The Web Revisited

Sometimes, however, there are forms that need to be printed for best use, such as employment forms for job applicants. Construction Trades Press Publisher Johnny Hamilton, whose Pipefitters.com generated nearly six figures in 2000, offers hard-to-find books and tools for pipefitters online. Because his customers often work on busy construction projects, Hamilton has a downloadable Adobe PDF order form on the site in addition to a secure, interactive form for online orders. "We often gets these forms, filled out by a project boss or with multiple orders," says his business partner and wife, Margaret. Hamilton produces the PDF document from a simple word-processor document.

Pixels over print

Publisher Bob Adjemian features more than 400 titles on Vedanta Press' Web site [www.vedanta.com], yet he still mails a paper catalog to customers around the globe. Taking advantage of the global nature of the Internet, his press now saves money by omitting those books that have modest but steady sales. from the printed catalog The printed catalog encourages customers to go to the site for the company's complete list of titles, especially those no longer in the printed catalog. Adjemian has been able to cut his printing and postage costs significantly because posting the books online required just a one-time investment of time and money, while the catalogs incur recurring costs and resources for design, layout, printing and postage.

One of the best ways to save money online is through effective use of e-mail. Not only is e-mail the most common tool associated with the Internet, but a January 2000 survey by card company American Greetings indicated that 60 percent of respondents preferred e-mail to paper mail for communication, and 34 percent preferred e-mail to the telephone. E-mail is popular because it's free, it's immediate and it puts information into writing, making it preservable and copyable, and it can be relayed and read at the convenience of senders and recipients.