With all the uncertainty and hoopla around the Internet, how can investors and business managers hit the right financial buttons? In Net Profit, Peter S. Cohan, a premier Internet consultant and stock picker, analyzes the trade's top companies--including Yahoo!, Amazon.com, America Online, and Cisco Systems--and offers some compelling insights for investors and businesses on the Web or those considering it. "This book is about the companies that are working to make economic sense of the Web," Cohan writes. "And it is about a search for the business strategies that distinguish the market leaders from their peers."

Cohan identifies nine segments of the industry--infrastructure, consulting, venture capital, security, portals, e-commerce, Web content, Internet service providers, and commerce tools. He judges each of the leading companies in the nine fields on its management, breadth of customer service, and most critical, ability to deliver a product that is so scarce and important that it carries a high price. Most Internet companies fail to meet all of Cohan's strict standards. Portal leader Yahoo!, for example, lacks economic clout over advertisers because of tough rivals in the traditional media. Cohan gives high grades to technology consultants like Gartner Group, venture capital firms, and network builder Cisco. He loves Cisco because it controls 80 percent of the router market, keeps customers by providing other network components, and shows a knack for acquiring smaller companies. Easy to understand, Net Profit features some key strategies for competing on the Internet. Cohan also helps companies evaluate whether it makes sense even to offer services on the Web. --Dan RingThe recent Internet stock crash has caused investors and managers to throw the baby out with the bath water. The gloom surrounding many publicly traded Internet companies makes objective evaluation of their performance difficult. In Net Profit, author Peter Cohan breaks down the complexity of the Internet market by answering two basic questions: Who makes money on Internet-related business? And how do they do it? His incisive analyses of leading Internet companies, their competitors, and their chances for continued growth pinpoint the factors that investors and managers in Internet business must examine to ensure future success. For excerpts and more detailed information on Net Profit, click here.