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

[aardvark]

> From: "Richard Bennett" <richard.bennett at skynet.be>
[...]
> >i've personally built a bunch of sites where the e-commerce portion
> >was so successful it supplanted all mail, fax, and phone orders... a
> >couple of them use the site (and its db) as their new order system
> >for the company, instead of feeding the site's orders into their old
> >system... each of those business is less than 30 people... or 20...
>
> Again, if you have any URLs it'd be great, especially where you
> suspect the businesses are actually making a profit. It's easy to sell
[...]

i sense you don't believe me...

unfortunately, a lot of work i do is as an outsourced resource, so i
don't get to brag about too many of my gigs...

i'd be happy to send you a few offlist, though...

> a lot (well...) if you sell cheap, (see Amazon) , but I wouldn't
> automatically call that a success, there are so many e-commerce
> companies that last just as long as their financing, and then fold.
> The problem seems to be that it is hard to recoup your initial costs -
> either you don't sell all that much, which means you never end up
> covering all the server and website (and helpdesk, logistics,

which has happened to a couple clients, well after we advised them
that online selling might not be what they hope for their products
and their business model...

it's important to know

> guarantee, refunds etc) costs, or you do sell a lot, and you find
> yourself having to invest in a more professional infrastructure, which
> suddenly costs much more than you initially expected, when making your
> business-plan.

the latter has been the case, but the system we built was more
than adequate to handle *all* their orders, and so it took over... in
this case, the client actually made out quite well...