The Internet, which in effect brings the world's adult bookstores and video shops to home computers, is following the same pattern. Others think it may be three times that. One sex firm, the Internet Entertainment Group, based in Seattle, claims to have 50,000 paying subscribers online, nearly as many as the Wall Street Journal. They have become expert at hunting out the best material at the lowest price from the thousands of sex sites online. Give away lots of samples, promote your service wherever possible, and aim for international markets from the beginning.
Travel agents are another group that has survived on exclusive access to information.
Most travellers prefer using travel agents to calling every airline themselves or figuring out how to work the flight-booking services on commercial online services, especially since using an agent costs them no more. They are doing this in two ways. The first is by selling seats on their own Web sites and together on Sabre's Travelocity, American Airlines' booking service. Yet the airlines may face an uphill struggle. It is easy to see why the mall was the first image that sprang to mind when people started to think about electronic commerce on the Internet.