Top Five Ways the Internet Has Changed Small Business


My Business, the magazine of the National Federal of Independent Businesses (NFIB) outlines the top five ways the Internet has changed small businesses:

1. Email:

      Because it changed the way small businesses communicate in business


2. Google:

      Because it changed the way small businesses advertise


3. eBay:

    Because it introduced online auction sites where small businesses can now buy and sell for their businesses

4. Amazon.com: Because it introduced small business to e-commerce

5. Online networking (such as LinkedIn.com): Because it enables business owners to share ideas and find business partners all over the country

This is a deceptively simple list. On the one hand, it could be dismissed as somebody’s musings about popular websites.

But if you want to know “why are small businesses proliferating?” then part of the answer is on this list.

Stop and think of the implications.

All five tools on the list have certainly changed my working life and my business.

With email I’d go one step farther: email has totally transformed my business. Without email my business would move far slower, I would need more physical space (for all those filing cabinets for paperwork), I would need an administrative assistant, and I definitely would have more expense.

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Anita Campbell Anita Campbell is the Founder, CEO and Publisher of Small Business Trends and has been following trends in small businesses since 2003. She is the owner of BizSugar, a social media site for small businesses.

One Reaction
  1. I found what you said to be very helpful. As part of a school assignment, I’ve been trying to dig up how the internet has changed business. I typed in ‘business before the internet’ a dozen different ways and never found what I was looking for, viz. ‘this is how the business used to be run and this is how it is run’. Instead I found the history of the internet and the development of companies. But taking a look at it, if you even discount these histories, you can at least see how business have changed. The five points seemed to help me best by seeing them as generalities. Like Ebay hasn’t really effected how, for example, a landscaping company runs, but it does show how certain aspects, like marketing, advertising, customer relationships, and other principles have become more relevant and easier to access by smaller companies. A landscaping company could grow as networking and advertising and exposure allowed more people to have contact with them. I guess that really helped. If you could point me in other directions in regards to other things that have drastically been changed in your everyday business by internet technology, I’d really appreciate that.
    Thanks