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An autographed picture of Bill Gates sits atop Tom Brady's piano. "I use his software so much," says Brady, "I decided to buy the picture at an auction." Perhaps, the picture will be a good investment some day. But what is a guaranteed investment is betting on Bill's technology.

In fact, Brady saw a major trend even before Bill. In the summer of 1991, Brady decided to quit his job and enter the new field of network support and later in 1994, Internet consulting.

He named the company Net Data Systems. "Since we were working with the Net, systems and data," says Brady, "the name made sense." He was also a pioneer in another major trend: the virtual company. You see, Brady worked from his home in Monrovia, Calif. Bill Greenberg, his partner, worked at his home in Sherman Oaks, Calif. "Sure, we could spend $2,000 a month on rent," says Brady. "But what's the point? It makes more sense investing the money into expanding our services." This new trend of virtual companies is known as the "underwear economy." That is, you can be working in your underwear and your clients would not even know.

However, for Brady, he believes in always looking professional. By wearing a shirt and tie, he feels ready to do business. Interestingly enough, home-based business is not new to America. During the eighteenth century, most Americans were self-employed, usually toiling morning-to-night on the farm. But once the Industrial Revolution hit, Americans started moving into the factories.

In the 1990s, Americans are moving back to the home. Advances in technology, as well as corporate downsizing, has made the virtual company very real. People also want to have flexibility and freedom to run their own show. Moreover, by being virtual, there are no long commutes, office politics, wasteful meetings . . .

According to LINK Resources, a New York research firm, there are approximately 15.3 million home-based workers in the United States. By the year 2000, the number is estimated to grow to a whopping 35.7 million.

Brady does not have any employees. Rather, his company works on a project-by-project basis. Currently, he has seven contractors--who understand HTML, graphic design, hardware configuration and installation. These contractors range from college students to retired seniors. One of the contractors, for example, is a retired Boeing employee. When he met Brady, he had little computer experience. Now he is working on major programming projects.

When Brady gets a new client, he will use a project folder to hold all the correspondence, proposals, change orders, etc. Not only does this keep everyone organized, but is also a great selling tool. The reason is that by the end of the year, the folder gets large. "When you show it to the client," says Brady, "they realize how much work we have done for them. It really does show our value."

Like every virtual office, there are fax machines, copiers, printers and computers. Brady also has a DirectPC satellite dish, which he says gives him about 160 kbs of bandwidth for his Internet access. He is the second person to have one in Monrovia (the first was CompUSA).

Net Data Systems uses the Web for their invoicing system. Greenberg created a hidden Web page, which allows all contractors to input the work they have done for their clients. This is sent to Brady, who creates the invoices and usually has them sent by the end of the day. A main focus of Net Data Systems is online marketing. Ironically enough, several of the company's competitors use Net Data Systems for their marketing services.

When Net Data Systems retains a client, it will do an "electronic X-ray" of the client. That is, Brady will do an extensive Internet search of the company and find all the instances where the company has been mentioned on the Net. Brady will then classify these items into good and bad news.

Then Brady will develop a core message to position the company. The first step is to have a small, but descriptive domain name. The domain should be no longer than the name of the company. Also, there should be no dashes (which are not natural for people to remember).

Next, Brady wants to effectively position the site on the search engines. To the dismay of many companies, if you go to a search engine and enter a word or phrase, you are likely to get thousands of listings. Brady focuses on the first ten listings (which he calls the "top ten") and tries to get his client listed on as many as possible. So, if you go to www.altavista.com and enter the word "degausser," you will see that listing two, four, five, and seven refer to www.datadev.com--which, of course, is Net Data Systems' client.

Brady accomplishes this by placing relevant language in the meta tags in each page. What are meta tags? Let's take an example. The first item in the "degausser" search shows the following:

1) A Guide to Understanding Data Remanence in Automated Information Systems
A Guide to Understanding Data Remanence in Automated Information Systems
NCSC-TG-025 Library No. 5-236,082 Version-2 FOREWORD The National Computer
Se... http://gandalf.isu.edu/security/isl/drinais.html [100%]

The first line of text is called the meta title. You want this to be as descriptive as possible. Actually, Brady will have a different description for each page. This increases the chances that the client's site will occupy more locations on the top-ten list.

The next section is called the meta description. Make sure you use complete sentences. Also, it is effective to place the client's phone number and address. That is, you should make it easy for customers to find you. You can also list keywords in the meta tags--which is what search engines look for. Brady used such keywords as "degauss, Degausser, degausser, coercivity," and so on. You should always use lowercase and uppercase versions for each word (some users enter uppercase). Some people mistakenly believe that if you use a certain word many times, the search engines will be more likely to list your site at the top of the list. This is a myth. Search engines have the smarts to see through this scheme. If the search engine finds more than six instances of the word, it will bypass it. Brady will also do Internet "crop dusting." This is the posting of messages on appropriate discussion groups. Brady will install an Internet traffic program on the client site. Thus, the client will be able to measure the effectiveness of the marketing program.

One of Net Data Systems' most ambitious projects is the Price REIT site. REIT stands for Real Estate Investment Trust, and as the name implies, is a company that invests money in shopping malls, office buildings, and apartments. At the Price REIT site, you can peruse the company's press releases, SEC filings and investor relations materials.

But the coolest part of the site is Property Info. Here, you can click a certain section of the US map to see information on a property. So, if you want to invest in land in Alhambra, Calif., click the map and you see demographics (population, average family income, size of the city), traffic (vehicles per day on various main streets), site plan, tenants, the gross leaseable area, and aerial map.

In terms of marketing, Net Data Systems does not advertise in the phone book, nor does it use direct mailings or banner ads. Rather, the company uses "word-of-mouth" advertising. "If you do good work and it's on time," says Brady, "you will get lots of business."

No rent, no marketing budget--and lots of customers. Yes, if done right, an Internet company can make profits.

Tom Taulli