2. If product's description or picture isn't detailed enough for you, contact merchant to get more information before you bid. You don't want to take a chance to waste your hard earned money.

3. Know highest price you will bid for product and stick with it. Don't get caught up in a bidding war; you may end up paying more than product's worth. Don't forget to add in shipping price with your bid.

4. Visit a few online auctions before bidding because some merchants auction same product in many auctions. You usually can purchase product for a lower price in a unpopular auction because there are less bidders.

5. Know time auction begins and ends. You also want to know how long it will take to ship. If you need product by a certain date, you'll want to estimate time it will take to receive it.

It was to be expected and very predictable because far too many dot.com enterprises were riding high on investor cash infusions, were long on promises but produced little if any cash flow.

The promise of success never materialized and investors wisely refused to throw good money after bad.

No business can survive having expenses but no revenue. Not even on Internet.

That was "Old Internet" business model.

You could write down an idea for an Internet business on a cocktail napkin and get millions of dollars from eager investors. Reality has finally set in and once FREE businesses are changing their stripes and attempting to charge a fee for their content or services.

Enter "New Internet".

The first quarter of 2001 has seen a rash of companies jumping on "Now We Charge a FEE" bandwagon.

A wide variety of services and content that was once delivered for FREE are now being delivered ONLY if you pay a fee.

This includes such services as web hosting, web site content like current time, weather and date, stock quotes, music files and much more.

Those once FREE services and content were able to be provided because there was a strong advertiser base that paid for show we all enjoyed.

But advertising base has faltered.

Some of big names that now offer new premium services include Yahoo!, http://www.yahoo.com/, eBay, http://www.ebay.com/, and of course, new court ordered changes at Napster, http://www.napster.com/, which made it a legal necessity to charge a fee for their music services.

Bizland.com, http://www.bizland.com/, has always provided web-hosting sites for small businesses, as well as email forwarding, e-commerce packages and marketing tools.