This is for the small and medium entrepreneur with limited funds but who wants to be his/her own boss and make lots of money.
Information sharing and delivery reigns supreme in today’s social media milieu, making customers more informed and selective over what they want and where to get it. The market is here and everywhere, waiting to be tapped and cajoled into buying your product and services.
The challenge, or better yet, the golden opportunity facing the micro-entrepreneur is to put a business on the Internet where he immediately engages with the global marketplace without even leaving the Philippines. However, taking the e-commerce path can be formidable especially if one is used to bricks and mortar, is unfamiliar with the platform that successful online businesses here and abroad use.
The quickest route, industry experts say, to earning extra income lies in running a virtual store because tangible products are sold to consumers who want them. This is where e-commerce can help the self-starting capitalist on his way to becoming a netpreneur.
Setting up an e-shop can be outsourced to companies whose e-commerce expertise is beyond reproach. Platform2u.com Phils.Inc., an e-commerce company barely seven months old in the Philippines, is making waves in the local IT industry. When it began operations in July last year, the company immediately launched its fourth generation e-commerce solution called SMilDS.com meant to help capitalists take their B2B and B2C operations online.
Fourth generation means social commerce or networking/multi-level marketing in the digital space. SMilDS.com software has a cross-selling e-trading engine – a first in the Philippines - that facilitates webstore owners to sell not only their own but also the products of other online merchants in the global market. The e-retailers earn commissions from their cross-selling.
The e-commerce software comes complete with the basic components of an e-retailing platform: easy set up and design e-store system, proactive fraud monitoring, relationship management system, automated logistics and payment processing (in 18 different currencies). In less than 24 hours, SMilDS.com can build a robust and secure 24x7 webstore.
Three business packs are offered – Lite Pack, Full Pack and Enterprise Pack - at a cost almost equivalent to having one, two or three Frapuccinos a day, depending on which is selected. Again, depending on the pack one has subscribed to, value-adds are thrown in like support in advertisements and digital promotions, system upgrade up to two years, business analysis report and training courses. Training in webstore design can be enjoyable and can be done in one’s own time because the tutorial is accessible on YouTube.
There are now 150 merchants who are part of a growing online mall hosted by SMilDS.com (http://smilds.com/ph/), selling almost 2,000 items that customers all over the world can view on their computer screens. Product viewing and comparison is made easy through the site links on the SMilDS.com e-mall. Clicking a product takes you to the website of the store owner.
At their July launch, company executives announced their vision is to help the Philippine e-commerce industry rise from ground zero and to bridge the e-commerce divide in the country. The industry, they said, recorded only about PhP5 billion (US$100 million) e-commerce transactions in 2009. If they begin now, budding Filipino online store owners will be part of the e-trading revolution, because by 2012, the size of the Philippine e-commerce industry is projected to reach PhP20 billion.
So, when a buyer from...let's say, Davao, Shanghai, California or any part of the world clicks and pays, the lucky webstore owner is on his way to becoming his own boss and earning more than he’d ever dreamt.
And SMilDS.com, which led their current merchant-partners to the Net economy, is barely seven months old.
