(FORTUNE Magazine) – Online retailers can't seem to catch a break. They spent millions on customer service and infrastructure to make sure that last year's Nightmare Before Christmas didn't recur.

The good news is that the presents arrived on time.

But that's the best that can be said for Dot-Bomb 2000. Internet sales this holiday season grew only 61.5% over last year. This sounds impressive until you realize that e-tailers needed sales to double--at least--to finance all their capital spending.

After watching 130-plus dot-coms go under last year, shoppers stuck with Web ventures they knew. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, seven of the ten biggest holiday e-commerce sites belonged to retail giants such as Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney, Sears, and Target. The big exception was Amazon. Two weeks before Christmas, the e-tail giant had more shopping trips than eToys, walmart.com, barnesandnoble.com, and jcpenney.com combined. In total, it shipped more than 31 million gifts.

For all but a handful of e-tailers, the next few months will be pretty bleak. Just try getting a venture capitalist to fund your company when you can't even sell merchandise during the busiest shopping season of the year. "Half of the e-commerce companies will have to raise capital to make it through 2001," says Anthony Noto, an Internet analyst at Goldman Sachs. "And this holiday season was an important factor in whether they'll be able to do that."

Those who do survive until Christmas 2001 will need a large customer base (Amazon has 25 million), strong marketing (like 1-800-Flowers.com), and solid order fulfillment and infrastructure (like Amazon, again). One of these alone doesn't cut it. (Rest in peace, Pets.com.) Of all e-commerce companies, Noto predicts that five, including Amazon, Global Sports, and 1-800-Flowers.com, will join the ranks of eBay and turn a profit in at least one quarter this year.

Of course, in the end, Wall Street will be the one that assesses the true winners this season. So where did shareholders flock after Christmas? You guessed it: J.C. Penney, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Circuit City.