The report advises Web merchants to address five important benchmarks that help determine whether your site is growing in right direction. Once a retailer gets these numbers moving in a healthy direction, it can begin its road to profits.

· Visitor-to-buyer conversion rates

· Traffic, measured by number unique visitors

· The proportion of repeat customers

· Orders per customer

· Ratio of repeat-order revenue to first-time revenue

The numbers above will vary wildly from retailer to retailer, but numbers produced by companies that reach profitability follow a positive pattern. "Converting traffic into profitable customer relationships is a challenge few online retailers have mastered," said Peter Stanger, Boston Consulting Group's vice president and leader of company's Business-to-Consumer Topic Area. "A business model that is based on spending $100 to acquire a customer who places a $50 order and never returns to site is destined to fail"

The online audience is certainly ready to support companies that their Net business right. By early 2001, online purchasing population had reached 68 million. They spent their dollars in more categories than they did just one year earlier, and they're optimistic about their future of their online spending. One in five expects to move at least half of his or her spending online in each of six major categories over next year. These include leisure travel, event tickets, music and video, computer software, books, and computer hardware.

It's a phrase I hear over and over again from many entrepreneurs, small businesses owners and inventors: "I'd love to hire someone to launch our publicity campaign professionally, but we can't afford it, so I'm just going to have to do it on my own."

Over past several months, I have been conducting an informal survey among entrepreneurs and business owners who have contacted me about my services. I have found that due to their lack of information or knowledge on topic, many businesses typically over-estimate or over-budget cost of a prospective public relations/publicity campaign. During my PR consultation with them, I asked: "How much do you think it will cost to launch a solid, effective PR/publicity campaign for your product/business?" Of 102 people I've queried:

· 11% - Thought a professional PR campaign would cost $10,000+ per month · 32% - Thought a professional PR campaign would cost $5,000-$10,000 per month · 39% - Thought a professional PR campaign would cost $3,000-$5,000 per month · 12% - Thought a professional PR campaign would cost $1,000-$3,000 per month · 6% - Thought a professional PR campaign would cost less than $1,000 per month

The truth is -- you can get a publicity/PR campaign in all of those prices ranges. What you get for your money and how effective campaign will be is real question? It is true that more you pay more you get. But getting most publicity/PR exposure doesn't mean you have to get most expensive PR agency or specialist.

A good rule of thumb is to align yourself with a PR business that best reflects your business size. Most times their rates will be in line with your prospective PR budget. If you are a small business owner with two employees, you need not hire a high-dollar PR agency with dozens of employees. Find a PR business whose office size and capabilities closely resemble your business.

Case in point -- there is a large PR agency in a fancy building downtown a few miles from my office. Frankly, we are not even competition to each other - in fact we have even referred clients to each other. Why? They typically work with large corporations and implement campaigns of around $10,000 per month. My business works with smaller businesses/individuals -- a PR/publicity campaign with my company would be about $10,000 for an entire year - not just a month. Mechanically, downtown firm and my business do same thing when it comes to PR campaigns: professional media release composition; extensive media market research; articulate personalized distribution to media; months of media relations (article placements/interview scheduling/media request fulfillment, clipping racking of media placements, etc.).

Signing up with big firm doesn't mean you'll necessarily get an experienced associate working on your campaign. So are you getting what you are paying for? A friend of mine who works at a major PR firm gave me following breakdown of billing fees in his office: