[thelist] does anybody make any money with e-commerce?

[kris burford [midtempo]]

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>Except the web-developers, consultants, and software-vendors, that is.
>  [snip...]
>
>I feel as developer I am better off advising small businesses not to invest
>in e-commerce, but to provide information, and free additions to their
>products on the web, and to regard it as customer-relations/advertising not
>as a profitable set-up in itself.

+1. but despite that i'm *still* in the process of building another site
with e-commerce functionality. i find that most potential clients,
especially those operating smaller businesses, come to me with a list of
functionality containing pretty much everything. forums and chatrooms and
spinning 3d representations of their products and e-commerce and mailing
lists and content management and animated characters and, well, boo.com
actually.

and, if you start off by saying that all these things are not *really* what
would serve them best, they either think that you're incapable or you're
standing in their way of their making some real money, so they go
elsewhere. people don't like being told that their grand ideas aren't grand.

so i've found the best thing you can do is get them to agree on doing it in
a modular fashion. pick the one bit of functionality that they grasp onto
most tightly and say, "let's get the main bit of the site done and include
x, then see how that goes. if it's a success, then we can add y and z."
that way i can quote realistically, produce nice work and have clients who
will recommend me to their peers.

regards

kris
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