Image via CrunchBase

Black Friday receives a great deal of press as the busiest shopping day of the year, but as consumers are increasingly turning to online retail stores to fill their holiday wish lists, Cyber Monday is rapidly becoming a significant presence in retail sales. Online sales for Cyber Monday in 2011 broke the $1 billion dollar record for the second year in a row, showing a 22% increase in sales from the time of its inception.

Cyber Monday was originally coined in 2005 by Shop.org, the digital division of The National Retail Federation, which is the world’s largest association of retail traders. The association includes many different kinds of retailers, from department stores to chain restaurants and grocers that all offer a variety of savings from discounts to coupons through the Shop.org portal.

Cover via Amazon

As the first half of Cyber Monday ended, sales were brisk, as buyers bought lots of discounted items from stores online all over the globe.

That is impressive, considering that last year sales for the same day were over 1 billion in the US, and many shoppers had already spent a significant amount shopping on Black Friday.