MarCom Professional

Where do all the Internet profits go?

Billions of pounds is traded everyday here on the Internet - do you see any of it? Probably not much. If you do make money online you don't get those billions, I'm guessing. So who does?

Well, the vast majority of the money that is spent online goes to just a handful of companies - Google, Amazon, Ebay and Microsoft. Even Tesco, the leading British retailer, with its millions of pounds of income each week online is a minnow in comparison. So the rest of us, earning less than those millions each week, are the "also rans" of the Internet profit world.

That does not stop people dreaming about making millions online. The problem is for many they are just dreams; they do not turn their dreams into reality. There are endless ebooks and courses that promise a great deal - and offer very little. Dozens of "gurus" offer their advice on how to make more money online (me amongst them...!). However, the people making the real money don't offer their advice. The Googles and Ebays of the world don't tell us how they did it.

So I've been looking at what these businesses do to earn their billions; what do they do here on the Internet to make themselves so attractive? The answer is surprising. Ebay, Google and Amazon have all done the same thing to make themselves billions online - and that is one thing. They have ignored the Internet. That's right, the single common feature between these giants of online profits is that they have got their traffic and their business as a result of their "offline" activities. In other words they have set up a business where the Internet has merely been the delivery channel. This has enabled their focus to be on the business, not on the channel.

Most online businesses focus on the channel and not on being a business. That's the difference between the billionaires and the rest of us; we are all looking in the wrong place for that money. We are looking at the Internet when we should have a much wider perspective. Focus on running a business, rather than the Internet systems and technologies and you are much more likely to make more money out of the Internet.

If you'd like to hear more about this theme, I'll be discussing it tonight in a special one-hour live teleseminar with communications expert, David Festenstein. You can even get your question asked in the £47 call by going to askgrahamjones.co.uk and placing your query which I promise to answer during the call at 8pm, tonight, the 23rd April 2008.

Also posted on www.grahamjones.co.uk