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The new-millennium middleman understands that customers actually prefer working with intermediaries who add value to whatever they're buying.

In fact, some of the Web's most successful companies have been intermediaries. Search engines like Yahoo serve as middlemen between people who are seeking something and people who are offering to provide it. EBay, the pioneering auction site, offers buyers and sellers a way to find each other online.

Then there's service. The Web's most lasting legacy may be that it's created an expectation of 24-hour help, in person, in real time. In a 1999 survey, Forrester Research, in Cambridge, Mass., found that more than a third of people who bought something online requested service at some point during the experience. In other words, being able to buy the product or service anytime wasn't enough; nor was it enough to be able to contact customer service later if there was a problem with the purchases. From the moment people log on to a Web site, Forrester concluded, they expect to be able to turn to other people for help.

But that expectation creates new opportunities, too. Service is, in fact, the new differentiator, as Geoffrey Moore writes in Living on the Fault Line: Managing for Shareholder Value in the Age of the Internet. "Even the most product-centric of companies -- automobile manufacturers, factory equipment vendors, and raw materials providers, real atom guys -- are now assigning their best and brightest to the task of differentiating on services," Moore writes.

Customers increasingly place a high value on companies that offer one-stop shopping -- access to a range of services in a single location. That, analysts say, bodes well for companies like Accuship.com, a Memphis-area company that shows its corporate customers all their price and service options for shipping packages. (See " Express Delivery.") Accuship is, in fact, a prime example of a trend highlighted in a 10-year business forecast prepared in 1998 by the Institute for the Future. The concept of disintermediation is "a mirage," futurist Paul Saffo writes in that report. "It's directly at odds with what is actually happening." In fact, Saffo writes, the Internet and other technologies "enable new kinds of transactions, which lead to new market niches and, overall, make the market environment more complex."

Such changes will, of course, kill off some intermediaries, but, as Saffo notes, they will create opportunities for others. Meanwhile, those who too readily bought into the wholesale slaughter of the middleman might want to keep Saffo's big-picture conclusion in mind for next time: "Beware of conventional wisdom, for it is nearly always wrong."

Anne Stuart is a senior writer at Inc. Technology.

With no fanfare and little venture money, the companies profiled here are delivering real stuff to paying customers and making a buck in the process. There may not be any "new rules," but there are rules, and we suspect every one of them will look familiar.

DVD Empire: The Bootstrapper
SitStay.com: The Mom-and-Pop
Shoebuy.com: The Scorekeepers
Accuship.com: The Traditionalist
Fashionmall.com: The Conservative
Healthcommunities.com: The Underwriter