Dotcom Overload It's not enough just to have ".com" at the end of your business's name anymore. These days, you need some serious marketing strategies to help you rise above the dotcom shakeout.

Don Mayer was a refugee from software sales, trying to get his start-up off the ground, when a friend suggested giving the new company a name reflective of its lowly status among the dotcom giants. Mayer didn't like the idea at first, but the more he considered how it would help him stand out among the online computer retailers with techy-sounding names, the more he liked it.

With all the failed dotcoms out there, who survived the fallout-and how? Read Easy.com, Easy.go.

Small Dog Electronics, the name he finally chose for his Waitsfield, Vermont, online computer retailer, has just 13 employees. Yet Smalldog.com showed up on Interactive Week's 2000 ranking of the top 500 Internet companies (in 299th position). It's more than the name that did it, of course. That was just the first step in a comprehensive-and successful-effort to make Mayer's company stand out in an overcrowded dotcom world.