Online Entrepreneurship

Traditionally, entrepreneurship has been synonymous with manufacturing and offline service industries. Though in today’s IT driven world, almost every business has an online presence, still it is regarded just an extension of the offline presence. However a small number of web entrepreneurs are challenging this notion by building either pure online or online driven businesses.

Let us first have a look at Aryanflorist.com floated by Rishi Sachdeva in 2004.Intially the website employed a network of florists who could deliver flowers virtually anywhere in India. Today the website has expanded its presence to US, UK, UAE Australia and New Zealand Along with flowers, now it also delivers gift items like chocolates and champagnes. Also there are a number of websites such as homeshop18.com, matrimonygifts.com who receive a bulk of their orders online.

Moving on from online driven businesses, let us now have look at pure online businesses. Labnol.com, a technical blog started by techie Amit Agarwal receives estimated 40lakh visitors per month. Similar is the case with missmalini.com a fashion blog based in Mumbai. The question which arises is how can one earn money by just posting content online? Well the answer to this lies in Google ad sense which offers free registration to website publishers. At the same time it has tie up with millions of advertisers whose ads are posted on the approved websites. Based on the pay per click model, the publisher earns every time an advertisement is clicked on his website.

However the thing to remember here is that the content is king. There are numerous blogs and websites out there but only a few are popular enough to ensure full time workings by the owner. The importance of content becomes clear from the case Amit Bhawani of techadvices, com.Starting out with a single website; he now has 40 websites covering everything from health and technology to automobiles. He has a team of 16 content writers and says that this is the only business where you can achieve a 100 percent year on year growth.

The major problems faced by web based entreoreneurs are finding ways of generating traffic towards their website. Online traffic is the life line is the life blood of any online business as it drives ad revenue. One of the major ways is to advertise through google ad words where in your link will appear as a paid link in search engine searches. The placement of our ad shall depend upon the cost per click you are willing to pay. Entrepreneurs also employ search engine optimization strategies wherein arrangements such as strategic placement of keywords in domain name, web pages and headers; as also proper site navigation is emphasized. However search engine optimization s a complex field and many firms tie up with professional seo agencies to increase the visibility of their businesses.

Earning money online is a process in itself which requires consistent persistence on your part and learning from mistakes as you go forward.