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•Four Greatest Ways to Become a Multi-Millionaire on the Internet 135

Amazon.com customer in Schoenenwerd in Switzerland, goes on to praise Amazon
for ‘doing business on the Web in a real customer-oriented way.’

Amazon opened its electronic doors in July of 1995 with a stated mission to use
the Internet to offer products that educate, inform and inspire. They did this by
offering an online store that is reasonably easy to navigate round and has a huge
selection of books, CDs, audio books and computer games. In 2001 they served 25
million customer accounts, compared to 20 million in 2000 and 14 million in 1999.
These customers are in more than 220 countries.

They have over 45,000 items in their electronic store, which they reckon is
about seven times the selection you would find in a bi-box electronics store. They
have millions of book on offer, some 200,000 of which can be browsed through their
Look Inside the Book feature. Once again, they estimate a typical bookstore has
100,000 titles at any time.

The site gives the following services:

• Search for books by author, title, subject or keyword. For music, search by
artist, CD title or song title.

• Browse for books in 28 subject areas or browse music styles.
• Get recommendations.
• Read reviews – either media reviews or reviews entered by other Amazon cus-

tomers.
• See the bestseller charts.
• Stay up to date by getting Amazon to send you reviews of exceptional books in

your area of interest.
• Buy gifts painlessly.
• You can even join the community by becoming an Amazon associate with the

opportunity to earn money by selling books on your own Web site.

The founder of Amazon.com is Jeffrey Bezos. He had a finance background, being
previously a Vice President of Bankers Trust Company and DE Shaw, a Wall Street
investment firm.