pulling the plug

Kath is a young mom who now works part-time but once stayed at home supplementing her husband's income by running a website designed around home entertaining which she called the Internet Kitchen.

"I didn't sell anything," explains Kath, "I made my money through commission from the advertising on my site."

"The hardest part of running the website was attracting advertising," laughs Kath. "But within a year I had seventeen advertisers paying me excellent commissions on visitors who were interested in their products."

"I'm a great cook and entertainer," says Kath, "so it was a real joy to provide recipes and photographs of my culinary masterpieces for the site."

"The advertisers liked my site and so did my visitors!"

"I started off with my favorite recipes and entertaining tips," says Kath, "but I soon found that gearing my content to the product being advertised was the fastest way to make money."

"I made heaps of money on commission," says Kath, "but when the Internet Bust started in 2000 things went downhill pretty fast after that."

"The product advertisers explained to me that the Internet wasn't bringing them the customers they expected," explains Kath, "and as a consequence of them going bust thousands of small Internet businesses that relied on advertising - like mine - also went bust."

"The advertisers discovered that they attracted thousands of 'lookers' but very few buyers," says Kath.

"At first I was being paid commission on the number of visitors who visited the advertiser's site by clicking on the ad on my site - which was great," explains Kath, "but when they changed my commission basis to a pay-per-sale click the money I earned was not enough to keep the website running."

Kath explains that when advertisers started paying commission on sales generated by 'clicks', small businesses like hers that relied on income from advertising started to feel the pinch.

"A lot of the product advertisers on my site were small business operators themselves," explains Kath.

"My site had never attracted the big revenue advertisers," laughs Kath. "My site was just a small operation and I relied on the small revenue advertisers to fund me. And most of them, quite understandably, only wanted to pay commission on sales, not 'lookers'."

"Faced with the prospect of keeping the site running without it generating enough income to pay for its operating costs I very reluctantly had to pull the plug when the annual charges fell due," sighs Kath.

"It was a lot of fun and I'd do it all again if I could get a permanent sponsor," says Kath, "but I was essentially in it to make money - not drain our resources - and it had to go."

"Very few small businesses ever make it," says Kath, "and fewer still on the Internet, especially when you have nothing to sell like I did!"