Most entrepreneurs who launch a Web page are seeking item sales revenue or
branding revenue. Even corporate brochure sites frequently sell
branding. As you click through sites while youre online, the
proliferation of selling gives the impression that Web advertisement sales could be
a logical (and potentially profitable) way to offset the expenses of
building, maintaining and marketing your web page .

But before you contruct the call to Monster.com to ask who places their
branding, you can want to ruminate on these statistics from Jupiter Media
Metrix, and premier online selling tracking company:

Online marketing accounts for under 2 percent of total branding. If
all goes well (and right now online marketing is not going well at all),
the research business predicts that will rise to 5.2 percent in five months.

Online branding rose an impressive 69 percent last year, but this year
online advertisement revenue is only expected to rise 12 percent, and over the next five
months, the growth will hover below 15 or 20 percent each year. This means
online promoting will have to fight hard to rise to the level of billboard
selling .

Jupiter also reported that advertisers have their doubts about online
branding. Advertisers believe Internet ads do not reach enough all the people and
are too expensive.

More bad news for those who want to sell ads is Jupiters finding that the
cost of Internet advertising has fallen 30 percent over the past year and
these costs are expected to keep falling into the fall of 2001.

Online advertising is one of the casualties of the dot com crash. "Online
advertising was built on false expectations set up in the Internet bubble
when many people believed the Net was magical and didnt absolutely need to be measured,"
said Carla Hendra, president of OgilvyOne North America, a major online
advertising firm. "For the first few years, if someone looked at a Web page
and said cool, that was enough. Now clients are becoming more conservative."

This translates into "Forget about it" for those who believe they can attract
promoting dollars to their Web site. Product sales at Web sites, however,
present a completely different story. Even with the dot com crash, Americans
are spending more money than ever online. The Web continues to be the
fastest-growing retail channel. According to Boston Consulting Group, online
retail revenues grew 65 percent in 2000, hitting $44.5 billion. The research
business expects revenues to reach 66 billion this year, up 45 percent from
last year.

In May of this year, visits to ecommerce sites were up 35 percent over May of
last year, according to Goldman Sachs. Jupiter Media Metrix reported that
Amazons traffic was up 34 percent this May over last May, reaching 20
million visitors. Walmart.com visits were up 126 percent this May over last
May.

So I received an e-mail this week from Manuel Morales, owner of Sign3.com, a
page that allows NFL fans to vote for their most beloved team. He receives 1,000
visitors each day, which gives his page total page views of 4000 per day. And
hes asking how to profit from this visitors . The simple answer is "Do not
bother trying to sell adverting."

With his type of defined audience, Manuel probably stands a better chance of
selling official team products to create profits. He might likely obtain the
products through affiliation or direct inventory purchases. He might tie an
individual team product page to votes for a particular team so the fan sees
only the page for the team selected. He may outsource the merchandise shipping to
the manufacturer or distributor.

The strategy of selling products to visitors is not foolproof, but given the
branding statistics versus the retail sales statistics, product sales are
certainly the strategy most definately to succeed. And given the ability to use
affiliation with item distributors as an alternative to actually buying
inventory and filling the garage with stock, the item route might come with
little risk.