For those that have not heard of e-commerce, it is helpful to explain what it is...The term refers to online commerce: i.e. selling products online. This can be any number of things, from digital products to physical products, the niche is vast, as with affiliate marketing...

But while e-commerce could mean selling an ebook from a landing page (you are selling something online), it is most often used to refer more exclusively to online "shops" that will sell multiple products using a particular layout and set-up.

Think Amazon here...This is likely the easiest and most popular example to use. Using their site, you can browse products at your leisure and add them to a wishlist or a shopping cart.

The difference from this shopping to shopping from a bricks and mortar store? With an online store you can do all your shopping 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

Remember the image from page 1 of this tutorial? Now let's see WHY I believe e-commerce is the future...

#1 Ecommerce is Growing Rapidly

You need to know and recognize that ecommerce is here to stay and it is growing. In the early days, people were uncertain about spending money at all online. There was something unsettling about handing over their card details and trusting that an online supplier that they couldn’t see face to face would deliver the goods as sold.

That has changed - look at companies like Amazon and eBay. Today these are household names around the world in many countries and everyone from the young and tech savvy to the elderly are now happy to shop with them.

These two companies have done more than almost any others in helping convince the masses to put aside any concerns they might have had regarding ecommerce and to trust in buying online.

E-commerce in general is growing and doing massive business.

For some proof, look no further than stats from ‘Cyber Monday’. Cyber Monday is a national holiday of sorts, and one when online retailers are expected to lower their prices.

It follows Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving in USA) which still has a focus with bricks and mortar stores and shoppers, but these Cyber Mondays tend to do nearly as much business – and it’s growing rapidly.

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).

#2 Online Shopping Is Convenient

What has led to such massive growth in e-commerce? Quite simply online sales benefit everyone. You avoid the traffic, the stores, the people, and save time. You get exactly to what you want fast.

These are key selling points for you when you are looking for an online business...

Remember that as an online store owner you will sell your products wthout having to employ a lot of staff, and if the products are digital you don’t have to rent physical space to store them.

If you do have physical products you’ll need somewhere to store them (unless you’re drop shipping, one method of selling products we will touch on in this tutorial) but other than that, your only costs will be hosting, shipping and web design.

These low overheads mean more profit for you and lower prices for your customers. You will enable your customers to order products online conveniently and on top of that, they’ll be getting them for a much lower price.

There’s also huge versatility in terms of what you can sell...

With an ecommerce store if you sell physical products you will have some up-front investment. But there’s a lot less up-front cost compared to a regular store. If you wanted to set up a regular store, you would need to spend quite a bit of money renting and setting up some physical space (the store), invest in stock, hire a manager and staff etc.

With an online store, all you’re going to need is some inventory to sell (if you are going to be selling digital products or acting as an affiliate there is no need for this either) and a website. It is very easy and literally can take a few clicks and you are set up and running in minutes for a negligible cost.

#3 It’s Another Way to Monetize Your Website

This is the beauty of what you are learning here with Wealthy Affiliate. You can easily add some store pages to your in-place website that you are using for affiliate marketing! It is a great way to add another revenue stream and monetizing your work.

Right now you are learning one of several methods to make money online with your website. Perhaps you’re making commission from advertising on your website (Google AdSense for example) or maybe you’re making money by selling an affiliate product (i.e. the Amazon affiliate program).

In both of those scenarios above, recognize that you have placed yourself at the bottom of the ‘foodchain’ when it comes to monetization. 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 as much if not more money than you are making. 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 1-50cents 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 there is not that much difference as you might 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 of thousands.

If you have an ecommerce store, then the buck stops with you. Now you’re making the maximum profit from your customers because you’re selling something to them and keeping the difference.

What’s more, is that you’re keeping your visitors on your site and engaged with your brand. You’re not sending them away, you’re keeping them right where you want them and making a real difference to the way they see you.

Finally, selling ecommerce products is better than selling digital products or affiliate products because it’s something that anyone can appreciate. Only a very specific type of person buys ebooks about making money online. Phone cases and clothes though? That has a much broader appeal!

Try putting an ecommerce store on your existing website and just see what a difference it makes to your profits. And the potential for growth is MASSIVE.