IMAGINE YOU RUN a company that just spent $10 million on marketing and advertising to acquire its first 200,000 Internet customers. You’ve been running television, radio, and print ads, you’ve built a public relations machine, you’ve joined affiliate marketing programs, you have banners all over the Web, and you have partnerships with more companies than you can be expected to remember. So far you have lost more money than you’re comfortable talking about. Oh, and let’s not forget Wall Street has decided that losing money alone isn’t a sustainable business any longer, whether your business name ends with “.com” or not. Now what?

Many of the rules on the Internet are different, but the business fundamentals are very similar: If ...

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