You know I just read a fascinating post along with an interview, which talked about the history of Internet Marketing. It's a little bit different than what you're talking about here but still losely related and I thought it was still worth the mentnion. It's called "An Internet Marketer Turns 12" by David Ledoux, I don't want to post the website here, but it can be found at the url in my name.
You know when talking about the Small Business Automation, one of the things I've recently discovered is having a virtual Assistant. Like having your own virtual staff, I got some amazing tips about it from David Ledoux's interview with Frank Kern's Virtual Assistant on his blog at: