E-Commerce Revenue Models

E-Commerce Revenue Models

Apart from regular selling of commodities, today there are many other ways by which companies can make money from the Internet. The other forms of E-Commerce activities are:

1. Affiliate site is a form of third party marketing in which the site owner gets paid based on the performance. The affiliate site may be a price comparison service or shopping directories or review sites or blogs that contain a link to a normal retailing site and are paid when a customer makes a purchase through it. The affiliate site usually attracts visitors by offering more information and tutorials on some specific product or a topic. See Figure 15.17 to Figure 15.23

2. Auction site is a kind of website, that auctions items on the Internet and levies some commission from the sales. e.g. https://www.ebay.com/

3. Banner advertisement site displays advertisements of other companies in its websites and thereby earns revenue.

4. Bulk-buying sites collect a number of users together where every one wants to buy similar items - the site negotiates a discount with the supplier and takes commission. e.g. https://www.alibaba.com/

5. Digital publishing sites effectively host the e-books or magazines on the web. They make profits in a number of ways such as advertising, selling etc., https://wordpress.org/

6. Licensing sites allow other websites to make use of their software. For example, the search engines which allow a visitor of the site to search within the website more easily.

7. Name-your-price sites are just like normal retail sites. In contrast, the buyer negotiates with the retailer for a particular product or service. https://in.hotels.com/

8. Online Shopping mall site allows multi E-Commerce traders to assemble together on a single website. Often these sellers would be related to each other, for example they may all sell luxury goods. This site would take a percentage of their profit.