GENERATING BIG PROFITS ON INTERNET Dear Friend You have doubtless heard a lot about the Internet. The Internet is a giant worldwide network of networks with over 50,000,000 users on it. Internet functions in a similar manner to Fidonet. That is, it is comprised of thousands and thousands of "hosts" and many nodes which are attached to the hosts. The Internet is a result of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was called ARPANET. ARPANET funded research on large computer networks for a number of private corporations and in a number of University Computer Science Departments. This resulted in a small private network in the late 1960's, and grew into a huge "network of networks" that today includes almost all universities, research centers, Fortune 500 companies and medium-sized corporations. These are the individual hosts for Internet. Each host connects tens of thousands of individual users. Many of the BBS concepts you have learned about also apply to the Internet system. Using Internet you can send and receive mail, download and upload files, "chat" with individuals and participate in public forums, and read conferences on thousands of different topics. However, the thing that makes the Internet different from BBS networks is its size and speed. Internet is huge, and much faster than networked BBS's. Just a few years ago it was considered unthinkable to do business on the Internet. Now however, the Internet is growing at a rate of over 1,000,000 users per month, and marketing via the Internet has become widely accepted. There are companies selling software, hardware, communications links, video images, databases, books, manuals and even video clips on the Internet. Additionally, every month brings a slew of new companies onto the Internet with different products to sell. Recent months have seen publishers, both large and small placing large catalogs on the Internet. This enables people to search and order on-line, saving time and money (i.e., no "printing" costs on postage costs when buying/selling is done on-line). Internet uses a mail system similar to Fidonet's Echomail. It is referred to as Usenet. Usenet is a giant set of more than 10,000 discussion groups - which are called newsgroups - devoted to hundreds of thousands of topics. Usenet discussion groups are devoted to subjects ranging from bowling alleys to zoology. Usenet also allows users to exchange netmail with one another - and this mail exchange is worldwide! You can access Internet's Usenet via a Fidonet BBS. As long as the Fidonet BBS contains special software, referred to as a Gateway, the link can be established. The Gateway is also referred to as UF Gate. Once you "pass on" to Internet via a Fidonet BBS, you can send mail to Internet users. However, you must know the Internet address of the person that you want to send your message to. A typical Internet address may be: Tom_Acres@F9.n251.z1.Fidonet.Org This address contains a node, network, and zone number. As an example of sending a message from Internet to Steve Doe on a Fidonet BBS with an address of Zone 1, network 222, Fidonet node 6, the address on the Internet message would be: Steve Doe@F6.n222.z1.Fidonet.Org. This may seem a little complex, but in time you'll get used to sending messages between Internet addresses and Fidonet. Individual addresses on the Internet are very basic. For example, Steve Doe would have the Internet address of: Steve Doe @UCLA.EDU In this example, Steve Doe is the name of the individual, and the "@" sign follows his name. You can always recognize an Internet address by the "@" sign following the individual's name. Following the "@" sign is "UCLA.EDU". The UCLA part of the address denotes the University (University of California, Los Angeles) and the .EDU at the end denotes that the "domain" is Educational. Other extensions possible are: .GOV (Government) .ORG (Organization) .COM (Commercial) After awhile you'll find that accessing the resources of the vast network of BBS's is almost second nature to you. As you gain more experience in tapping into the vast BBS/Internet world, you'll start finding ways to make your advertising on BBS's extremely profitable. Just remember that in order to realize the big profits using electronic marketing you must "pyramid" your profits, that is, you must keep finding new BBS's to place your messages, whether it be a classified ad, a sales letter disguised as a "report," or a report that has the main section (i.e., the latter 80% of the report) scrambled and needs a password for full access. ** Copyright OPB 1995 All Rights Reserved. It is unlawful to reproduce any part of this excerpt without permission from Joe Roth or OPB. ** This has been an excerpt form Joe Roths "How You Can Earn Tens Of Thousands of Dollars Monthly Using Computer Bulletin Boards and the Information Super Highway." If you would like more information on how to receive a copy, e-mail or call Joe Roth at : 76731,2270 for Compuserv or jwiz@interserv.com You can also call us at (310)444-9862