Not long ago, the term 'business model' was not exactly on the tip of everyone's tongue. Then, in the early to mid-1990s, 'business model' became a catchphrase that described how a company makes money or saves money.

Over many generations, fortunes in the business world were made through buying and selling products in physical stores. Internet fortunes have been made buying and selling products online.

The number of small businesses in the United States totals about 25 million. Because most of these have a local trading territory, relatively few advertise online. Online advertising reaches the masses of the Internet world, whether they are local or not.

Search engine marketing and search engine optimization are critically important to online businesses. You can spend every penny you have on a website, but it will all be for nothing if nobody knows your site is there.

Traditional horizontal search engines cannot always identify the target audience, niche or vertical industry of a page or site. Vertical search engines address this issue by the nature of their design. They identify sites according to more specific criteria and sometimes even by human input.

Good website practice and optimizing for conversion usually makes for good search engine optimization. These work together to ensure you drive quality traffic and can persuade that traffic to help you meet your business goals.

There are hundreds of ways to make money using the Internet.