eCommerce Website: Shopify, Dropshipping, Amazon and more. (Udemy.com)

If you’re looking to make money online, or even if you just want to increase the profits of your existing business; creating an eCommerce store is an excellent strategy. Scratch that: this is 100% the best way to make money online and that goes for hobbyists, entrepreneurs, bloggers and small businesses alike.

Bold claim? Sure is! But read on to find out why we can be confident in making it.

So just what is eCommerce? Of course, the term refers to online commerce: i.e. selling products online.
But while eCommerce could mean selling an eBook from a landing page, it is most often used to refer more exclusively to online shops that sell multiple products and that have a particular layout and set-up. The most popular example of an eCommerce store is undoubtedly Amazon. This acts just like a high street store and allows you to browse products at your leisure and add them to a shopping cart. The only difference is that you can do all this from the comfort of your home and once you check out, the products are the simply delivered to you wherever you are.

It’s a familiar concept, but what makes it so important?

Why eCommerce is the Future

#1 eCommerce is Growing
The first thing you need to recognize is that eCommerce is growing. In the early days, people were uncertain about spending money online and found that it was daunting handing over their card details and trusting in a supplier that they couldn’t meet face to face.

But now look at companies like Amazon and eBay. These are household names around the world and everyone from the young and tech savvy to the elderly are now happy to shop with them. These companies have helped many people to put aside any concerns they might have had regarding eCommerce and to trust in buying online.

And eCommerce is growing as well doing massive business.

For proof, you need look no further than stats from ‘Cyber Monday’. Cyber Monday is a national holiday of sorts where online retailers are anticipated to lower their prices. It follows Black Friday but these days it tends to do nearly as much business – and it’s growing rapidly.

For example, in 2014 Cyber Monday created a total of $2.59 billion sales online. That’s no small number but in 2015 this was increased to $3.19 billion. That’s a huge increase. $2.28 billion of these were on desktop (versus $2.04 billion last year) while $838 million were through mobile devices (versus $548 million).

Across all devices, Cyber Monday increased by 21%!

Seeing as Amazon is probably the best known online retailer, how is its growth going? Well, the company sold a total of $107.01 billion worth of products in 2015. The company employees 230,800 and there are 304 million active Amazon customer accounts. The brand is worth $47.73 billion and this is only expected to continue to grow as well.

The story is the same across the board. People are becoming more and more familiar with eCommerce and high-street stores are struggling. This is undoubtedly the future of selling and it’s easy to see why.

#2 It’s Convenient
So what is it that has led to such growth in eCommerce? Well, the simple fact of the matter is that online sales benefit everyone. The only reason online sales haven’t already dwarfed physical sales is probably the fact that some people still don’t trust shopping online or aren’t sure how to go about it. Over time this concern will be eroded more and more – while tools like PayPal will make it easier and safer than ever before.

When you sell products online, it means that you don’t have to employ staff and you don’t have to rent the same amount of physical space. You’ll need somewhere to store your products (unless you’re drop shipping) but other than that, your only costs will be hosting, shipping and web design.

Lower overheads mean more profit for you but they also mean lower prices for customers. Customers now have the ability to order products online conveniently but on top of that, they’ll be getting them for a much lower price.
There’s also greater versatility in terms of what you can sell. With an eCommerce store you can sell physical products which will require some up-front investment. But

There’s also a lot less up-front cost. If you wanted to set up a high-street store, then you would need to be willing to spend a large amount of money to rent the physical space, to invest in the stock and to manage staff etc.

However, if you are setting up an online store then all you’re going to need is some inventory to sell (perhaps not if you are going to be selling digital products or acting as an affiliate) and a website. It takes just a few clicks to set up an eCommerce store and that means you can have one up and running in minutes for a negligible cost.

#3 It’s the Best Way to Monetize a Website
The last two examples explain why businesses should launch their own eCommerce stores and why you might consider launching an eCommerce store as your business. But you should also sit up and take notice if you run a blog or website already and you’re just looking for a way to monetize it.

Why? Because it’s actually one of the most effective methods there is of making money from an eCommerce website.

Until now, you likely have been relying on one of several methods to make money online. Perhaps you’re making ads from advertising on your website (Google AdSense for example) or maybe you’re making money by selling an affiliate product.

In either of those scenarios, it’s important to recognize that you have placed yourself at the bottom of the ‘foodchain’. In other words, you’re being paid by those advertisers and product creators in order to send business their way. The fact that they’re happy to continue paying you, means that they’re making more money that that from you. In other words, they’re earning more from your visitors than you are! You’re getting a small share of their profit but they’re taking home the lion’s share. And in fact, you’re essentially doing their work for them!

And that’s why you’ll typically earn about 1-50 cents per click on an advert. Meaning in turn that you’re going to need hundreds of thousands of visitors to your site a day to make any reasonable money. Compare this with selling your own products and making $20-50 each time. Of course, it’s much easier to get someone to click on an advert than it is to get them to buy something – but not as much easier as you think if you have decent products and you’re running your store well. The bottom line? You can make a living from a website with just a few hundred daily visitors instead.