Internet is very fair to everyone; no matter you are a big boss or an office worker, you can always find the chance to open your on-line shop and dig the gold. However, since the capital, and abilities of each person is different, the business types they choose are also various. Find your suitable business types, do some preparation for that, and then, you can start your new business on-line.

1. On-line auction
On-line auction is the easiest on-line business type for people to get in. Normally, the people who post the products for on-line auction mainly are individual sellers who just want to have a try or the owners of small scale shops. Because the barrier to enter this business is low, the competition is great relatively. Moreover, on-line auction customers love to compare the price, normally they will choose the products has lowest quote among the same.

To the sellers have big amount of products, the fees to post products is also very high. It is very common for the sellers to spend thousands dollars one month just for posting and advertisements. Plus the procedure fee charged from on-line auction platform, the cost of on-line auction business won’t be much lower than to rent an entity shop.

However, some sellers build their reputation through on-line auction and then set up their entity shop or company. To the one who is lack of capital, on-line auction is still a sound way to start the business gradually.

2. Community business
This type is for the one who starts their business from running on-line club and managing the on-line community. So far they are more like to be network engineers or the related experts who involved in Internet in the early days. At the time when they involved in web world, although they have abilities to build up their community forum, instead of having a practical mode to earn profit, their management and expectation is a bit unrealistic.

Nine out of ten on-line companies set up at that time had declared to withdraw when the initial capital was used up. And the remain ones had sort of “belief” towards the Internet world, and they also had some sense of mission towards their community. Later on they found that it is a really good way of earning by providing products to the community users according to their needs. And gradually they started to build their reputation and became the key person in certain field in their on-line community. Firstly, they boost the traffic and build reputation and then they provide the professional information which the community interested about following the Internet principle” Content is King”. If their words really carry weight, the product they sell surely will have high customer trust as well.

3. Making own brand
It is the dream of many designers to create their own brand, but the talented designers are over abundant. To become the next LV or Armani is nearly impossible in this situation. However, Internet provides the possibility for the designers to create their own brand. The good thing for the Internet is, it can gather scattered individuals through web. Therefore the designers can find the chance to display their talents to their net friends who has interest. Since it sounds possible for them to manage their own brand with limited capital, many designers started to join this trend. No matter the students in design colleges or many “silent” designers are all busy with building up their own brand on the web. Compared with the era which unknown designers have to work for the others to live, Internet has given all the small brands new hope of survival.

4. Business for special needs
To open an outdoors shop, it is very important to find a good location. Therefore the competition for the shop owners to get the primes location is always fiercely. However, to the shops who sell the products which are not that popular, even it is located at the best area; they still cannot attract many customers to earn enough for the rental. But on the Internet, you don’t need to worry about the location. As long as the owners can call the customers who have needs to come to their own websites, they can always find the way to do the business.

On the web world, no matter what is it, you can always find someone provide it. To the owners, they don’t need to worry that the rental is too high for they to afford; To the customers, they don’t need to complain that the things they need are too difficult to find, the Internet has given both of them a hand.

5. On-line branch
Although many owners consider that their services are better than the big companies, their business has been undercutted by the big shopping malls and their chain stores. But through web, they can find back customers who has recognized their products and their services.

To the owners of small scale shops. Internet has helped them to find their customers in this fierce market competition. While more and more customers rush to the big shopping malls, CBD, the one visits the small shops which is located in relatively outlying area is less and less. However, Internet helps another type of customers who don’t go out that much to find the shops provide good service and run by reliable, friendly owners, to both customers and sellers, this is no doubt a win-win methods.

6. International sales
To most of the people, running international business through Internet is still unrealistic. Although Internet has no boundary, if you cannot speak their languages, how can you do the business with the foreign costumers. However, to the one has international trade background, Internet is a really good tool. They don’t need to go oversea to be international traders; they can just make the deals through the web. In the past, owners need to send the samples to oversea for the customers to check, but now they have their own space in the websites to display their products. The oversea costumers can just browse the pictures and then counsel the companies with mail or telephone. It makes the deal easier to be done.

Nevertheless, through Internet, the sellers can do retail business directly with their foreign costumers. Of course there is one premise: owners need to know at least their language first, they should have the ability to read the message their oversea costumers send to them. If they can write their product introduction with their languages the chance for them to earn money out of their country is much higher.

7. Supplier direct selling
Facing too many competitors, the suppliers always have to consider the channel flows. Moreover, the cost of whole channel flows also raise up, it is not easy to strengthen the band nowadays. In the past, the supplier can only know the market reaction through the retailers, the deviations in between makes it difficult for them to adjust their product positioning.

However, through Internet, suppliers can hear the voice of costumers directly and communicate with them as the manufacturers. It helps them to know the market needs and produce the product which fit the needs of the market more. For the suppliers, to sell product on-line is totally different from making a big order, the profits from selling one or two products is very small, but it opens a new sales channel and a new web costumers service system which can face to the consumers directly.

8. Vertical portal website
Building up a one-stop shop is the ambition for many on-line business owners. But the requirement of setting up this type of business is really high. First, owners should have sufficient capitals and then they need very powerful platform and technology to serve many costumers at the same time in one website. Managing a vertical portal website is like running an on-line supermarket. The running cost of a supermarket is much higher than that of a small shop; this business type is definitely not for everyone.

Currently the most powerful vertical portal e-business websites are the e-market run by few big portal sites, only few owners who have very strong technology and professional knowledge can find the way to involve in this business type.

Edited By Vicky Yin