It's that time of year again, folks. The calm after the holiday storm. All your relatives have finally gone home. You've settled back in at work after far too few days off. The kids are back in school. The neighbors have finally taken down those 1,253,890 Christmas lights that kept causing brownouts in the neighborhood all December. And, most importantly, you finally have time to get back on the internet.

Of course, after a long strenuous holiday season, it may not be possible to just jump right back into your previous internet routine. You may need a little assistance from a Trained Internet Professional. Someone who knows the 'ropes', and can get you back in the cyberspace 'swing of things' in no time. Unfortunately, unless you're willing to pay $24.95 and download several e-books, it looks like the only help you're going to get will be in the form of:

The Online Jester's Getting Back To E-Business Checklist 2003

(1) Get That Email Caught Up

First and foremost, you'll want to get caught up on your unread email. Resist the urge to just delete all the thousands of emails in your inbox. After all there may actually be a few important emails hiding in there amongst the spam and the hundreds of emails from every website you've ever visited wishing you 'happy holidays' in a desperate attempt to get you to visit their website again.

For instance, you may have received an email or two from old friends who care about you so much that instead of doing something insincere like coming to visit you, or calling you on the telephone, they, being the real friends that they are, have sent you a free e-card that takes 3 minutes to load and, quite possibly, contains a virus. These are the types of emails you want to be sure you don't delete.

You'll also want to be sure and save any emails that have unreadable subject lines, or no subject line at all, as these emails are usually from your mother.

I recommend getting your email caught up ASAP, even if it means skipping a few meals, because until all the email is read you cannot move on to the second point on our checklist, which is:

(2) Checking All Your Statistics

Since it's a new year, and you've been away from cyberspace for awhile, you'll want to find out where you stand financially online. This means checking your statistic pages and account balances for all the affiliate and paid-to programs you have ever joined. This means remembering a LOT of passwords. Unless you're like me and use the same password for everything. Then all you'll have to remember are all your different login and user IDs. These are even harder to recall than passwords, because, whereas your password is usually something sensible like your mother's maiden name backwards-in German or your age, weight, and favorite vegetable combined, User IDs have a tendency to get out of hand. One problem is that the first three IDs or logins you choose will already be taken. This never fails. Even if you are the first person to ever sign up at the website, your first 3 (or more) choices will be 'already in use'. So now you have to rack your brain for more. So usually you come up with something weird like 'crzyychick02', or 'stud78man4', or in an extreme case-'mike'. All of which, needless to say, you will lose countless brain cells trying to remember. So while you still have the amount of cerebral activity left that is needed to read, we will move on to our third point on our checklist, which is:

(3) Tweak Your Website For The New Year

As a serious internet marketer you realize that you can't expect visitors to your website to be subjected to the same content they saw in 2002. Therefore it is necessary for you to review all your webpages and find ways to change, and hopefully improve, the 'look' and 'feel' of your website. I would like to give you some pointers here, but I, personally, don't know how a website is supposed to 'feel'.

It may also be a good idea to re-submit your website to the major search engines. Before you do this you will, of course, want to optimize your website so that the search engines will like it. This may involve incorporating things you do not, and WILL NOT, ever understand like meta tags, doorway pages, and various HTML tags into your website. This may also involve putting actual content on your website instead of just banners and pictures of you and your pets. And now before I get nasty emails from all you pet lovers out there, we'll move on to the next item on our checklist, which is:

(4) Find New Programs To Join

The fact that you made NO money online last year should not deter you from looking for more programs to join this year. The beginning of the year is a great time to do this because there are always lots of new programs in 'Prelaunch' around this time. When a website is in prelaunch it basically means that the owners of the site are out of money and are waiting for your money to finish developing the website or to finish paying for their son's college tuition. It does not mean that there will ever be a 'Launch'. But never hearing from a website again is a small price to pay for getting in early.

You'll also want to be on the lookout for any new programs that include a 'forced matrix'. No one really knows what that term means, and you may be able to get a few confused newbies to sign-up under you. And on that note we head fearlessly into our final item on the checklist which is:

(5) Remember To Have Fun

Just because you can't seem to find a good way to make money online, and your website hosting service has raised their prices, and your ISP has raised their prices, and the only affiliate program you ever made money with went belly up, and Ebay canceled your membership, doesn't mean you can't have fun online this year. There are plenty of websites and ezines on the World Wide Web that can provide you with hours of fun and enjoyment. And as soon as I find out where they are I'll let you know about them. For now though, I've gotta go. I've got a few belated e-cards to send out...