The Abundance of Simple Business Models on the World Wide Web

Michael Featherstone,Graduate College of Management, Southern Cross University, Lismore,NSW, Email: mfeath20@scu.edu

Allan Ellis, School of Social Sciences, Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, Email: aellis@scu.edu

Keywords

e-commerce, e-business, business models, internet business models, redirects, web business

Abstract

The World Wide Web is complex, dynamic and relentlessly changing. This article discusses new findings regarding the conduct of business from within the environment of the World Wide Web itself. We identify business models evolving in the Web environment. These models utilise simple business strategies and form identifiable categories exhibiting increasing complexity and sophistication suggesting a hierarchical classification scheme to distinguish the categories. The simplest business models redirect Web users to other Websites and reimburse the domain name owner on a pay per click basis. It is only by studying these phenomena from within the context of the Web itself that we can hope to discover and understand the variety of new forms of businesses evolving there.