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.

In January of this year, over 163 million Americans had Internet access, which is up almost 40 million from January 2000. That is a significant 33 percent rise just in American Internet users.

The average age of Internet surfers, reports ZDNet, http://www.zdnet.com/ is 38 years, and rising. The baby-boomers are coming on strong.

The average level of education shows that 39 percent hold a college degree, yet overall, this number is actually falling.

Can you guess which is fastest-growing segment of Web newbies?

It is Americans over 55 years old with working-class incomes and middle-class ideals that are fasting growing segment of newbies.

The face of 'Internet Community' has changed.

About five years ago, average Internet surfer was a white male, college educated and earning $50,000 plus a year.

Just this past month, women surpassed men as major Internet surfer for first time in history.