E-Commerce Revenue Model describes how the publisher’s websites will earn revenue, generate profits, and produce a superior return on invested capital. The 5 major types are sales, transaction fees, subscription fees, advertising fees, affiliate fees.

Sales - Sales of goods, merchandise information and services provided in the publishers' websites.

Affiliate fees - Companies receive commissions for referring customers to others' websites. It can include CPM (cost per thousand impressions), CPC (cost per click) and CPA (cost per acquisition/action).

Google Inc. is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online-mapping, office productivity, social networking and video sharing services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same technologies. 99% of Google's revenue is derived from its advertising programs. For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported US$10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only US$112 million in licensing and other revenues. Google offers targeted advertising solutions and global Internet search solutions. Its principal products and services include:

Google AdWords. It is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue ($21 billion in 2008). AdWords is a pay per click advertising program of Google designed to allow the advertisers to present advertisements to people at the instant the people are looking for information related to what the advertiser has to offer. When a user searches Google's search engine, ads for relevant words are shown as "sponsored link" on the right side of the screen, and sometimes above the main search results. Google generate most of the revenue from Google AdWords. Google recognize as revenue the fees charged advertisers when their ads are published in magazines. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is an online advertising payment model in which payment is based on qualifying click-through. An advertiser has to pay every time his ad receives a click. The Advertisers decide the keywords relevant to their offer that should display their ad and the maximum amount they are willing to pay per click for that keyword.

Google AdSense. It is an ad serving program run by Google. It provides a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website's content pages and earn money. It's also a way for website publishers to provide Google web and site search to their visitors, and to earn money by displaying Google ads on the search results pages. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, video advertisements on their sites. Revenue is generated through affiliate fees which on a per-click or per-thousand-ads-displayed basis and the ads are administered by Google. AdSense program includes AdSense for search and AdSense for content. AdSense for search was launched in the first quarter of 2002 and is Google’s service for distributing relevant ads from its advertisers for display with search results on the Google Network members’ sites. AdSense for content, launched in the first quarter of 2003, distributes ads from Google’s advertisers that are relevant to content on Google Network members’ sites. Google advertisers are required to pay Google a fee each time a user clicks on one of their ads displayed on Google Network members’ web sites.

eBay Inc. is an American Internet company that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide. eBay do not have inventory, it generates revenue from a number of fees. The eBay fee system is quite complex; there are fees to list a product (Insertion Fee) and fees when the product sells (Final Value Fee), plus several optional adornment fees, all based on various factors and scales. eBay may earned transaction fees from each successful transaction made by the bidders or sellers. eBay now owns the Paypal payment system which has fees of its own. Paypal founded in 1998 and acquired by eBay Inc. in October 2002. Paypal enables any individual or business with an email address to securely, easily and quickly send and receive payments online. Paypal's service builds on the existing financial infrastructure of bank accounts and credit cards and uses the world's most advanced proprietary fraud prevention systems to create a safe payment solution. A global leader in online payment solutions, Paypal has tens of millions of registered accounts and is accepted by millions of merchants worldwide, on and off eBay. Revenues from PayPal's transaction fees were $243.9 million, a gain of 51 percent from the year-ago quarter and 145 percent from querter2 2003. And the number of registered PayPal users shot up to 79 million from 50 million a year ago. ebay also earn advertising fees for allow some advertiser posting their advertisement on the website. eBay offers several advertising programs that may help advertisement publishers increase their sales cost-effectively.

Amazon.com, Inc. is an American-based multinational electronic commerce company. Amazon.com is a well known online shopping on the web, it provides a wide range of advertising channels to reach the most demographic availability. Amazon uses the internet as the sole method for selling goods to its consumers. Its major revenue is come from the sales included books, movies, musics, computer, electronic, toys, sports and others on domestic and international Websites, such as Amazon Marketplace. Since year 2000, Amazon.com entered into new partnerships designed to increase the firm's revenue and make it profitable. Example like through its agreement with Greenlight.com, Amazon.com added cars to its product offerings in August 2000. The new link presented information on automobiles and trucks in the standard Amazon.com format.

Amazon charges a commission rate based on the sales price, a transaction fee, and a variable closing fee for each successful sale. Amazon.com Inc. said that earnings climbed to $177 million, or 41 cents per share, in the first quarter in year 2009 was thanks to strong sales of products.

Related Links:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google

2. http://www.organicspam.com/google_revenue_model.asp

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdWords

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay

5. http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/essentials/ebay/article.php/3522981

6. http://ecommerce.hostip.info/pages/29/Amazon-Com-NEW-PARTNERS-HELP-INCREASE-REVENUE.html