Among other things, Mark was instrumental in sparking e-book marketing craze, wrote an e-book which has been downloaded millions of times, and is responsible for one of greatest success stories in Net history: building of SearchHound.com on an ad budget of $0 - and selling it for millions.

[Marty]: Mark, can you give us a little background on your online business operations?

[Mark]: Well, I started on Net back when I was a very young man and Internet was then called "Arpanet." My uncle had an Arpanet teletype machine in his house and from that point on I was hooked.

In 1994, when e-commerce was just starting to happen on Net, I opened my first business and acted as a software reseller. Now I own my own Internet software company - Aesop dot com.

Our latest project is called ROIbot. With this, we started out by asking "what does everyone doing business online really need to be successful?" and we built tools that answered that question.

[Marty]: What are some keys to Internet success that you've discovered?

[Mark]: Two things: Testing and persistence.

There is so much advice out there... Some of it's very good, some of it's horrible. To make matters worse - some of it may be good advice for someone else, but bad advice for you.

So what do you do? You can test!

When you test, you know exactly what's working. And when you know what's working, you can duplicate that success again and again.

Try some simple math. Imagine you have a website that is generating one sale of your product for every 300 visitors. You net $50 per sale.

If you get 3,000 visitors per month, you're making $500 per month in net profit.

Then you test out 5 new websites and find one that gets you one sale for every 50 visitors.

For same traffic level, 3,000 visitors per month, you are now earning $3,000 per month, rather than $500.

Here is where persistence comes in. You have to be willing to try out different things and accept that most of what you try will fail. If you keep trying, sooner or later you'll hit on some winners.

Many make mistake of trying out one thing and then giving up when it doesn't work. You should just assume that your first round out of your gun is going to be a dud. Accept it and keep firing!

One problem with Net is this - what may be working one day could soon become obsolete! The only thing that stays consistent is testing.

[Marty]: What specific types of online tools are you using successfully?

The fact is, you are less likely to succeed when you market one (or just a few) products and services. Even if you happen to stumble across one of those relatively rare items that is enormously successful on its own, you can still benefit by diversifying and expanding your product line. Consider several reasons this is true:

* Diversity gives your prospects more choices.

When you offer a variety of related products and services, prospects are more likely to find something they want to buy.

* Diversity increases average order amount.

Offering prospects and customers a variety of things to purchase from you also makes it more likely they'll purchase multiple items, thereby increasing average amount of profit per order.

A Note of Caution: Diversity can confuse prospects in some cases, so it would be wise to test in order to find which approach works best in your circumstances. Some marketers find it better to initially focus on making one sale without any other offers that might confuse a prospect, and following up with related offers at a later time.

* Diversity helps you take maximum advantage of lifetime value or your customers.

Many marketers are content to sell one thing to a customer, one time, and forget about that customer forever, only to continue their quest for new customers elsewhere. However, such a strategy overlooks lucrative profits available through additional sales to existing customers.

The best customer is one that already trusts you, and is satisfied with previous dealings with your company. Since people prefer to do business with those they know and trust, additional sales to existing customers meet with less sales resistance.