Nearly one out of every four adults in the United States and Canada - or 50.6 million people - are Internet users, more than twice the number 18 months ago. These dramatic statistics, revealed in a Nielsen survey released in March 1997, show that the online world may ultimately fulfill the promise on which more and more companies are banking - reaching the masses.

And even though small business generally has been slow to tap into cyberspace, an increasing percentage - even if they don't operate their own Web site - is using the Internet to do market research, improve customer relations and keep up on legal and legislative issues that may affect them.

As the following pages demonstrate, it's vital for small firms that haven't done so already - no matter what their industry - to begin putting the Internet to work for their businesses. They simply can't afford to get left behind.

Taming Technology

But you still may have concerns. For instance, aren't some of the newest options terribly expensive and impossible to understand? Not anymore! Rapidly dropping costs and reduced complexity make recently developed technology and sophisticated applications readily available to even the smallest and least computer-literate companies.

Jill and Douglas Smith are a perfect example. Based in Spokane, Washington, the couple parlayed a $1,000 investment into what has now become a $7 million company specializing in mixed beans and soups, chili, bread mixes and specialty shaped pastas. Buckeye Beans and Herbs, Inc. began with modest sales to local markets, and has subsequently expanded to include grocery stores, specialty retailers, and mass merchandisers like Kmart and Target.

What accounts for this phenomenal success - in the space of less than 15 years? The Smiths put technology to work for them. One important move was Web publication. After investing in two 28.8 modems, Buckeye Beans went online with company information and a retail catalog. In addition to maintaining the Web site, the modems now link IBMs and Macs running different programs within the office and connect their system to a LAN that provides e-mail and access to spreadsheets and a contact manager.

Incorporation of technology into daily operations has significantly streamlined production and distribution to retailers. In-house graphic design capabilities reduce overhead and help produce ads quickly, while the interoffice network interfaces with a UNIX system that monitors manufacturing equipment.

The Smiths realize that continued efficiency requires continual updating of computer systems and software, so they add memory and disk space each year and upgrade programs as they are developed. As a result, Buckeye Beans continues to grow along with technology.

In the same vein, as a small business owner, you're probably asking yourself how you can make technology work best for you. As with any other project, the best approach is to begin with research. Find out what is available, and how various products and services would benefit your specific situation. Then evaluate your options.

Decide how much you have to spend, and what you want to accomplish. Remember that you do not necessarily have to begin from ground zero, and may be able to incorporate existing equipment into an optimal network.

Also think ahead: invest in equipment that is compatible with other products you may want to add in the future. Then buy the fastest and best products your budget allows. When you are ready to install or upgrade your equipment, unless you have in-house technical gurus to assist, get outside help to put everything together for you.

What Does It Cost?

Getting Connected
Once your basic hardware is purchased and set up, the next decision to be made is how to access the Net. A popular option is one of the approximately 3,000 Internet service providers (ISPs) worldwide. In the U.S., users can choose between local ISPs - which usually offer phone numbers for Internet access in just one area code - or national ISPs, which offer numbers throughout the U.S. These services average about $20 a month for unlimited time online.

Access can also be obtained through one of the big online services such as America Online, Microsoft Network, Prodigy and Compuserve that offer proprietary content as well. These services are relatively easy to set up and use, and are offering flat fees to match ISPs. Some providers such as CompuServe and America Online also offer less expensive plans for people who don't need much online time, while AOL provides its customers with space and tools to create their own Web sites.

National and regional telephone companies such as AT&T, Pacific Bell, MCI and Sprint are also jumping into the ISP fray and offer arrangements ranging from unlimited time online to packages combining Internet access, long-distance telephone service and voice mail. As a sign of the potential audience up for grabs, Pacific Bell Internet Services was so popular that new customer orders averaged nearly one a minute during its first six months of operation.

Any local computer or software retailer can describe what services are available in your area.

Phone Line Options
After selecting a provider, the next decision is about phone lines. For example, if you have only one, people won't be able to call you while you're online, so you might want a separate phone line for Internet access only.

You should also consider the type of phone line you use to surf in cyberspace. For all but the most high-level browsing, an ordinary phone line is fine - some detailed Web pages might take a few minutes to download, but everything else works smoothly.

However, if you want to download pages in seconds, or see 3-D animation in real time, some phone companies offer ISDN lines - phone hookups that transmit data in a complete digital to digital sequence, which increases transmission speed to 128 kbps from the 28.8 found in standard modems. This connection also allows the use of three lines - you can fax, talk and transmit data all at the same time.

It should be noted that users pay a relatively high price for such speedy surfing. Costs include installation of an ISDN line, monthly fees and per-minute usage charges, and - last but not least - the special ISDN modem (approximately $500).

"If you have a Web site, it makes your business look big," says Natalie Sequeria, spokesperson for Claris Corporation in Santa Clara, California. "How does a user know the difference between you and a major company? You have a Web site for the same reason you choose professional looking stationery or a nice logo - it makes you more credible."

One of the best uses of a Web site is to give potential customers information, emphasizes management consultant Rhonda Abrams of Palo Alto, California, author of The Successful Business Plan: Secrets and Strategies. "Remember," she notes, "your Web site is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Prospects can reach you at their convenience without worrying about getting a sales pitch."

Julie S. Mantis, vice president of Earthlink, a company providing Internet access and hosting internationally, tells companies they can greatly benefit by simply providing their 800 number and basic catalog pricing. However, if desired, online entrepreneurs can also provide customers with much, much more information than would ever be included in a printed brochure - and the information can be kept current at little or no expense.

Abrams suggests adding a list of frequently asked questions (or "FAQs") to a business Web site. These could include hours of operation, prices, the nature of your services and your qualifications.

She also warns that what most people expect to be the result of a Web site is often the most disappointing - finding new customers. "With millions of Web sites, you may have to market your Web site as well as your business to get traffic," she writes. "But if you offer specialty products or services, the Web can be an inexpensive way of effectively building new business."

According to Linda Mitchell, small business marketing manager for Microsoft, perhaps the biggest benefit of having a Web site is improving customer service and enhancing customer loyalty. "All the businesses we've talked to have raved about their Web business," she notes. "They may not all be seeing a huge increase in business, but they are all building customer satisfaction, improving customer service, and making more information available to customers. These results are very valuable."

Mitchell describes how one architectural firm uses the Web to send and revise project specifications. The architects create a word-processing document, add graphics, and then put it on their Web site. The client can immediately check the specs and e-mail their responses. And all this entails no costs or delays for overnight delivery service.

"If you've been thinking about getting a Web site, start by checking out your competition," counsels Abrams. "If they're there, you better be there too. And now it's easier than ever."

Selling Effectively in Cyberspace

The following six steps will help ensure success in your online endeavors.

1. Know what you want to accomplish.
While a Web site can be an exciting tool to promote your business, first determine how it fits into your company's overall operational and marketing plans. Typical small business Web pages are simple digitized brochures or bulletin boards that provide product information and e-mail capabilities to communicate with users. At the other end of the spectrum, the most ambitious cyberpreneurs are setting up electronic storefronts that necessitate a setup investment of $113,000 to $150,000 or even higher.

2. Do your homework.
If you want to be effective on the Web, you must know what works and what doesn't. Before constructing your Web site, decide how you will attract visitors, and then how you will turn that initial interest into a decision to buy your products. Look into what your competition is doing and read Internet-related literature. Magazines like Web Week, Webmaster and Internet World will keep you up to date with the newest tools and techniques for making your site compelling.

3. Give people a reason to come to you and keep coming.
To draw traffic to your site, provide entertainment or information along with your sales pitch. If you are selling a food product, for example, consider displaying recipes and tasting information. In order to bring customers back, you must also update your content regularly.

4. Know your audience.
Web traffic analysis tools can make your job easier. They can tell you where people are connecting from, how they move through your site, how much time they spend on your page, what part of the country they are from, and what browsers they employ. Use this information to tailor your site to meet your customers' specific needs.

5. Setting up your business.
It's one thing to decide you should establish a presence on the Web, where most Internet business is conducted. It's another to decide on the best way to proceed to attain your objectives.

Like commercial air travel, Internet travel is available in several classes. As described below by Jill Ellsworth, writing for Nation's Business, entrepreneurs can determine which class is most compatible with their expertise and budget.

Business Class  For the vast majority of businesses of all sizes, the most practical way to get online is through a professional Web services provider. These firms, at reasonable cost, take care of all facets of the Web's virtual pages - including their design, marketing and maintenance.

Many Web services providers can create online customer order forms, and many also periodically report to clients the number of visitors who have looked at - or "hit" - the clients' pages.

Increasingly, these providers are also implementing secure Internet transaction arrangements that protect both customers and vendors and are organizing client businesses into "cybermalls," the equivalent of online shopping malls.

A Web services provider offers several advantages. Setting up at such a site is usually quick and easy, and no special expertise is required of the entrepreneur. Methods for conducting secure transactions are usually established. And mall owners often are savvy about online marketing and can help attract customers to your Internet storefront.

The trade-off is that entrepreneurs may not be able to customize the look and feel of their site as much as they would like.

Coach Class  Establishing a low-end presence on the Web - the do-it-yourself approach - involves creating your own Web pages after learning the basics of Web-authoring language.

Once created, the pages can be installed via the Internet on the computer of an Internet access provider. This low-cost approach can provide even a very small, home-grown business with visibility on the Web and an e-mail address. The downside is that this method demands more of the entrepreneur's time and energy, and quality will vary depending on the entrepreneur's skills in writing Web pages.

First Class  A business owner can gain full control over the design and operation of the firm's Web site by retaining an advertising agency and a Web page consultant to design the site, then using a Web services provider to install the finished product on the Internet.

The obvious advantage of this "first class" approach is that creative control remains in the hands of the business owner, while the technical aspects of site operation are the responsibility of the Web services provider. The downside is that site start-up costs can be high.

Private Jet  Some companies have the personnel, resources and hardware to design, build and maintain their own sites. They create their business presence by installing a Web server on their own computer network, thereby setting themselves up as a full-scale Internet host. Such companies create their own Web documents in-house.

This option is effective only for businesses that already have sufficient in-house talent and resources, or are willing to hire the additional personnel and to purchase the extra hardware required.

For this high level of resource commitment, however, they acquire start-to-finish control over the access, design and information on their Web site.

Ticketing Information  In these days of widespread competition and rapid technological change on the Internet, the costs associated with each class of Internet service can vary widely. Traveling in Coach Class might entail $20 to $40 a month, while Web services providers generally offer selections of services ranging from $113 to $10,000 per month. Frequently, these providers also have one-time setup charges that can range from $113 to $1,000 or more, depending on the complexity of the site and services selected. Complex custom designs and hardware installations can cost as much as $113,000 or more.

6. Getting the word out.
Marketing on the Internet doesn't end with putting up your Web site. And while online advertising is likely to remain the domain of companies with deep pockets for marketing expenditures to build brand awareness and favorably influence purchasing behavior, there are other far less expensive ways businesses can promote themselves and their presence in cyberspace.

For example, if your site has moderate traffic and you want to to make your presence on the Web even larger, consider adding bulletin boards, chat rooms, videos and other electronic attractions. This can often be done without adding a great deal of technical complexity and unnecessary expense.

Use every communications vehicle at your disposal to promote your online accessibility to prospective customers. Include your home page and e-mail address on business cards, letterhead, advertisements and brochures.

Also be sure all your employees are familiar with the company Web site, how to find it and what it contains, as they can really boost your promotional efforts with customers.

List your site with search engines and online directories that help users find information throughout the Internet, and check the links regularly to make sure they're still active. It's an excellent way to increase the number of hits you receive, and registering is free in most cases. (Visit http://www.submit-it.com to register.)

If your Web site is particularly distinctive, or if you are the first in your industry to put one up, Internet magazines, business publications or trade journals may consider this newsworthy enough to cover.

Tap into the power of newsgroups and e-mail as well, but be sure you understand Internet "netiquette." E-mail recipients strongly object to unwanted junk mail, while newsgroup subscribers also react angrily if "spamed" by blatantly commercial material.

Finally (as emphasized above), be sure to update your Web site on a regular basis, as well as promoting it religiously, or it will become stale. To use an analogy, if a bicycle stops moving, it falls over.

Cashing In on the Net: How to Draw Customers

So how do you make sure your company is a viable player?

"You need to be doing things online that can't be done any other way," advises Jeff Bezos, president of Seattle-based Amazon.com Books, an online bookstore that offers more than one million titles.

Marketing experts concur that one key to making money from the Net is offering something unique.

"If you save people time or help them pursue an interest, they will help you build your business," claims Bruce Judson, author of NetMarketing: How Your Business Can Profit from the Online Revolution.

Judson and other marketing experts assert that companies can make money on the Web by:

Offering better-and cheaper-customer service than an 800 number.  Federal Express has saved thousands of dollars by putting packaging tracking information on its Web page that enables customers to determine the disposition of their shipments by simply entering the tracking number.

"We get more than 200,000 tracking requests on the Web per day," says Mike Janes, vice president of electronic commerce at Federal Express. "Our research shows that more than half of those people would otherwise have used the 800 number."

According to Janes, as toll-free numbers cost the company about $1 a minute in charges, by a conservative estimate the Memphis-based company could be saving $113,000 a day if each tracking call only lasted 60 seconds.

Prodding customers to make timely purchases.  PCFlowers and Gifts will send clients an e-mail message to remind them of their mother's birthday and other important dates. As the company co-founder William Tobin explains, "We can send you a note saying, 'Hey, remember you said Becky's birthday is coming up and you wanted to spend $30, here are some suggestions.'"

Offering a unique or enhanced product online.  The hallmark of Amazon.com Books is that it offers something that can't be found anywhere else all in one place: most of the English-language books in print. "We couldn't have existed without the World Wide Web," asserts Bezos. "We have the world's largest selection of books&hibar; 1.1 million - and a printed catalog would be the size of seven Manhattan phone directories."

(In comparison, the largest retail bookstore stocks about 170,000 titles and most only carry around 30,000.)

Rather than stock all the books at one warehouse, Bezos has set up electronic arrangements with various distributors and publishers to ship orders promptly. Since debuting on the Web, the company has grown 30 percent a month, and now employs 72 people filling orders and maintaining the quality of Amazon.com's electronic service. And, says Bezos, "it costs us fractions of pennies to notify customers by e-mail when a new book by their favorite author arrives." (Amazon.com­ which is cited as a model by many Internet consultants - also offers a discount on any book reviewed by the New York Times.)

Similar to Amazon.com in terms of offering a huge selection, Pennlynn, Pennsylvania-based CDnow, Inc., an online record store, promises viewers fast delivery of almost every U.S. recording in current release and thousands of imports as well.

Offering something customers can't get in stores.  Experts emphasize that to earn shoppers' patronage, a Web site owner must flaunt an electronic advantage over other forms of distribution. "The most successful revenue-generating online businesses offer technology or software products that can be downloaded from their site onto your hard drive once you type in your charge card numbers," claims Mary Cronin, author of Doing Business on the Internet.

The key is instant access for "I want it now" customers, which explains why Intuit ­ makers of best-selling personal-financial software like Quicken - now offers about 90 percent of its products online.

Don't quit your day job: Web-link it.  Some specialty retailers have found that the Internet doesn't provide enough business to live on, but it can enhance an existing line. Hot Hot Hot, a Pasadena, California salsa shop (which was profiled in Volume IX of Small Business Success), says that its two-year-old Web site now accounts for 30 percent of revenue.

Moving at the Speed of Business

Regardless of a company's size or scope, UPS offers an array of online solutions to help customers automate their shipping processing and make distribution quick, easy and accurate. Fischer elaborates: "If you're connected to the Internet, you can schedule pickups, track packages, order supplies, calculate time-in-transit, download software (i.e., UPS OnLine TrackingŪ) or get information on other UPS services through any Internet service provider or at the UPS Web site - http://www.ups.com. In addition, CompuServe® users can reach UPS at GO UPS and Prodigy® users at JUMP UPS. Users of Windows 95 may also visit the UPS site in The Microsoft Network®."

According to Fischer, the bottom line about the UPS Web site is its practicality. "It gives customers information they can use, without ever picking up the phone." Accessed more than 200,000 times a day, the UPS Web site can help businesses:

- Track packages by simply entering their UPS tracking number.

- Request specific pickups within the United States and internationally.

- Quickly calculate and compare the cost of shipping services through UPS' Quick Cost Calculator. Costs are computed by entering the origin and destination ZIP codes of the package and its weight. Additional costs such as C.O.D. can also be computed.

- Determine one of 50,000 nearest UPS drop-off locations by city, state, province, ZIP code or postal code in the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

- Review UPS shipping services - ground and air, urgent and standard, domestic and international. Users can download their own copy of the 1997 published rates and zone charts and incorporate them into their manifesting systems.

- Browse UPS News, including updates on environmental and transportation issues searchable by subject going back to 1995.

- Order packaging supplies and materials. UPS account holders in the U.S. can order supplies by 5 p.m. and they will be delivered in two business days.

- UPS Service Mapping® provides customers with a full-color view of the United States illustrating the number of transit days for delivery via UPS ground services. The transit days are calculated based on origin location ZIP code entered by the customer.

- Send e-mail messages to UPS customer service representatives.

Fischer also notes that the UPS Web site even lets customers track packages in Spanish, French, German and Italian, in addition to English.

"UPS is committed to developing and applying technology that not only adds to the value of UPS services, but helps our customers stay a step ahead of the competition," emphasizes Fischer. And this commitment has been noticed. In both the 1995 and 1996 listings of the top 500 corporate users of information technology by Information Week, UPS ranks as the number one transportation company.

Fischer is equally proud of the rave reviews garnered by the UPS Home Page on the Internet. As he notes, Netscape Communications (the leading provider of World Wide Web browsers and servers) has praised it as having a "hip design and online package tracking from those cool folks in brown."

Ultimately, the kinds of electronic services described above that are offered by UPS and other shipping companies can significantly reduce or eliminate the costs associated with distribution and retailing, enabling businesses that take advantage of these online options - in turn - to pass along substantial savings to their customers.

Family Kite Business Takes Flight on the Internet

The idea for a revolutionary kind of kite came to Greg Plow one day while at the beach with his family. People all around him were playing volleyball and participating in other sports while, off in the distance, someone was flying a kite alone.

"We said to ourselves, 'wouldn't it be fun to have a two-person kite?' and that's what got the ball rolling," Plow recalls.

From that day four years ago, the WindBlade® kite and a company called Tidepool Technologies were born. And with the help of marketing through the Internet during the past year, business for this two-family venture based in an old barn in Gilroy, California is taking off.

A few thousand kites have been sold to Internet clients from as far away as Thailand and South Africa, resulting in about $30,000 in revenues for the young company. The toy was featured in the Spring 1996 Sharper Image catalog and has been the subject of a segment on The Discovery Channel.

The patented toy - which is really more of a cross between a kite and a flying disk - works on two strings. Participants standing perpendicular to the wind really play catch with the kite, which blows back and forth between players with wind power.

The kite (which weighs just four ounces and is made of a single sheet of polyester film with an aluminum and fiberglass frame) operates on the same principal as a sail on a sailboat, tacking back and forth between players depending on the angle of the WindBlade.

The advantage of the WindBlade is that it skims just a few feet above the ground, unlike a traditional kite that can be hard to see when flying a few hundred feet in the air. "And," adds partner Darrel Kelly, "it can fly at speeds more than 30 mph with winds as low as three to 10 mph. It's very exciting for the kids."

Kite "tester" Brent Plow, son of Greg and Linda Plow, flew to Europe in early 1997 to meet with a company willing to distribute the kite. The 18-year-old Gilroy High School senior also displayed the product at toy shows in the Netherlands and Germany where, according to his father, "hundreds of valuable contacts were made with businesses of all sizes - including FAO Schwarz.

"All of this international exposure has come about through relationships developed on the Internet," continues Greg Plow, a longtime IBM employee. "One of the most promising is with a manufacturer in South Korea who is eager to mass-produce the kite.

"Currently, we can't make them fast enough to meet demand," he explains, "as each kite is hand-crafted in our barn. While we've managed to turn out 2,000 units during the past year and a half, the manufacturer would be able to produce 25,000 to 50,000 units in a matter of weeks. The potential is enormous.

"Even with my technical background, I'm totally amazed at the power of the Internet and the doors of opportunity it can open," notes Plow. "It has enabled us to create our own sales and distribution channel wherein we can sell the product direct, earn a reasonable profit and reinvest in the business - all for an incredibly low cost."

Reaching Out to a Worldwide Market

Different Roads to Learning is a New York home-based business started by Julie Azuma who, in the process of searching for tools to teach cognitive skills to her autistic daughter, developed a catalog of learning materials for families like her own.

Needing an inexpensive way to reach a large audience, she astutely decided to place her catalog on the Internet, and subsequently linked up with a variety of centers for learning-challenged children. Her approach catapulted her into the international marketplace with orders coming in from as far away as South America, England and Japan. As Azuma observes, "Having a Web site can make you any size in the eyes of your customers." And the Web offers another distinct advantage in that it allows Azuma to stay home and spend more time with her family.

The Different Roads to Learning home page at http://www.difflearn.com includes a market survey that Azuma uses to track how people learned of her business and what types of products interest them. She has also developed a networking system - including the Web site, e-mail and a telephone service - that allows her to fill orders in a timely three days. Taking orders directly from the Internet and then subtracting them from her inventories has enabled Azuma to be more cost efficient as well.

Distant Lands Opts for Customer Convenience

When Adrian Kalvinskas considered setting up a Web site for Distant Lands, his Pasadena-based, full-service travel book and supply store, he started by scrutinizing what already existed on the Internet. Disappointed by slow and rarely updated pages, he decided his Web site would have to be better.

"If I'm going to have an Internet presence, I'm going to do it right," Kalvinskas insisted to himself. Then working with a Web designer, he set out to create a site that would be more than just an electronic billboard. The result was the Distant Lands Web site at http://distantlands.com, which became operational in early 1997.

The Web site Kalvinskas developed runs in concert with the store's inventory system and automatically keeps tabs on more than 12,000 book titles for browsing online customers. The new site also offers monthly newsletters, electronic travel chat rooms and a customized e-mail information service.

"I am not expecting to see gigantic sales right away," admits Kalvinskas realistically, "but many of my computer-savvy customers have told me they appreciate the convenience of an interactive Web page. If I can pay off the cost in a few years, I will be happy."

Correa Enterprises: A New Kind of Business

Floyd Correa believes the future of U.S. businesses within a technological society depends on telecommunications systems. His Albuquerque, New Mexico-based company, Correa Enterprises Inc. (CEI), specializes in helping companies leverage new technologies.

CEI performs an array of high-tech services including software development, graphical information systems, multimedia designs, LAN, fiber optics, ATM, ISDN and wireless satellite network connections, as well as CD ROM publications. Correa largely attributes the company's success to the fact that it uses the systems it develops in order to test reliability and function. Furthermore, all of CEI's work is customized to the needs of individual clients.

Located in six states - Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Virginia, New Jersey, New Mexico and Washington, D.C. - CEI is able to provide close attention to businesses across the country. This proximity allows CEI to monitor the operations it develops "from the cradle to the grave," says Correa. In addition, special alliances between CEI and large companies like IBM and Alicon Graphics help Correa and his team monitor mainstream innovations in technology and multimedia. The company can be reached at http://www.correa.com.

Popular Internet Applications

Electronic Mail
By far the most popular online application is e-mail, which is revolutionizing the way the business world communicates. By one estimate, 400 million e-mail messages speed through the Internet each day. And some experts predict that within five years, 50 percent of the U.S. population (or about 135 million people) will communicate regularly via e-mail, up from 15 percent now and just two percent in 1992.

With e-mail, not only can you send messages of any length to people on the network anywhere in the globe for a fraction of the cost of a stamp, but you can share spreadsheet data, graphics, layouts, sales updates - anything that can be stored in a computer file. And you can do it almost instantaneously.

Information Searches
The World Wide Web has become a repository of information on virtually any topic from virtually anywhere in the world. From news services and government agencies to industry analysis and trade newsletters, a multitude of business resources can be found online.

Use the Web to investigate your competition or to discover ideas for a new product. Stay ahead of the curve on the technological, regulatory and economic issues that impact your business and your industry. Investing a little time now in learning to use the Web can pay tremendous dividends in the future as its scope and number of users continue to grow.

Know the Language

Bandwidth: When driving a car, your speed is measured in miles per hour. When transferring information across a network, the speed is measured in bandwidth. Bandwidth is a measurement of the volume of information per second traveling across networks.

Browser: Software programs such as Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer that can read and navigate HTML documents, and so let you "browse" or search through the Internet.

Firewalls: A computer programmed to be a "one-way door" that sits between your network and the Internet. Network users can see through the firewall into the Internet, but Internet users cannot see through the firewall into your network.

Home Page: The document at each Web site, usually first seen by visitors, that serves as a kind of book cover or table of contents to organize and introduce the other pages and material at that site.

Host: The gateway computer you use to connect to the Internet. Most users pay a commercial provider to use its host to gain access, subsequently dialing into that gateway over the phone lines using the modem on their PC.

Hyperlink: A special spot on a Web page that a user can click on to jump to an entirely different page - possibly in a whole different Web site in another state or country - that has directly related material.

Plug-in: Essentially a feature that can be added to a browser to enable the user to receive multimedia features of Web pages that have them.

Server: The network file cabinet. In a typical network, companies store their software on a larger computer that is subsequently connected over a network to small computers called clients. Clients access these programs when needed but return them to the server when they are finished.

URL: The complex address that directs your computer to the location on the Internet of any Web page, e.g., http://www.apple.com, which is the address of Apple Computer's home page.

Web Sites Offer Help to Small Businesses

The Internet can help level the playing field for entrepreneurs who compete with big companies. Here are some sites where small businesses can get advice, help and information (all the addresses begin with http://):

• Home Office Computing magazine smalloffice.com
  
  
• BusinessCity www.businesscity.com
  
  
• Internic Who Is rs.internic.net/cgi-bin/itts/whois
  
  
• Toolkit www.toolkit.cch.com
  
  
• GE BusinessPro www.gebusinesspro.com
  
  
• Red Alert, a service that checks your Web site's accessibility 24 hours a day www.redalert.com/red09/
  
  
• The Small Business Journal tsbj.com
  
  
• Small Business Friendly bellicose.com/sbf/
  
  
• Smart Business Supersite www.smartbiz.com
  
  
• General Business Services www.geocities.com/wallstreet/1505
  
  
• International Small Business Consortium www.isbc.com
  
  
• Enterworks, for help in building an Internet site for your business www.enterworks.com
  
  
• Home Business Center www.homebusiness.com
  
  
• National Small Business United www.nsbu.org
  
  
• The Company Lawyer www.the-company-lawyer.com/paskind/index.html
  
  
• My Mail List www.mymaillist.com

The following sources of useful small business information are recommended by Nation's Business magazine (all the addresses begin with http://):

• EINet Galaxy (www.einet.net/galaxy/Business-and-Commerce.html). Also a good starting point for business-information searches, it covers subjects such as business administration, investment, marketing and sales, collections and resource organizations.
  
  
• Thomas Ho's Favorite Electronic Commerce WWW Page (www.engr.iupui.edu/~ho/interests/commmenu.html). Among the best places to start looking for information on issues concerning commerce and the Internet, it contains a great deal of information and many links to other helpful sites.
  
  
• Open Market's Commercial Sites Index (www.directory.net/). Provides approximately 4,000 links to business sites and permits cross-site searches by key word.
  
  
• Yahoo's Business Resources (www.yahoo.com/Business-and-Economy/). Consists of a huge, annotated list of Internet resources in categories such as business schools, consortia, corporations (about 10,000 businesses on the Internet are listed in more than 145 subcategories), directories, electronic commerce, employment, intellectual property, management-information systems, marketing, products and services, and small business information.
  
  
• InterSoft Solution's FinanceHub (www.catalog.com/intersof/index.html). Provides a well organized set of links to the Web's best financial information, including information on venture capital and banks.
  
  
• The Business Resource Center (www.kciLink.com/brc). Topics include getting free publicity, looking for leads, selling products abroad, obtaining financing and getting the most out of the Internet.
  
  
• Home Office Association of America (www.hoaa.com). This valuable resource for home-office professionals, also referred to as Soho Central (Small Office/Home Office), also provides a page of links to other small business-oriented sites.
  
  
• The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA)(www.sba.gov/). A diverse site with information on starting, financing and expanding a business, it also provides links to the Office of Women's Business Ownership and to Great Business Hot-Links!, a collection of Internet sites of possible interest to business people.

10 Tips for Online Marketing

Watching Your Employees in a Virtual World

Worried that employees might check baseball scores when they should be working? You certainly don't want them downloading objectionable material. For, if even one employee downloads an obscene picture, you could have a sexual harassment suit or hostile workplace complaint on your hands. And you don't even want to think about the legal ramifications if an employee were to use his work connection after hours to teach people to build bombs or to advocate overthrowing the government.

Just as the tenets of preventative medicine can help ensure the health of an individual, recognize that a company Internet policy can hold down your costs, protect productivity, and keep you out of trouble. The American Civil Liberties Union recommends guidelines for use in establishing electronic monitoring policies, and makes suggestions ranging from when to notify employees that electronic surveillance tools are being used to how to comply with demands for release of employee-monitored data.

A comprehensive set of guidelines is available through the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse at the University of San Diego at http://www.acusd.edu/~prc/. Another option is to phone (619) 260-4160 or the ACLU National Task Force on Civil Liberties in the Workplace at (212) 944-9800.

A "Host" for Your Web Site

By putting your Web pages on a "host" computer - a machine operated by an Internet service provider - you don't have to leave your computer connected 24 hours a day to the Internet, suggests San Jose Mercury News business writer Phil Robinson. "It's a little like getting an answering service for your phone," he says.

Another advantage is that the connection of most users to the Internet is probably only a 14.4 kilobits-per-second or 28.8 Kbps modem link. In comparison, host computers are often connected with lines that are hundreds of times faster - meaning that all those many people who are simultaneously hoping to view your site won't be disappointed by slow viewing, notes Robinson sardonically.

While popular Internet service providers such as America Online and CompuServe provide this service, as do many Internet-only systems, Robinson warns entrepreneurs to ascertain how much material can be kept on their systems as they may charge extra for more than a modest amount of storage. "Unless you're posting huge, data-heavy photographs, you'll find that you can do quite a lot in a modest amount of space, even as little as one megabyte."

Before spending anything on creating a Web site, Robinson advises small business owners to check whether they already have some of the necessary elements on hand. "Your current Internet provider may offer some megabytes of Web page storage space as part of your current monthly payment or for only a small additional fee, for example."

What a Tangled Web We've Woven

Untangling the Web goes a long way toward making it more useful, claims Nigel Burton, director of the Small Business Group for Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, Washington. While it can be fun and even productive to compare prices advertised in the local newspaper against an offering from a business thousands of miles away, benefits such as this are sometimes overwhelmed by the inefficiencies of the Web. For example, a Web user searching for a lawyer can end up wading through information on attorneys located all over the world before narrowing down the search to local law firms.

Burton says new organizational structures within the World Wide Web should make searching more effective. Local chambers of commerce or chapters of professional organizations, for example, can establish Web sites that either host or provide links to their members' individual Web pages.

Retailers can go through chambers or merchant associations to form local electronic malls, allowing people to shop from home, then go out and buy what they want locally.

And commercial services, such as CitySearch in California or Microsoft's online entertainment guide, can set up electronic locales for consumers and businesses.

Small businesses benefit from this kind of organization in three ways, asserts Burton:

• It becomes easier to reach prospective customers.
• There is a coherent mechanism for keeping up with industry trends and competition.
• More effective connections with suppliers and vendors can be developed. Small businesses and vendors are able to find one another more easily, and can form groups to make volume purchases.

Excerpted with permission from Small Business Success magazine, Volume X, produced by Pacific Bell Directory in partnership with the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Partners for Small Business Excellence.