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What are you doing right now? Yes, I know that you're reading this column but what else are you doing? Are you listening to the radio? Are you watching television? Are you perhaps even reading a book or a magazine while you're reading this column?

Does that sound a little bizarre? Could people really be watching television or even reading something else at the same time they're reading this column? Well, yes it does sound a little bizarre ... to me ... because I can multi-task with some things but reading a book or magazine while reading something online is a little beyond me. But lots of people are doing it.

At the moment I'm not only writing this but I'm also listening to a West Coast jazz radio station online and for me, that's about the limit (although I can sometimes fit in some IM chatter too). However there are a lot more people out there who are adept at multi-tasking than I am. In fact a recent survey found that last year over one hundred million adult Net users watched television, listen to the radio or read print publications at the same time as they were surfing the Net.

So why is that important to us? When you're multi-tasking your ability to absorb important information ... or even see it when it's staring you in the face ... is reduced. That has obvious connotations for us online marketers. Perhaps we need to be thinking about how to make our message simpler, more obvious and more in the face of the surfers so that we get our message across.

On the other hand think of the impact you could have if you had your message in front of the surfer and on the radio station they were listening to or on the television station they were watching all at the same time.

Does that sound crazy? Well television advertisers regularly buy blocks of advertising on all the major networks at the same time so that channel surfers get the same ad wherever they go so it's something worth thinking about.

Where is e-commerce headed?
In 2006 online retail spending increased by a staggering 24% over 2005 and reached a figure estimated to be around $US102 billion. While that may sound like an amazing set of numbers it's really not anything we should be surprised about, after all we've seen double digit grown in online spending for years but will it continue?

Well it certainly will ... or it might not ... it all depends on who you talk to. One survey of Internet users found that 41% of those surveyed thought that they would increase their online spending in 2007.

Another survey by Jupiter Research suggested that the increase in online spending for 2007 might drop to around 16% and begin to decline even further in the years ahead. Jupiter suggested that by 2011 the annual increase in online sales would have dropped to a single digit percentage.

However, it's not all gloom and doom for everyone involved in selling things online. Jupiter suggests that while actual online sales may slacken off more and more people will be influenced by online advertising or be doing research online for products that they will buy offline.

For those of us who do have e-commerce sites online, or are planning to move into online e-commerce, those figures are interesting. They suggest that there's still time to get online and make money from sales but things could begin to get a little tougher in the years ahead.

For those of us who are involved in affiliate marketing things could also begin to get a little tighter in the years ahead and now might be your last chance to develop information sites that will have high traffic numbers within a few years.

If you have sites like that you will then be able to benefit from advertising revenue as well as affiliate marketing. But the time to start building those sites is definitely now and not when the online sales growth begins to slow.

What's working these days?
The results of another survey were released last week. This survey was aimed at online marketers and asked them what marketing tactics were working for them at the moment.

In 2006 search engine marketing was the most popular way of marketing for these guys. Number two was email lists that the marketers had compiled themselves. They did not see much value in email lists that came from other sources.

For 2007 those online marketers who were surveyed suggested that they would be looking at blogs, social networking and video ads. I have to say that in the last few months I've seen some very creative video ads and even I've taken the time to watch them.

So there are a few things to think about over the weekend but don't spend all weekend thinking about business. Instead get out there and spend at least some of your time doing just one thing - having fun.