How to make money in e-commerce

E-commerce enables companies, suppliers, customers and partners to share information through e-commerce, realize the electronization of business processes among enterprises, and cooperate with the electronic production management system within enterprises to improve the efficiency of production, inventory, circulation and funds. The following is the e-commerce that I collected for everyone on how to make money. I hope it will help everyone.

The first type: the line is too thin, and it is easy to live offline.

? Online+offline? That is, the current popular online to offline can avoid the shortcomings of traditional e-commerce single online operation, which is very suitable for small e-commerce in the vertical field. The key of this model is to integrate online and offline operations into a complete chain, otherwise it will be counterproductive.

1 Hong Qinghua: Make money steadily from the beginning.

At present, e-commerce has two practices: small and beautiful e-commerce pursues profits, and large and comprehensive e-commerce loves scale. There is no right or wrong in these practices, only suitability. My opinion is that it is necessary to make money steadily from the beginning, and through continuous circular development, it should be the pursuit of most companies including e-commerce.

Every company has its own genes, and our genes start offline. We first did tourism planning consultation, and then expanded to tourism marketing, tourism development, hotel chains and so on. , are offline business. At that time, we had formed the habit of making money. The establishment of Lvmama.com, on the one hand, conforms to the development trend of the Internet, on the other hand, it is also a supplement to offline business, perfecting the company's business chain and forming a closed loop. The ultimate goal is to make better money.

Enterprises want to make money by low cost, good products and excellent services, but the means are different. There are two successful places for donkey mother: one is to adopt online and offline integration in business model, and the other is to achieve the ultimate service.

When Mama Donkey first started doing it, she studied Ctrip and E-Dragon. I sometimes think it's good to do online alone, but Ctrip has grabbed the lead and the second place is far from it. Small vertical e-commerce companies like us have been developing steadily because of online and offline interaction.

Online+offline is the popular online to offline. I always pay attention to tourists and scenic spots. Among the six business segments of the group, donkey mother. Com introduces tourists to the scenic spot and makes planning and design for the scenic spot. In addition, there are scenic spot marketing, operation management and even investment. On the other hand, the good relationship between me and the scenic spot offline is bound to provide better resources online. I can get better resources at a lower price. In this way, the cost performance of my products has improved, and I can even provide special services for tourists.

In our industry, there are also people who burn money and quickly reach the market scale, but we are also growing rapidly, with an annual growth rate of tens of percent, which is enough. As long as you can live well, you are not afraid of pressure. Why? Because this market must be a big wave. I believe you can succeed if you invest money quickly, but the chances will be very small. What should I do if I burn the money and haven't done it? I think self-profit is the most stable mode, no matter how the outside world changes, it will make money.

Xiao Xu: Take the road of self-hematopoiesis.

When it comes to making money, it's actually not as profiteering as the outside world says, just break even. However, as a diamond e-commerce, we do have our own way to make money.

Model, which we first proposed in 2005? Mouse+cement? The combination of website and offline experience store. I have always believed that the experience store is the terminal of the brand. For the category of diamonds, the experience store has greatly improved the brand value, enhanced customer confidence, and reduced transaction disputes and after-sales service costs.

However, this model was very thin in the early days, and online and offline were almost separated. After several years of optimization, it gradually matured. Now online can bring 50% traffic to the experience store, which is the main contributor to revenue.

In 2007 and 2008, we successively got two investments from Today Capital and Ceyuan Capital, and spent a lot of money on promotion, but we took a detour. Since 2009, we have consciously cut costs and changed our marketing strategy. We have reduced TV and offline channels, adopted innovative gameplay in marketing methods, and made innovations in marketing content.

The so-called cost reduction is not blindly saving money. On the contrary, it is necessary for a brand manufacturing company like ours to maintain the necessary exposure. Therefore, we will still put advertisements on buildings and TV from time to time, and the money saved will be invested in more valuable channels, such as word-of-mouth marketing.

We believe that social media is deeply interactive with users, so before Weibo and WeChat became popular, we kept communicating and interacting with users on the forum. Nowadays, it is easier for users to make their own voices through social media. This is an opportunity for us. However, we don't guide word of mouth, but learn from users' feedback based on customer information system, and then adjust our products and services.

Cooperative marketing is another way for us. In the case of limited budget, in order to achieve the most effective communication, we must constantly look for cooperation opportunities and take advantage of market advantages. For example, in the just-concluded Chingjoy, we cooperated with Shanda, and the ornaments in the game were redesigned and made into peripheral products, making them more valuable for giving or buying.

Regarding how e-commerce should make money, I prefer the circular development of self-hematopoiesis. As an offline brand, our service is the core. After controlling the team to 500 people, we have made up our minds to take the road of self-hematopoiesis.

The second type: it is not easy to make money, but saving money is king.

When burning money becomes a thing of the past and a large amount of investment becomes a thing of the past, how should e-commerce survive? Saving money means making a profit. Tongcheng. Com, which is about to sprint to the market, will achieve the ultimate in careful calculation, and its financial statements will even be accurate to every day, and the cost will be shared with everyone at the meeting.

Wu Zhixiang: Burning money is unrealistic.

Tongcheng. If you want to make money, you can also make money. In 2004, I came out from Alibaba and founded Tongcheng.com, which was influenced by my former employer. At that time, I felt that Ali could survive as a B2B in the whole industry, and I should have no problem as a B2B in a sub-industry. I didn't consider taking venture capital at that time, just thinking about making money to support myself.

Based on this concept, we achieved income balance in the first year and began to make profits in the second year. What we did at that time was simple. We established a B2B community for travel agency owners, developed members, made electronic business cards for them to hang on the website, and then charged them. Initially, it was 100 yuan. By 2008, we had nearly 6.5438+0 million paid members, and the maximum fee for a single person reached 6.5438+0 million yuan.

In 2008, we attracted the attention of VC, but VC told me that if we want to be big, we need to transform to B2C. So we need a sum of money, so we introduced Suzhou Venture Capital Group150,000 investment.

At that time, investors hoped that we could find ways to quickly expand the scale and increase profits. Undoubtedly, it is difficult. We only have150,000 yuan and more than 200 people. Our competitors are super predators like Ctrip and E Long, and we are embarrassed to say that we are competitive with them. But it was also from that time, Tongcheng. Com explored its own path and adopted a very grassroots method? SEM and SEO.

In 2009, we were the travel website that threw the most money at Baidu. 20 10 annual profit, revenue 1 100 million yuan, profit of about 4 million yuan.

By the time Tencent invested 20 12, we actually knew that it was unrealistic to burn money in China, and we could only rely on refined operation. The loss in April of that year accelerated our pace.

According to the original financial system, the loss in April will not be known until May 13 at the earliest. What is the value? So we made one? Report day system? Divide the company's annual budget into days. If the profit this month is 2 million, it will be 75 thousand. For example, yesterday's profit was 50,000, so the poor 25,000 will be divided, so try to make up for it.

In this way, every morning at ten o'clock, I can get the report of the day before yesterday, and all the costs, income and profits are clear at a glance; By the end of the month, we can clearly know how much the actual operation of the month deviates from the budget, and then discuss how to adjust.

In terms of management, so do we. For example, in a meeting, we will estimate the cost of each participant, how much each person will spend for half an hour, and what results the meeting will achieve. If it is not completed, it is a waste of resources.

In terms of business, the products of online travel websites are not much different, but the spelling is more detailed. Ctrip is dominated by officials and business people, so it is better to strive for the younger generation of self-help tourists. Although the competition is fierce, our hotel business can still maintain a growth rate of 60% to 70%, and it is still profitable.

Du Fei: Without positive cash flow, you are a beggar.

In recent years, many e-commerce companies are burning money, because everyone thinks that scale is the way to survive. In fact, small and beautiful companies are also doing well. Many vertical brands in Taobao shops are profitable. There is no difference between Taobao brand and e-commerce, but the way of channel presentation and the way of obtaining members are different.

These profitable e-commerce companies have a common feature, which is to make the front-end and operational control capabilities very strong. For example, the production control of Royal Nifang and Afu essential oils is very good, at the same time, the gross profit structure and demand structure of commodities are strongly controlled, and with good operation control means, profits are easy to appear.

There must be a habit when doing management: when making a project or annual plan, you must calculate the time node of profit, even if there is no profit node, you must also calculate the date when the cash flow is positive. If there is no positive cash flow, you will ask others for charity in the future and have a hard time. You are a beggar.

I believe many people have calculated this account, but why does the enterprise eventually get out of control? First, the accounts are unclear, and people usually use strategic losses to cover up the defects of unclear accounts; Second, the planning is not long enough. The founder ignored that competition would stretch the profit node too long and blindly pursue scale. When you predict that your revenue will reach 1 100 million yuan, you must not apply the expense and cost structure of 1 10,000 yuan. Your customer unit price, fixed cost and marketing cost will change with the market.

Good companies make money by operating. The marketing of a good company can be dull, but if the operation is well controlled, it will definitely make money. Operation is from the beginning to the end, from product selection to purchase, to determining the gross profit structure of goods, to monitoring sales, out of stock, out of stock and consumer feedback, forming a complete data link and feeding it back to executives, so that you can know what goods to do, what goods to eliminate and what goods to curb. These are all ways in which retail and e-commerce collide. Therefore, the operation department is the midfield engine of e-commerce companies. This department is responsible for offense and defense. When to promote sales and when not to promote sales is not decided by the purchasing and marketing department, but approved by the operation department. This method is also in use now.

At the beginning, we always wanted to make the customer experience more extreme. When I first arrived in Tuotuo, I found that our customer satisfaction was 150%. In fact, as long as 80% of customers are enough, the whole service cost will be lower. Our current customer base is very small. When the customer base increases one day, people will start to complain about how the quality of your service has declined. We should gradually improve the quality of service. You can achieve 150% in one breath. How to improve in the future?

E-commerce and retailing in China are not dead? Small? On, but died? Big? Let's go The founder should manage his own rhythm and don't follow the rhythm of others. Some enterprises are eager to expand their scale, and sometimes expect to increase their costs after two or three years. But in fact, consumers are really not in such a hurry.

The third type: don't fight price wars, and do services with peace of mind.

In the craziest years, e-commerce companies were busy melting money, burning money and fighting price wars. Who cares about the user experience? When the tide recedes, everyone discovers that your customers are the most important people around you. The essence of e-commerce is a long-distance race, and vicious competition in that year was not desirable.

5 Li Rixue: The price war is out of date.

Five years ago, e-commerce was crazy. As long as you can speculate on this concept, it is easy to get investment. But by 20 13, the whole market has returned to rationality.

For VC, they will invest in many enterprises in the early days, but they know very well that many enterprises can't do it. This is the common practice of VC, but when capital enters you, it will be profitable after all, and only because of the market environment and other reasons will there be so-called staged losses.

An entrepreneur certainly doesn't want to be cannon fodder, but it is speed and scale that determine whether he can survive. The internet is changing very fast. You can see that many enterprises are doing well now, but they are only low-priced and have no characteristics. And the price has no bottom line. When will it be cheaper? The essence of e-commerce should be convenience for consumers, not cheapness. Everyone knows that cheap goods are not good. E-commerce blindly caters to consumers and depresses commodity prices, which is one of the reasons why e-commerce is generally losing money.

Every enterprise will look for its own core competitiveness. We have always stressed that we are in service. We don't regard ourselves as a sales channel, but want to provide service value. Now including Taobao and Tmall, they also provide services for users, rather than simply selling goods.

This is especially true in JD.COM. JD.COM had its own logistics system six years ago. At that time, many companies felt stupid. Why do they do logistics? Including finance, data platform, network promotion and so on. What it is doing now is actually to provide services for businesses and consumers.

Now, the commodity prices in JD.COM are actually much higher than three years ago. More and more big brands and manufacturers directly cooperate with them, and their price system is more and more balanced with the external market. Some of these brands have also customized some products for JD.COM, which is actually very common in traditional retail industries such as Wal-Mart, Gome and Suning.

Many people say that Liu burns money, but JD. The warehousing and logistics of COM is a big investment, not burning money, but a normal investment, so the competition is fierce now, and those e-commerce companies who don't know what they are doing are burning money. Under normal circumstances, if an enterprise cannot make a profit for three years, its value will be questioned.

Therefore, start-ups must first do things that are in line with the nature of business, including how to make customers trust and how to establish a security system. Many enterprises don't want to provide security because they have to pay the cost. They think they are smart, but the consumer's choice is simple. They come to you because of your security system, and they will leave you because there is no security.

Xu Maodong: Now it is the competition of management and operation ability.

Group buying was once the focus of people's attention, but some changes have taken place in the past two years. This change can be described by three key words: the first is evolution, and those who don't do well will be out. In the past thousand regiments, there are now three or five left; The second is differentiation. We are also doing group buying, but we are doing it differently. Some companies are still in the traditional group buying mode, some companies have done vertical mode, and some companies have turned to physical objects; The third is integration, where Internet giants come in to hold shares and make mergers and acquisitions.

Although group buying websites help merchants sell excess capacity, they are extensive and bring a series of problems. The price is very cheap, but users can't find a seat after making a lot of calls, which is different from the service provided by group buying. These problems are not caused subjectively by merchants, but by extensive methods.

However, life service e-commerce is different from group buying. Life service e-commerce is to help life service businesses sell excess capacity through refined methods such as time-sharing operation and dynamic pricing. This is very similar to airlines, which ensure the attendance rate by adjusting the discount of air tickets.

From this perspective, group buying is only the beginning of e-commerce in service industry, and it is a long-distance running. In the past two years, there was vicious competition on group buying websites, which also consumed a lot of money. Now the competition between group buying websites is not the competition of funds, but the competition of management ability and operation ability.

Since the end of last year, Wo Wo Group has achieved large-scale profits. At this stage, it is most important to establish core competitiveness. The first is the ability to get through the supply chain, and whether merchants and consumers can work together to solve the needs of consumer interaction, interaction is the core link; The second is industry consolidation's ability to provide consumers with inexpensive products; The third is the ability to acquire and maintain users, and the ability to develop and maintain business households. These three abilities are the basis of competitive advantage, not capital.

At present, there are only three group buying websites in China. Maybe some companies have higher turnover than Wo Wo Group, but it doesn't matter. Wo Wo Group will seek independent development, not merger.

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