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Not too long ago, folks were wondering if anyone could actually make money on the Internet. Jaclyn Easton is convinced that some folks already have. In her new book, "Striking It Rich.com: Profiles of 23 Incredibly Successful Websites That You've Probably Never Heard Of", Easton tells the little-known stories of booming online enterprises. A columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Easton has been covering the digital revolution since 1994. Read the transcript of the chat below.

"The Navigator – Live" appears each Thursday from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern time. It's a live, moderated discussion offering washingtonpost.com users the chance to talk directly to intriguing and sometimes unusual guests who are shaping the digital world. "The Navigator" appears in The Washington Post print edition every Thursday. You can read past columns by following this link.

Linton Weeks: Hello everybody. Welcome Jaclyn. Everybody here in Washington is obssessed with the senate trial, so let's try to provide some comic, and cosmic, relief and go right to the questions.

Linton Weeks: Why did you write this book?

Jaclyn Easton: I wanted to prove that there was indeed wealth online and that someone could start a site with as little as $30 and make millions. The most important caveat is that I refused to profile any sites that deal in sex or computer related information. That to me was too easy a sell...for all the obvious reasons. In all fairness the average cost to launch for the sites profiled is about $5,000 - $15,000. But hey that still real doable!

Washington, DC: Will the growth in e-commerce last for only a few years or will it be a growth industry for the next decade or more?
Will we continue to see a decline in mall shopping due to the growth in internet shopping?

Jaclyn Easton: E-commerce growth will continue at a frenzied pace partly because it is a global proposition, not local or national. When you think of the selection, convenience and savinga for the consumer and couple that will the advantages in business to business can you imagine anything other than explosive growth?

Virginia: I imagine that from the date you completed writing your book to the date it was actually published was a long time in computer years. Computer years being much quicker than dog years. Are there newer online companies that you might have included in your list if you could now?

Jaclyn Easton: Thank you for asking. Actually the book is still really fresh. McGraw-Hill fast tracked it so that from the time I finished until it was on shelves was only 90 days. I have magazine articles that have taken longer. But here is the important part: there are constant updates on the "23" at www.strikingitrich.com so the book is always fresh.

New York: What is the most successful (lucrative) website that you know of that cost the least to create? Do you know of any expensive flops?

Jaclyn Easton: In my book it would be Cassette House. $30 to launch with $1 million gross of which about 35% is pure profit. Outside of my book it would have to be Amazon.com for all the reasons you know.

I think The Spot from ages ago was an expensive flop. Fortuneately my beat is web success so I don't get to focus too much on those that don't qualify.

McLean, VA: Are there any success stories for providing services rather than products?

Jaclyn Easton: About a third of the sites profiled in StrikingItRich.com are information/content sites (services) versus retailing and I think this are the most creative in terms of their marketing. One of them is Ask the Builder and you can read the chapter about this money being made by this one-man web wonder by going to www.StrikingItRich.com (click on sample chapters).

The tempestuous teapot of W.D.C: Where do you see the most opportunity on the internet to become sucessful. Office products? Grocery delivery? Pinball machinists?

Jaclyn Easton: The opportunties are in the non-obvious...what we haven't thought of. Why? Because all the major categories, such as the ones you have listed (perhaps excluding pinball) have been co-opted by major players such as OfficeMax, Wal-Mart, PeaPod and the like. What we all want is something different. Something that without the web never existed before, like eBay or Priceline. So ask the impossible, come up with something possbile but different and put your money in that.

Herndon, VA: What's the best low-risk, low-capital way to get STARTED with an e-commerce website if I have an online biz idea?

Start from scratch with a webhosting service? Or hire a web consulting firm? Or get one of those "e-commerce-in-a-box" software products that purport to do it all for you? Or some other way that I'm not even aware of due to my naivete? Thanks!

Jaclyn Easton: I love Yahoo! Stores. It used to be a company called ViaWeb and they were bought by Yahoo. You can literally set up shop in a day and for (I think it's now) $100/month for 50 items or less and that includes a vanity domain (www.yourcompany.com) and your hosting, etc. And it really is that easy to use. I don't like any of the off the shelf products. Nothing comes close to Yahoo Stores. Trust me. They also win EVERY award.

Washington. D.C.: Are you familiar with the concept of "rational branding?" This is, as I understand it, the idea of giving Web viewers a service---something like a mortgage calculator or a useful search function. Your thoughts on this as an effective tool?

Jaclyn Easton: All the best and most profitable sites do this. Reel.com (the only site in StrikingItRich.com that most people probably have heard of) has great movie matching services, movie finders, etc. On the same note, this is exactly why Amazon.com bought the Internet Movie Database. But try to get something new and different. I can name about 15 sites with mortgage calculators. How can you expand on that concept? Then do that.

Linton Weeks: Can you talk a little about your antipathy toward America Online?

Jaclyn Easton: Personally I curse the online service because I feel it gives people a lousy experience of the Internet. Their original browser -- which a large percentage of their members continue to use -- does not support basic web functionality including some order forms, vital to a retail site.

Their service can be incredibly slow, with page load times in the minutes rather than seconds during peak periods. And in an effort to try to speed up their service they sometimes cache pages on their systems, so when a member types in the web address of a popular destination, instead of fetching the latest pages from the site requested, they will serve up a copy stored earlier. Often the two are different.

Despite my animosity I am thankful to AOL for merely getting people online. It may constantly rank at the bottom in surveys of technical performance, but they were the first to create a truly easy online experience. Any devout Internet/online user knows that they can hand their grandmother an AOL disk (of which they have box fulls) and never need to answer a support question. For that I am grateful.

America Online is also responsible for up to 50% of the traffic on some of these profiles and I know that without the service some of them would not have achieved the success they have as quickly.

Bethesda, MD: What is the maximum amount one can charge for a subscription for content on a Web site? Would asking a user to pay $20 for a six-month access reduce the number of subscribers? Is $5.00 too little?

Jaclyn Easton: You're not going to like this answer because it is not concrete, but I can give you a way to think about it.

How much you can charge is in direct proportion to the need for the information you are providing, the way in which you provide it (viewpoint) and the degree to which you have competition. Think about those $495 business oriented newsletters that are published monthly and are a whopping 12 pages long. What makes them worth that dough? Now port that concept online. Bingo. Or should I say "cha-ching!"

Linton Weeks: We're a little more than half-way along now. I'm going to sip a little cherry Coke. Keep those great questions coming.

Linton Weeks: Success on the Internet, you write, does not depend on interactivity. That's a radical notion. What exactly do you mean?

Jaclyn Easton: Correct. Interactivity is a misnomer. It basically means "point, click and read." A friend of mine says that when you think about it even vending machines are interactive.

So then what is the secret? Relationships. In a retail site that means getting the customer in, getting them exactly what they want instantly and then getting through the checkout quickly. And if they have a problem solving that. It also means responding to e-mail in hours, not days, and getting the order out immediately.

Now I apologize for referencing Amazon.com so much but there are many reason they have been so successful and this is one of them. Look at how they establish relationships.

If you have ever ordered a book from Amazon.com you know that if you check ground shipping they automatically bump you to priority mail at no extra charge. This one customer service nuance does so much more than any Java applet could.

What is also important is something Tim Bernes-Lee (the man who invented the web) terms "inter-creativity". This is when you build something online and create something new.

All the travel sites prove this. You are building an itinerary. Or the new BabyGap clothing site that let's you dress us the kids in different outfits to see how clothing looks together before you buy it.

Linton Weeks: So, Jaclyn, do you have any new companies you're watching really closely?

Jaclyn Easton: It's not so much new as much as everyone is finally starting to pay attention to them and that is The Mining Company (www.miningco.com).

This is a site that has something quite unusual behind it. Ready for this? Humans. Yes, oodles of beating hearts, over 550 pulses dedicated to every topic you can think of. Their slogan is "we mine the net so you don't have to" and they have done a a fabulous job.

Once people discover it, then never return to Yahoo for general site searches.

Reston, VA: Where do you think the future of web design is heading?

Jaclyn Easton: I'd like to say where I'd like to see it go and hopefully it will follow suit.

We need many more "non-scrolling" screens. I think it should be a law that a homepage can't scroll. Some of them are ridiculous. Also I think all nav bars should be on the left or right side and that company logos should not allowed to cover more than 15% of the screen. So many take up to 40%. What are these people think?

I hope we get out of the generic-Yahoo look that all sites seem to want to adapt. There is a better way.

In a perfect world I'd like to see a universal set of icons (much like those garment care instructions) that all sites could use.

arlington, VA: I registered the domain name showercurtains.com. Do you think it is worth developing something as specialized as an online showercurtain store? If so, would you recommend getting involved in fulfillment, or should I just take the orders and pass them on to agents. Thank you!

Jaclyn Easton: Yes. Yes. Yes. The more niche the better. And shower curtains is a great place to start. The secret to success if that you have got to have the inventory to back it up. You must have hundreds of shower curtains, not just 10 or 50.

Here's a site to prove the point. Go to DogToys.com. Yup, just dog toys, hundred of them orgainzed by breed.

And the organization of your site will be critical as well. Organize the shower curtains by color, by design, by every way you can think of. It's perfectly fine to have the same curtain in more than one category.

Linton Weeks: Have any of your businesses failed since you wrote the book?

Jaclyn Easton: One has decided to sell. It's Discount Games. They were making a lot of dough, but one of the investors is not a long term thinker and want to be making more. So he pulled the plug.

Where anyone with sense would keep the enterprise going as he was trying to sell, he just halted the business and is now looking for a buyer. Need I say more about his business sense.

On the flipside 4 of the profiles have been sold since the book published. All for millions and millions of dollars.

Washington, DC: I am not trying to be disrespectful by this question! I am curious about the name of your book (which I have not read, but it sounds great):

If a website is "incredibly successful" how come I've "probably never heard of" it? Is this an oxymoron or am I just missing the point? Thank you, and looking forward to today's chat.

Jaclyn Easton: Great question.

The reason is simple. Most of the websites profiled are niche. If you are enagaged to be married you probably have heard of The Knot (a information based wedding site), if you've ever bought a power saw online you've probably did it at Coastal Tool and Supply. If you drive a Harley-Davidson you know about Motorcycle Online.

But if you answered "no" to any of the above, well then, you wouldn't know about them. And that is the most important point.

These "23" were early to capture a very specific market and have profited from their intuitiion.

I have a 9-word forumla for success on the net. If you follow it you will be guaranteed to do well.

Be the first. Be the best. Or be different.

Be the first means the first in your category. For example the general flower market is not avialable anymore, but niche flowers like a site not in my book that sells dead roses to be sent to philandering significant others was completely available and two smart people grabbed it.

Be the best is something that can be quantified. The biggest inventory or the most content.

Different is just that. Dead flowers is very different. Or Just blank tape like Cassette House, or just hot tub parts (Long Island Hot Tub) or just leather aviation jackets (like US Wings.)

And by the way, in perfect world you want to be all three.

Linton Weeks: And so we come to the end of another episode of Navigator--Live. Thanks so much to Jaclyn, to the good folks at Washingtonpost.com and to all of you who sent in thoughtful, probing questions. Join us at 2 p.m. Eastern next Thursday when my guest will be an old friend, Todd McIntyre, of Microvision. Todd's company, founded in 1993, is on the sharpest edge of the digital future. According to its company profile, Microvision "takes advantage of the human visual system to project electronic information on the eye without the use of a screen of any kind." They call it a Virtual Retinal Display. Todd will explain all that and other bleeding edge technologies and issues next week. Until then...

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