Deanna Brown, the president and CEO of Powerful Media, whose ambitious subscription-based website Inside.com set out in May to become the Daily Variety of cyberspace, had been held up at the office, she told her friend, finalizing the debut issue of [Inside], her company's new magazine. That's right, magazine--as in a sheaf of stapled-together pages covered in ink and distributed by snail mail. Brown is not alone. Like the wagon-train homesteaders who traveled west only to straggle back to civilization when their crops didn't grow in the thin soil, the pioneers behind Inside.com--magazine veterans all--and a number of similar websites have seen the future, paused, reflected and decided to trek back to the past. Along with Inside, new magazines such as Space Illustrated, Nerve, Travelocity and Expedia Travels have morphed from their cyber origins. In an interview with the New York Times, Brown admitted that her website fell short (some suspect far short) of its original goal of signing up 30,000 paying subscribers at about $200 a pop. Like other online information sources, from Microsoft's Slate.com to TheStreet.com, Inside.com overestimated people's willingness to spend real money for a virtual product. "It's one of the Darwinian realities of starting a new business now," says Michael Hirschorn, co-chairman of Powerful Media. "You don't have the luxury to kick back and say, 'Let's build brand awareness' and 'leverage eyeballs.' You have to prove yourself very quickly."