In the early 2000s, I had a “business” selling the internet at retail – on CDs. I would make agreements with content providers – websites like algolist, openbsd, and cooking recipes to place a “buy this site on CD” banner on every page, and in return I invested time in creating a static version with search functionality and recording it onto discs. Links from the pages led to .nadiske.ru, where there was a large order button and upsells from other projects, related and not. A percentage from each disc went to the content owner. Delivery was done by cash on delivery through the Russian Post (meaning, I sent the discs without prior payment), and I collected the money at the post office. The site effectively had two pages – a product list with checkboxes and an order form. However, there were as many sub-sites as there were partners – on each of them, the main product was listed first, and the rest were upsells. The idea was that since we’re already ordering, let’s get something else too”.
So, several interesting problems arose back then. How to match the money received with the orders posted? For each order, I dynamically formed a price – adding pennies so the price was unique. For the end customer, it made no difference whether they agreed to a price of 150 rubles or 150 rubles and 12 kopecks, but for me, it was convenient for matching. Together with the date, it was quite reliable.
The second problem was where to manage orders with statuses and the like. In the end, I chose Microsoft Access. It pulled XML with new orders from the website. I developed the whole system on Access in a couple of hours. It was ideal. By the way, has Access died out yet?
Interestingly, the top sellers were discs that I had produced just to expand the selection – Unixes and Linux. Understandably, there weren’t any links from partner websites to these, but they were bought as add-ons, and ultimately they topped the sales and were the easiest and cheapest to produce.
Also, I developed a search engine for the CD to search through this content. I don’t remember how, but back then it was possible to embed executable code in the browser that opened index.html from the disc. Either there were ASP inserts and DLLs, or something of that nature.
I closed the project when it became clear that decent internet would eventually reach the regions, and the demand for discs would someday wane. Plus, everything was heading in that direction. Additionally, the disks required updates, and it was a pity to invest more effort and time, especially considering the first point.
