Things have definitely changed over the years. Previously, we do business using retail trade, but nowadays, more people prefer to do business online. The following scenarios will show you how the retail trade has evolved to the online trade.
Scenario of a Retail Business: A typical retailer usually invests a large sum of capital to start a retail business. In retail trade, they buy goods or services from the wholesaler and sells them at a retail price to the consumers to earn gross profit. The gross profit are then used to pay the running expenses like the shop rental, employees salary, utility bills etc . The net profit or loss are then shared among the partners or directly to the owners of the business. On top of this, a retailer has to run expensive marketing campaigns by placing promotional advertisements on television, newspapers, printing of flyers, billboards etc to earn more sales.
Scenario of an Online Business: Nowadays, a person invests a small amount of money to set up a website and sells its products or services in their website. In the internet world, they pay a small amount to join affiliate programs and earn commissions from selling their associates' products. The income from joining the programs or commission from sales will go directly to the pocket of the online business person. They market their products with their website by running marketing campaigns using backlinks, blogging, articles writing, keywords, ezine solo advertisements, pay per click advertisements etc to drive traffics to their website.