Stay ethical. Another basic datum. Unethical people and companies tend to fail. The more unethical they are, harder they fall. You could sum this up simply as "what goes around comes around".

Venture capital is NOT income. It is a liability because it usually has to be paid back. In general, a company should only need venture capital when it is first created. If venture capital is needed to keep company afloat after a reasonable startup period, then this is a bad sign. If venture capital is required on a regular basis to pay payroll, then this is a very bad sign. Use income from stock sales wisely. Getting an infusion of cash from selling stock can be a great windfall for a company. BUT this is also not income - it is a windfall profit. Use it wisely.

Determine true income. You need to figure income on amount of money you are making from selling your product or service. Money obtained from your credit card does not count as income.

Income must exceed total expenses. Seems pretty basic.

Large amounts of debt is bad for business. Generally, higher your debt, less freedom you have to run your company. At some point, you become a slave to your creditors.

Excellent leaders often make poor managers. Remember to keep these two positions separate. The skills required to be a leader have nothing to do with skills required to be a good manager.

What's bottom line? Making money on internet is same as making money anywhere else. Just because it is internet does not mean there are special rules or law has been suspended. Also, just because everyone else has gone insane and are doing incredibly stupid things (the majority of dot com's come to mind) does not mean you need to jump in and join stampede.

The internet is a set of tools which you can use to sell products and services. Used properly, they can magnify your efforts to incredible heights. Remember, be smart, be ethical and, fundamentally, inflow must exceed outflow.

CTR - Click Through Ratio:

Used primarily in affiliate programs and advertising, this is ratio between total impressions of a banner or link and number of times a site visitor actually clicks on (or executes), banner or link. For example, if a banner/link had 10,000 impressions in a month, but advertiser's banner/link was only actually clicked 2,000 times during that same period, CTR would be 20%.

CPC - Cost Per Click:

This represents amount of money (or other consideration), an advertiser would pay to site owner each time their banner or link was clicked by a site visitor.

CPI - Cost Per Impression:

This represents amount of money (or other consideration), an advertiser would pay to site owner each time their banner or link was viewed by a site visitor.

CPM - Cost Per Thousand:

This is amount an advertiser would pay a site owner for every thousand units. I'm using term UNITS to represent whatever site owner and advertiser agreed to base payments on - per click, per impression, per subscriber (in e-zine advertising), etc. For example, if you were being paid $.20 cents for each click through, and in a month your site generated 10,000 click throughs for a specific advertiser, you would be paid $2,000.

There are many more terms you should become familiar with, but these are most commonly used terms with regard to web site traffic, affiliate programs, and web site and/or e-zine advertising.