For websites, commission revenues and referral fees may become a more important source of income than the ever-elusive banner ads. Wholesalers and distributors will consolidate and will do retail sales. Just as the line between search engines like Yahoo and portal sites like AOL has blurred as the former have added chat, free home pages and e-mail, both of these will further blur and merge with online product catalogs. The Refer-It site list a number of other programs available to websites, and Mark Welch's banner ad page includes a page on referral programs . Many of these referral programs are admittedly fairly new and shaky and lacking in credibility or brand name recognition.
Books are a particularly interesting field.
Com belongs, I believe, to Ingram , a giant nationwide wholesale distributor of books and other products. Com can't survive as a retail bookstore alone. They are moving more into book distribution, stocking inventories, as their Amazon Advantage program for small publishers competes directly with the Ingram Express program. True that backend outsourcing is happening more and more. Print this page.