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Five Ideas For Starting a New Online Business in 2017

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The internet is the modern entrepreneurial petri dish from which great ideas can come to life.

And with e-commerce sales boasting a 15.6% growth rate in 2016, it’s clear that if you’re not already doing business online, now may be the time to start.

Today’s infographic from Distributel details five online business archetypes that are worth knowing for anyone looking to launch side hustle in 2017.

Five online businesses to start this year

Five Businesses, Five Personalities

As the infographic shows, there is a business type for every online entrepreneur.

Some would prefer to make online business their full-time job, while others may want a side hustle that helps monetize their impressive social media presence or creative abilities.

Which of the five business types suits you?

1. The Expert
Sometimes it’s an idea, rather than a product, that will captivate the marketplace. The expert’s e-commerce strategy is to capitalize on that winning idea, distributing it from a tiny seed, like an e-book or a newsletter, and growing it into a much larger media enterprise. Media mavens like Gary Vaynerchuk have proven the power of this expansion-oriented style of online commerce.

2. The Creative
Whether you’re handy with needle and thread or a 3D printer, e-commerce is the world’s biggest craft fair. The vanguard of the DIY e-commerce movement is represented by services like Etsy and Fiverr, where unique DIY ideas and highly-varied skill sets can be marketed to a global audience. Etsy alone sold $667 million worth of handcrafted goods produced by its army of sole proprietor vendors in 2016.

3. The Social Butterfly
Partnering with others is the driving force behind one of the most social forms of online commerce: affiliate marketing. Simply put, blogs and social media influencers promote sponsored products in return for a commission on sales that are referred through their site. According to research by Rakuten Marketing, affiliate marketing is expected to grow into a $6.8 billion industry by 2020.

4. The Market Trailblazer
Online commerce also often allows an entrepreneur to partner with a larger distributor or wholesaler to become a storefront. This allows web entrepreneurs to open up new markets for existing products, and to conduct high volumes of business without having to manage a huge inventory and overhead.

5. The Optimizer
Though online businesses have low overhead and are easy to start, they are not without risk. The Optimizer knows this, and makes it their business to lower that risk and improve their profitability. Once you’ve started turning an e-commerce idea into an optimal, well-oiled machine, it’s equally important to use the right metrics to measure your progress and iterate toward greater successes.

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The World’s Biggest Cloud Computing Service Providers

Cloud computing service providers generated $270 billion in revenues last year, concentrated among a few giants.

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This tree map shows the biggest cloud computing service providers globally by market share.

The World’s Biggest Cloud Computing Service Providers

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Today, the three largest cloud computing service providers command 66% of the global market.

Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have generated billions in revenues through their cloud infrastructure that provide the computing power companies need to store data. What’s more, most AI models are run on the cloud, creating a surge in computing demand for cloud providers.

The above graphic shows the largest cloud providers globally, based on data from Synergy Research Group.

Breaking Down the Cloud Market

Here are the world’s top cloud computing service providers based on enterprise revenues as of the fourth quarter of 2023:

ProviderCountryMarket Share Q4 2023
Amazon Web Services🇺🇸 U.S.31%
Microsoft Azure🇺🇸 U.S.24%
Google Cloud🇺🇸 U.S.11%
Alibaba Cloud🇨🇳 China4%
Salesforce🇺🇸 U.S.3%
IBM Cloud🇺🇸 U.S.2%
Oracle🇺🇸 U.S.2%
Tencent Cloud🇨🇳 China2%
Other🌐 Other21%

With 31% of the global market share, Amazon’s cloud division posted $24.2 billion in revenues over the quarter.

AWS is a major cash engine for the company, but growth slowed over 2023 as enterprises and startups cut back on tech spending. Annual sales growth compared to the same quarter last year grew by 13%—far below competitors Microsoft and Google, whose cloud divisions grew by 30% and 26%, respectively.

As we can see, U.S. firms make up the lion’s share of the market, while China’s Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud together comprise 5% of the global share.

The AI Boom and the Cloud

Given that a significant chunk of AI models are run on the cloud, the industry may be positioned to see greater demand as momentum accelerates.

In fact, newer AI systems are as much as 10 to 100 times larger than older models. In line with this, major cloud providers are seeing high demand for cloud services to allow companies across financial to manufacturing sectors to run large language models on their platforms.

Today, 98% of companies globally rely on the cloud for at least one part of their business applications, which may present a market opportunity for the industry as advancements in AI continue to grow.

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