Attributes of an Online / Internet business over a traditional business setup

If you are thinking of starting a business and are looking for business ideas, allow me to briefly introduce the different setup of business, particularly online (internet) and traditional business.

The traditional business setup is very common since way back. What do I mean by 'traditional’? My own definition of ‘traditional’ business has the following traits:

- high capital investment/setup cost
- need to source for a good/strategic location, do up the renovation and pay rental/leasing cost
- keep inventory/stock, if you are selling goods
- hire employees to carry out the work, unless you are on a one-man show
- invest huge amount of advertising/marketing cost, but not knowing what the outcome will be
- full-time job that demands almost 100% of your waking time to run the business, yet you do not know if your business will succeed or fail.
- due to high initial capital investment, business may take a couple of years before it breakeven. There is no guarantee of success even after the breakeven mark is reached.

But an online/internet business can be vastly different. It is a setup that:

- normally does not require a physical office, hence no need to incur rental/leasing cost. This means there will be a huge savings, as you can work from home.
- the setup cost can be as low as only a few tens of dollars.
- depending on the nature of your business, most of the online/internet business do not require you to keep inventory/stock of any kind at all. For example, affiliate marketing.
- as it’s a simple setup, you can do a one-man show and own 100% of the profits earned. There is no need to pay salaries for hiring helpers. Nor is there a need for partnership.
- the advertising cost incurred for internet publicity is much lower than traditional advertising media such as television commercials, newspaper, magazines.
- you can do the online/internet business as a freelance or a side job. There is no need to quit your current full-time job. This offers you security and continual income until your online/internet business is stable and churn out good profits.
- In case you run out of business ideas, you can find ideas easily in the internet; it’s full of opportunities, information and resources and most of these are free.
- you can monitor your internet business performance online and take immediate actions to switch from low profit-making products/services to other business ideas very quickly if you wish to, hence minimizing your loss before it burns a big hole in your pocket.

I hope the brief information offered above is useful to help you decide whether to go for a traditional business setup or an online/internet business. The internet world is full of business opportunities. There are free resources for you to read. Do your research carefully and read up for more information.