Today, a scant few years later, the Internet has become the mainstream focus of the entire industrial world. What was once a dark, colorless place for role-playing games, programming marathons, and the occasional text based game of chess has become a billionaire's mecca of wild graphics, multimedia, online stock exchanges, and monster mega-malls.

What happened to Kansas, Toto?

Everyone in business has a website, email address, secure server, and online store. They trade stocks online, buy their groceries online, order their pizza online – heck, if you look hard enough you can even flush a toilet online!

So once again the question comes up – are you playing the game? Are you online? Are you ready? How do you possibly compete for attention in this mayhem?

The Internet is going the way of television. It's focusing on a variety of content on a minimum number of websites. It's happening everywhere. One site with everything you need.

So how does this affect your ability to do business as a needle in a haystack?

The biggest buzzword on the Net today is "affiliate". Create an affiliate program whereby you pay a commission to any site that either sells your product or sends you a customer. Some of the largest companies on the Internet got there by doing this and some of the largest companies in the world are starting to catch on that it works! It's not difficult and it's not expensive in relation to the sales volume that you can generate. Don't think that your product can't be sold this way. Everything including books, CD's, free software, telephone systems, furniture, baby clothes, management services is being sold using this system.

By creating an online store and allowing others to add it to their content (even branding it as their own), not only can you spread your gospel at a fast and furious rate, you can get yourself the best, most loyal sales force on the planet – the nerds and geeks that became millionaires on the Internet.

©1999 by Jamie Penner. All rights reserved.