There are several types of businesses you can start online. It is difficult to make certain distinction among the Internet business types because sometimes they are interwoven and combined to give the best results. A criterion that can ease the distinction is the main income source of the business.
1. Corporate WEB site. This is not really an online business. Actually it’s WEB presence of a business, created for promotional purposes. Anyway, online presence is useful for almost any offline business and can bring new customers.
If you own offline business and you want to expand sales online, sometimes it would be better to create a corporate WEB site first in order to sense the potential market.
The basic income of a corporate WEB site comes from offline sales initiated from the WEB presence. These sales are very hard to track.
2. WEB Services. WEB services include: e-mail, web hosing, directories, online payment (PayPal), online marketplace (E-bay) and many others. I this category we can also include some services that are prepared by order and could be delivered online like; web design, graphic design, internet marketing, translation, market research etc. Generally the income comes from monthly fees and sales. When the services are free the sites are monetized from the embedded ads.