I recently participated as a judge for Inc. magazine's Web site competition.
I expected the experience to demonstrate just how sophisticated Web sites
have become among the small businesses that make up Inc.'s readership. I
didn't see the level of quality I expected, but I was even more encouraged by
what I actually found, a wide-ranging display of sites that were selling
everything from exotic soaps to electronic parts. And they were doing it
profitably. Raw entrepreneurial energy oozed through these sites as they
experimented with serving new customers.

The segment of the overall contest I was assigned to was ROI, the new lexicon
for return on investment. ROI has become rallying cry of ecommerce as it
tries to get off the defensive and back up on its feet. Not surprisingly,
it's a new category this year. Up until the cyber-crash of 2000, Internet
companies were blissfully free of the dirty need to produce a return on cash
invested. The small business audience of Inc. magazine never had this
peculiar luxury.

The dot com boom was a high-flying gamble by high-moneyed players. Venture
capitalists and large enterprises put up the stake, and the young dot commers
were either new to business or young upstarts flooding in from the investment
and technology communities, both of which are nestled in the padded nest of
major corporations. ROI was the least of their concerns. The dream was very
big, and when you dream really, really big, mundane thoughts of profits are
typically left for the next generation of managers

The chronically under-funded small business community was late to the
Internet world. The owners of small companies live on a razor thin edge, and
if the blade slips, it cuts into personal income. One small blunder can cut
very deep, setting the owner back years. For small company owners, attention
is just as dear a commodity as capital. Take your eye off the ball for just a
moment and your customers start scattering in all directions.

Small business owners were late to the Internet game for two clear reasons.
The customer wasn't demanding an Internet presence and the ROI was difficult
to see. No matter how far-thinking the owner may be, how can he or she
justify venturing into an area where customers are not waiting? In the
Internet world, executives used the imagery of hockey great Wayne Gretzky who
clamed he didn't skate to the puck, he skated to where the puck was going to
be.

This is great theory, but for the small business owner, anticipating where
the customer is going to be is not sufficient. The small entrepreneur has to
hit the customer exactly on target every time. So the small business mantra
concerning the Internet was, "If you can't connect with a sale immediately,
stick to the sales you can make."

Now, amid the rubble that once was the Internet gold rush, small companies
are entering and finding some success. Perhaps a portion of the company's
customer base has made it known they are willing to buy online, or perhaps
the cost of entry, in both capital and management attention, is now low
enough to take the risk. Whatever the reason, small companies are moving
slowly, cautiously and successfully to ecommerce.

The sites I visited for judging defined themselves in ROI. Either they were
Web extensions of existing companies or they were Web-only start-ups. For
existing companies, the site had to deliver new, profitable customers. For
the Web-only companies, the site had to simply show a profit. Some of the
sites were bare-bones mall shops, while others were fully-integrated arms of
a flourishing enterprise.

They all had one thing in common; they were built of the tough strands of
small business muscle and bone. There is nothing more honest in business than
a trend that delivers results for small entrepreneurs. The Inc. contestants
may show a new door the opens the Internet as a legitimate, profitable
channel for new markets and, surprise - surprise, additional profits.

Rob Spiegel is the author of Net Strategy (Dearborn) and the upcoming
Shoestring Entrepreneur's Guide to Internet Start-ups (St. Martin's Press).
You can reach Rob at spiegelrob@aol.com

How many times have you downloaded a file off the internet? I'll bet you just clicked a link and the downloaded started automatically. You probably didn't notice the URL as it flashed across your screen, but there's a good chance that it was an FTP address.

You know about FTP, don't you? FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and it is a very efficient way to copy files over the internet. It's far more efficient than the standard HTTP protocol (the way your browser transfers information). Because of that, you will find FTP addresses buried in web sites all over the internet.

Most of the time, these are anonymous FTP sites, which means you do not need a username and password to get the files. You see, you can set up FTP to require a username and password - this is perhaps the most common way people get information loaded up to their web site.

However, if you want you can remove the username and password requirement to allow anyone to get access to your files. Most of the time an anonymous FTP site only allows files to be downloaded from the site: finding one that allows uploads is very rare as this means anyone can add information at any time.

It's easy to log into an anonymous FTP sites. Sometimes no username or password is required at all, and sometimes you just enter "anonymous" and a password of your email address. Once you do that using your favorite FTP client (or just Internet Explorer), you can have a great time looking through what's available.

Why would anyone want to use FTP instead of just loading some web pages? Besides the fact that FTP is more efficient, it's also very easy to maintain. An FTP site is structured very much like your standard file system, with directories (or folders) and files, along with folder-level security (the ability to require a username and password on selected folders or directories). That's about all there is to an FTP site. It's very simple to maintain, relatively secure (as long as you don't allow people to upload or write) and easy for visitors to understand.

You will find fully anonymous FTP sites are common in situations where large numbers of files need to be made available to the general public. These include support sites which post patched versions of software, desktop themes and screen savers and volumes of documentation.

The wealth of information that is available from these sites is huge. It can be an incredible pleasure to explore the files available on one of these sites. One of the things that makes them so pleasurable is no one has gone through any great effort to make a good presentation (as with a web page). Thus, what you see is raw files containing information, and not pretty web pages.

Some great anonymous FTP sites and FTP site lists include the following:

Swedish University Network's, FTP archive ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/
One of the truly great FTP sites. Tons of files freely available for download.

Archive-name astronomy-ftp-sites http://www.seds.org/pub/faq/astroftp.html List of FTP sites with information for people interested in astronomy.

Perry's FTP-List Page
http://home.iae.nl/users/perry/ftp-list.html List of hundreds (if not thousands) of FTP sites.

Introduction Exhaustive List of FTP Sites http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ftp/intro.html Another list of lots and lots of FTP sites.

Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets at http://www.internet-tips.net - Visit our website any time to read over 1,000 complete FREE articles about how to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.