All Systems Go Here's how to get sales of your new product off the ground, using the Internet as your launching pad.

There are two ways to successfully sell your invention on theInternet. One is to launch your own site, link it with other sites,learn how to work the search engines and offer free information tolure visitors to your site. The downside: Setting up and developingyour own site is expensive because you need to work virtually fulltime to pull in traffic. It's even more expensive if you haveto hire someone to do the programming.

The other Internet strategy is to sell your products to onlinemerchants who have active sites that already draw plenty ofvisitors. In many ways, this is the ideal setup for inventors.Unlike most retailers, Internet merchants can buy a few units ofthe product, put them on the site and then see how they sell. Ifthey don't sell, the merchants haven't lost much. If theydo sell, you could win big.

What types of products are well-suited for selling online? Theideal product is one that isn't widely sold but has a core ofdedicated consumers. For example, most people don't buyreplicas of Air Force bomber jackets, but a small group of peopledo. When those people search for "bomber jackets" online,the few sites that sell them come up as a match.