Lucky for us who work with the Internet.
The Internet is becoming a more and more lucrative medium to support your brick-and-mortar business and/or to build your new startup entirely doing business online.
According to the data from Internet World Stats – Updated on March 2009, the number of people using the Internet has reaches 1,596 million (yes – that’s nearly 1.6 billion users worldwide!). In the US alone, the Internet user number has exceeded 220 million mark, with online retail sales growing exponentially from $172 billion in 2005 to $329 billion in 2010, as indicated by Forrester Research.
Here’s to compare: according to Euromonitor, World’s retail sales exceeded $8.69 trillion in 2005, where $2.58 trillion is from North America.
Combining the data above: The retail sales has grown 36.5 per cent from 2001, While in the US, the 2005-2010 growth of online retail sales is fantastic: a predicted 91 per cent increase – Online retail sales has grown almost 3 times faster than the growth of retail sales as a whole.
Too much stats? I have a point or two to take soon, I promise… Just bear with me for a while:)
What the stats are indicating
I learn a few things from the stats above:
- That $300 billion is on online retail sales alone. What about the revenue generated by sites selling consultancy services (i.e. website development) and information products (i.e. membership sites)?
- $300 billion from 220 million US Internet users – that’s $1,300 online retail spending per person anually.
- The 220 million Internet users in the US is only account about 14 per cent of world’s population of Internet user.
- The online retail sales is only a small fraction of the total number of retail sales.
Even considering the 80/20 rules, assuming 80% world’s online retail sales are originating from the US, while 20% of the Internet users are from the US, we can draw one conclusion: You ain’t seen nothing yet in making money online.
A strong reason for you to do business online
From the above conclusion, I insist you to do business online.
Here’s why: The online retailing and every other type of business making money online is in the very early stage of growth. This means, joining the making money online bandwagon can bring you success… and riches.
So, there you go – This is the first part of two blog post series talking about the reason you should do business online. Coming up next… The second part will talk about why you need to enter online business and make money online arena now and not tomorrow, next week, next month or next year.
Stay tuned!
Ivan Widjaya
Doing business online
Image by Mads Boedker.