So what's going to become of this Internet thing once all the advertising dries up? Who's going to be left once all the dot-coms are gone? If you keep up with the tech gossip, it would be easy to suggest that there will be nothing left but paying sites six months from now. Everybody is clamoring to come up with subscription and fee-based services to survive. So everywhere you go, everything you do, the theory is you'll be charged for it.

I'm not so sure... There are still huge chunks of corporate America (and world-wide corporations) that have yet to put a stake in the ground in the Internet land grab. What is the web good for in a product context? I can think of several things. Technical documentation, product comparisons, catalog information. All of which exist in some form today, but will be much more useful when everybody is on board. This is absolutely the best way for a company to establish and maintain contact with their customers and provide them information for the lowest cost. Doesn't that sound a whole lot like advertising? It's even better than advertising because you don't have to squeeze the information into a 30-second multi-media clip. But not everybody is going to want to spend money or research products all the time online. So there will be companies subsidizing free content in exchange for an ad placement. But they aren't likely to be online pet food stores. They're much more likely to be Coke and Pepsi. You think they care about click-through? No. They want their brand name tattooed into your brain.

So let's figure out what failed. I don't buy pet food. If I'm buying upscale wine, I usually do it on impulse. I want to drink it tonight, not wait for delivery. Last week you could've sold me a Jackson double-wheeled wheelbarrow. That is if anybody in the country had one that I could've clicked and bought. I saw pictures at amazon, but nobody actually had one for sale. I would also love to know if they have one in 8 cu. ft. size instead of 6. But amazon won't tell me that, and Jackson doesn't seem to have a site of their own so I could choose the best model. The other thing you could've sold me last week is a Warn winch and mount for my Jeep. Warn has a wonderful website. Chock full of information. Everything you need to know to buy a winch and to select the right one. But they won't sell anything to you! Incredulous. So, here's the experience of one web shopper and why nobody took his money. If you want to take peoples' money, you'll have to do better than this.