. Expanding or moving your business into the Internet world has its awesome advantages. I'm going to describe them in this article.

The World Is Your Market

What do I mean by 'The World Is Your Market'? There are over 1,060,000,000 internet users in the world and this number is multiplying year after year. You can promote your products to a specific target market. Let's say, you're selling baby clothes. Your target market could be expecting mothers, people buying baby gifts etc. And these people can come from countries like the US, UK, Australia, China, France and so on. The bottomline is, your customers can come from every single part of the globe.

You're Open 24/7

When you run your own small business in your country, your business might not be open 24/7 and you only make a certain amount of revenue at different times of the day. When you have a website that promote your products, your online "store" is constantly open for your customers. Basically, when almost half of the world goes to sleep, the other half becomes your market for the next 8-12 hours and vice versa. Do you think you'll make tons of revenue on a 24 hour basis? Hell yeah.

Low-cost Capital

Starting up a small business on the internet requires little capital. You need to apply for a webhost in order to set up your own website. Applying for a webhost is like asking a landlord for a space to rent on the internet. You might need to hire a web designer to design your website and a writer to generate quality content. A technical support person is also needed to constantly upgrade and improve your site.

If you're selling multiple products, you would want to have an online "shopping cart" on your website to allow your customers to purchase more than one product. It might be included as part of your webhosting package features. As for payment from customers, you can use payment gateways such as Paypal, which is a free service.

To promote your website, you can use pay-per-click advertisements on Google Adwords to bring the target market to your site. You only have to pay for the number of clicks your visitors clicked on to come to your website. This business expense should be covered by the profits you make on your website.

Delivering Your Products

If you're going to sell physical products, you have to take note of the shipping costs to the consumer's country. You will also have to take note of the product packaging, warranty etc.

Constant Advertising

When your consumers buy something from you, simply ask them for their name and e-mail addresses to promote future products you will be featuring in a form of a newsletter or you can cross-sell with other products. For example, if your consumer bought a set of a newborn baby's clothes, you could recommend a pair of baby shoes that could go along with them. In this way, your consumers will be constantly notified of the products you are promoting and will continue to buy from you again.

Expanding or moving your small business to the online world is considered the most recommended step of all to take. The online business industry is generating billions of profits every year. As for you, why not have a percentage of those profits?