http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/ 09/02/BU147439.DTL&type=business

Come on John, if you were about to go out on your own, would you rely on sources you quote in your story and wade deeply through mire of that bureaucratic gobbledygook to get to occassional gem? How about sources like

http://www.workz.com where I am proud to be a columnist in their guest expert section on Small Business Ecommerce at:

http://www.workz.com/content/1679.asp

How about true home business based sites like

http://www.ahbbo.com (short for "A Home Based Business Online" run by Elena Fawkner).

How about truly valuable stuff for independent professionals at sites like

http://www.learningfountain.com

run by Paul Siegel where valuable community among freelancers helps all become better business owners?

One of your listed sources is http://ecommerce.About.com

Where I used to have a link to my website until they began requirements of new http://lunanetwork.about.com/ which requires that linked sites cross promote About.com and that partners must serve a minimum of 150,000 pageviews a month from their own sites. Now you must be a Goliath to be listed by Goliaths.

The same happened at former small business section of about.com where entire category was dropped and merged with ecommerce section, which then dropped all of Davids from their Goliath-only links list!

Now we see all over web how Goliaths are courting business from Davids as they suddenly realize that we make up almost 50% of US economy. Oh really? What a surprise! Big business falters after absorbing all of each other's money, then begins luring smaller fish when they've eaten all big ones. I did a piece on that as well at:

http://website101.com/arch/archive96.html

I have a much better list. Here's a few additional sites for you to review so you can gain a true understanding of what little guy truly needs to survive as a small business.

http://www.ideacafe.com http://www.guru.com http://www.elance.com http://www.allbusiness.com http://www.website101.com I'm not too proud to list my own site.

http://www.MyeHive.com

Set to capitalize on peer to peer technology in a huge way, they are offering a browser "skin" that allows linking to and download from other desktop users -- any digital content you like from ebooks to music. But they've worked out a way to pay YOU for it! This site is still in beta and will go live soon. (Bookmark it!)

http://www.gocard.com

Affordable advertising for little guy. And guess what?! You'll be in rack with big boys. It's open to even you and I on a first-come first-served basis. Your postcard on racks right beside American Express and major manufacturers in big cities!

http://www.ibill.com

Various payment processing solutions for small business online. These folks have been around for awhile and although they take a hefty chunk of sales, it beats some of other options for little tiny businesses like mine. ;-)

http://www.cihost.com

These folks were a big hit at show. As attendees lined up to grab CIhost tchotchkes like keychains and pens with thier logos on them, sales staff started throwing CIhost t-shirts to crowd. Good natured fun, and not reason enough to choose a web host, but they offer top-notch customer service as a key component of sales. Good pricing and great webmaster revenue share affiliate program.

http://www.goback.com

Back-up and restore software that tops anything I've seen for system crash recovery. $40 bucks that could save you thousands in lost time and information. You just gotta check this one out! It's unbelievable in it's power to get you back up and running after an ugly system failure.

My favorite crowd pleasing publicity stunt was from

http://www.SpiderCache.com

Your picture with a friendly Tarantula on your shoulder. They offer a wonderful product aimed at small to mid-sized ISP or company with it's own servers. Traffic spikes and heavy bandwidth users gain stability and reduce peak loads. Where does that spider come in?

Unbelievably, there are more. But I'll save them for later. Good show. Most journalists were discussing low crowd count and a few no-show show demonstrators. I was real happy to have chance to talk with some innovators without too much t-shirt tossing and was glad to see Siebel Systems salespeople with nothing to do. Little-guy solution providers were quite busy.