Entrepreneur Forum

When E-commerce first started, nearly everyone was selling products, either tangible or digital. There were a few sites that made money selling "banner ads".

Now, it seems everyone has gone the way of adsense. Why? Is it because it's easier to manage? Is there no future in selling products?

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http://www.cropwiki.com

Good question, there are still many websites out there that sell tangible produts, but i think many people go the way of adsense and affiliate marketing as it has suh low start up costs compared to selling products, i'm currently an ebay affiliate, even though i havn't earned anything significant, ebay is paying me 50% of there revenue earned from the sale of the items i bring to ebay.

It's a current economy problem IMHO. People are not paying anyomore for the intangible assets as everything seems to be free. Software is free as open source, media content is free, etc.
There is still some money involved when buying something from ebay and get it posted to you, but I assume most of the cost is to cover the logistics rather than producing the item.
I'm facing the same problem because without a decent return, I can't produce decent content.

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Veiko Herne - entrepreneurial blog
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i read somewhere that ebay is stopping selling digital goods - things like ebooks, not things like cd playes =| one of the reasons for this was that a lot of the digital things are spam. where am i going to sell my warcraft gold from now =(

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jonathans blog | realcash | my band - hybrid machinima

Well, that's what I'm getting at.

The tangible products I guess cost more to start-up. But initially on the web, most people were moving toward selling tangible products through web stores. Then the whole affiliate marketing thing moved in and took over. And now it is Adsense. But the problem is it seems everyone has moved to Adsense. I'm guessing the pendulum will shift a little toward physical products. Perhaps that is a good way to make money now.

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http://www.cropwiki.com

Actually Adsense is now oversatured with people that are eager to make income from it. Many newborn blackhatters that forcing Google to launch smart pricing. There are many CPA Network other then Adsense that are paying their publisher. Im now joining 2 other CPA Network and they pay me constantly.

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i've never really got into adsense, didn't really see the point for about $0.22 a click etc and so much hard work writing up blog posts about a niche i know nothing about just to squeeze a few extra cents out of each click.

I'm more into affiliate marking at the moment, and may put adsense on my website, but undecided yet.

yes, you are correct now every one is switching towards the adsense , in case of products we get paid only when we sell a product but incase of adsense just by user clicking the ad ot by visiting the ad we can get paid . It'an easy way to get paid rather then taking risk in selling a product.

Adsense is ideally a system where you can simply let your website do the work for you, you don't need to do anything special and still get paid for it. The chances are when somneone clicks on the link to a product they may not actually purchase it and therefore you aren't really getting anything from it. Adsense elimanates this, but it doesn't really make anything easier I think. You need to work Adsense into your website in a more efficient way than selling products, no wonder there are so many e-books on it!

Personnally, I would feel a little nervous about buying any kind of inventory. I think that most other people feel the same way. Eventhough Google Adsense really isn't paying out what it used to, it is a simple thing to use that can cost you nothing.