Roughing it paid off big time for the online small fry. Last year, Florist.com turned a $1 million dollar profit on $3 million dollars in sales. Benon's success stands in stark contrast to the fast rise and even faster failure of other, more high profile gifts sites such as Send.com, which bit the dust in January, a year after blowing $20 million dollars on a quirky ad campaign. "I knew the bubble was going to burst," says Benon. "I said, 'No, I'm going to keep it grassroots.' We take one baby step at a time. Only when the business proves itself to us will we spend the money to get bigger."

Dot-coms may be going down in flames every day, but a surprising group of web survivors is emerging unscathed: small business, the might mini-dots. With a handful of employees and annual sales of $5 million or less, these intrepid independents are doing what none of their venture capital-funded-brethren could: make real money online.

Who would have thought? After the rise of big dot-coms such as Amazon.com and the later arrival to the web of big retail chains such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., a lot of experts predicted the Web giants would crush small businesses like bugs. Instead, it was other dot-coms - all playing high-stakes, get-big-fast games with multi-million dollar portal deals and TV ads - that got slammed.

Thousands of small businesses, flying under the radar, are turning modest but healthy profits. Already, the evidence is coming in. According to ActivMedia Research, 44% of companies with fewer than 10 employees turn a profit on their Web sales, compared with 26% of companies with 100 employees or more.

Unlike dot-coms with inexperienced executives, the mini-dots are succeeding by employing the same strategies that small-business owners have relied on for centuries: They're sticking to the niches they know well. They scrimp on expenses, forgoing expensive portal deals and using net resources, from email to customer-sharing arrangements, to save money. And they're branding together on the Web, presenting a bigger face to the online world. With it’s vast reach, the Internet can enhance any business that uses it properly.

Small companies are taking advantage of websites, e-mail and chat groups as new marketing channels for their businesses. And no online marketing channel has proved more effective than online auctions, pioneered by eBay in 1996. Besides spurring the formation of thousands of small businesses online, online auctions have given many small businesses a new outlet for their wares.

Finally, the Net has allowed far-flung small businesses to gang up and pool their resources against bigger and louder competition in ways they cant do in the physical world. For example, the American Booksellers Assn., which promotes independent bookstores, runs a program called BookSense.com that allow members to offer amenities only big chains could offer before, such as gift certificates good at any member store. Moreover, their online customers can order any book in print from their site, even if they don’t stock it themselves. Thus, Kerry Slattery, owner of Skylight Books on Los Angeles, partly credits the program for a higher than expected 15% rise in her store's sales in 2000 to $1 million dollars.