Internet news was explosive today!

The financial press had a variety of stories ranging from Barry Diller spinning out Expedia.com as a new public company from his IAC empire to an interesting article in The Wall Street Journal about search engines that find the cheapest price for current bestsellers.

But the best dealt with a story in The Wall Street Journal entitled "How an Artist Fell Into a Profitable Online Card Business" by Gwendolyn Bounds. I would suggest that anyone in ecommerce clip this article and keep it on their desks as a reminder that there are still thousands of great ecommerce stories to come.

For those who will not read the article let me summarize: A British artist named Jacquie Lawson has created an incredibly successful online greeting card company. Some metrics: two employees, no marketing costs, revenues approaching $5 million, tiny inventory of 500 greeting cards, and an $8.00 per annum subscription price!

The success of jacquielawson.com is just one of thousands of ecommerce gems that few of us ever learn about. And it reminds me of our good fortune to have purchased a company called arttoday.com (which is comprised of photos.com, clipart.com, flashcomponents.com and animations.com) about 18 months ago. Revenue at the time (June 30, 2003) was about the size of Jacquie's and the business grew by word of "net." We have gone on to add more components (both organically and by acquisition), but the basic business continues to grow by leaps and bounds because of the value offered by the various services.

As an aside I must mention that my mother of 89 years has been sending Lawson cards for several years. Shame on me for not checking out the source. I was not able to reach my mother today to ask her how she found out about the Lawson service, but will report on this shortly.