1. An old service back in vogue
e-Commerce is nothing new. Its just a 200-year-old service repackaged: the latest way to sell goods and services.
OFTEN, when you try to understand something new, it helps to compare it to something old. Like a man did at a seminar on e-Commerce. As I was talking about the Internet - and how to use it to sell your goods and services to customers in the comfort of their homes - the man suddenly spoke out. "Hey," he said, "thats just like 200 years ago!" He was thinking back to the days when merchants had to pack their goods onto carts pulled by horses or donkeys and traveled to their customers to show off their offerings. "If I understand this right," the man said, "then the Internet can be my modern day cart - except I wont have to travel anywhere and customers can buy from me any time." He was right, of course. Only todays "Internet cart" is much more powerful. Every day it presents millions of goods and services to tens of millions of customers - anywhere, anytime - even if the sales person is fast asleep. It helps shop owners provide better services with little effort, increases customer loyalty, helps gain new customers and best of all does it for very little money.
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