SME's online business strategy to generate profits: Study case: PT IP vs. PT PS

Abstract

Many free offers in internet has made startup online business owners struggle to pay their bills. At first, local startup online companies learned that free stuffs will attract traffics and once you get the traffic, revenue will follow. However, it doesn't come easily. PT IP, as a local online escrow service provider for C to C, transaction traffics were dropped to more than 80% after they start to charge the transactions with a very low administration fee. While PT PS, which offers part time jobs to freelancers, had a different strategy, they charged their services from the day one. This in-progress research found that creating traffics by giving free services to generate future revenue may not be suitable for SME (small to medium enterprise) due to capital limitation and lack of economic of scale, therefore start managing your online business revenue from the day one, stop giving free stuffs and start making money by managing valuable traffics.