A quarter of all Internet users in the UK earn less than £600 per month making low income users the largest group online, according to the latest stats from Internet monitoring outfit, NetValue.

However, dig underneath this headline information and it's revealed that just under half of this group is made up of students - a major and impoverished part of the Net community.

At the other end of the scale, those who earn £4,000 or more a month account for just over 8 per cent of all Net users.

In a statement, Alki Manias of NetValue said: "The Internet is not reserved for a rich elite.

"These figures show that the web is being welcomed by low income earners. Online businesses have to recognise that the Internet market is every bit as diverse as the high street market, and not limited to big earners," he said.

There are now more than 13.5 million homes Net users in the UK. ®

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