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Part of any successful business is finding the right technology to give your employees. But with the myriad of printers, computers, network cards, scanners, and so on, it's very frustrating to find the right products.

Until 1995, Tom Fair worked as a consultant, helping companies find the best technology solutions. When the Internet started to emerge, he saw a great opportunity: Build a site that lets people make informed decisions when purchasing technology. The result is BuyinGuide, based in Charleston, S.C.

BuyinGuide is full of useful information. But, unlike other shopping sites, BuyinGuide's information is updated daily. What's more, the site tries to provide you with all the relevant sources of information. Many shopping sites will link to one source of product reviews. As for BuyinGuide, there are links to many product reviews across the Web.

"What is very important is the information be unbiased," says Fair. Basically, BuyinGuide obtains product information from the manufacturer, then rewrites it to strip out the hype and confusing jargon. "We strive to be completely objective," Fair says. "Our goal is not to push products."

The site is divided into three sections:

1.Computer BuyinGuide: To use this, you answer merely four questions. From there, you'll get a list of one to two computers from each top computer manufacturer. Click the computer you want, and you'll see a list of the specifications (hard drive, price, RAM, and so on). If you like the computer, you can buy it online.

2.Software BuyinGuide: You can search by name or category (games, education, etc.) For example, suppose you select games. You'll see a list of packages. What's very cool is you can do side-by-side comparisons. Select several of the packages, then a table will be generated, showing how the different packages compare (such as in terms of price, operating system, RAM/disk space, etc.)

Of course, there is information on the well-known products -- such as Microsoft Office, PhotoShop, Norton Utilities -- as well as lesser-known products, such as Interact: Guide to Financial Statements. In all, there are more than 17,000 software titles in the database.

3.Hardware BuyinGuide: Here you'll find information on hard drives, data storage, printers, modems, and so on (again, you can search by name or category). You can also do side-by-side comparisons.

Marketing:

Crucial to any successful website is marketing. BuyinGuide has done the traditional forms of marketing, such as banner ads and public relations. But perhaps its most creative marketing efforts have been its promotions. "It's what we have the most fun doing," Fair says.

Every week, BuyinGuide has a contest to give away five programs. Of course, to participate, you need to fill in personal information. Also, every month there's a hardware giveaway -- of which some of the products retail for as much as $800. It costs BuyinGuide nothing to do these promotions. The reason is the manufacturers see it as an opportunity to generate interest in their products. "These promotions have been very successful," says Fair. "It creates much repeat traffic." Although, not all the promotions are for profit. BuyinGuide has a Scholarship section, where students can register to win $1,000 for college costs. "Many of our employees are actually students," Fair says. "Everyone loved the idea."

Business Model

The primary business model for BuyinGuide is advertising revenues. "On our site, we have a customer survey," says Fair. "It indicates that 80 percent of those who visit our site are ready to buy. This is very strong evidence for advertisers." Besides selling banner ads, BuyinGuide is experimenting with having corporate sponsorships of certain subcategories of the site. For example, Hewlett-Packard may be a sponsor for the printer area.

The Future

Fair is not slowing down; he has many ideas he wants to implement. One is to create a BuyinGuide on CD-ROM, which will be bundled with computers and distributed at computer retailers, such as CompUSA. There may even be a print edition of the BuyinGuide. There are also plans for bringing out other Buyin guides -- even for other industries, such as cars. But perhaps the best evidence of the success of BuyinGuide is the customer response. While I was talking to Fair on the phone, an e-mail crossed his screen. It read: "This site is the best thing since Tupperware!"

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