Hello my people! Well here we are again on the net in 2003. Would you be surprised to know that Blacks from the US make up almost 25 percent of US Internet users?
An estimated 2.2 million households spent almost $2 billion shopping on the Internet in 2001, according to the electronic commerce component of the Household Internet Use Survey (HIUS). These households placed 13.4 million orders over the Internet from various locations.
Along with other minorities in the US do you know that we account for almost 30% of the Internet purchasing which amounted to $600,000,000.
Did you know that The New "Big 3" Reasons why Minority and Women owned businesses have problems on the Internet are:
Minority businesses only receive about 3.5% of total corporate purchasing dollars. Women-owned businesses receive less than 4% of all venture capital, less than 3% of corporate purchasing dollars and approximately 2% of Federal contracts.
Or did you know that:
· Only about 13% of the nation's largest minority-owned firms use the Internet to sell products and services
or that
· 42% to 56% of the nation's largest minority-owned firms had Web sites.
Now you would think with all that monetary power that we would be a strong force for good, and economic growth on the Internet but this is not true.
We account for less than ½ % of all money's taken in on the Internet yet we spend enormous sums. We have little lobbying power or say so in the direction the Internet takes. We don't decide if pornography or education should be the focus of legislation. We also have no national organization supporting any programs towards making the Internet either more accessible or more educational or to bring it into minority and urban schools like the programs that proliferate in rural and well to do America.
With this in mind I have started a drive and an organization. We need a national voice! The Minority Internet Professional's Society or M.I.P.S. for short was created with this in mind. We need one voice, one front, to assure that our interest are taken seriously in the next decade as E-commerce and the Internet become as common place as watches are today. I mean look at the proliferation of new web enabled devices such as phones and watches. Look at the proliferation of on-line banks and bill paying on the net. Look at the enormous number of businesses that now can and do, do business on the net. We must be a part of the revolution and not behind it.
It is time we were on the fore front, the first wave of such a revolutionary trend and not taking up the rear. We need to organize and establish our selves today. We can not afford to wait any longer.
Join our national mailing list for only $5.00 and help support the formation of an organization dedicated to procuring the future of ourselves and our children. Your fees will help us finance the filing of our 501 c(3) papers and the establishment of our web site. Later we will be looking to establish business relationships with entities and getting our monthly newsletter into a more permanent format. We need not only your dollars but your time and energies to assure that we ride the wave into the next decade and stay on it throughout the rest of this one. We are recruiting for volunteers as well to help us organize and expand our concept and ideals to the web.
Visit M_I_P_S@Blackplanet.com for further details.
