Customer Rating:  
Summary: Excellent Information for E-Commerce
Comment: I am a few weeks away from buying a very expensive website to launch and e-commerce business and this book has come in very helpful in making some key choices for the project. I like the interviews and success stories from actual businesses.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Start Your own E-Business
Comment: Start Your Own e-Business: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Success contains a combination of tips for those individuals looking to start an e-business and interviews with individuals that have e-businesses. The tips range from how to build a website that will suit your business needs through ways of gaining much needed capital funding to learning how to better serve your potential customers. The interviews include individuals with well-known success stories and those entrepreneurs who are still climbing the ladder to success.
I really like the duel aspect of this book. The tips state outright the boundaries and rules pertaining to e-business. The interviews not only reinforce these notions but also show how others entrepreneurs have added their own creative flair to these basic foundations. Moreover, though the book shows the dangers and potential downfalls associated with e-business, many of the interviews are quite inspirational showing that entrepreneurs can succeed in dot com industry.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Plenty of nothing
Comment: This book contains a few good tips and the rest is interviews with people about their specific situation which might not pertain to yours. It certainly did not pertain to mine. Very disappointing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The big book of dot-com cliches
Comment: Usually the only time you hear this many dot-com cliches, is when someone is making fun of dot-com cliches.
Here are some quotes :
"It's war on the monitors, and more web sites will die than will survive. What will yours do?"
"The internet is for real, and in the 21st century, if you're not on it, you're not in business. That is today's reality byte."
OK, fine, so they use some cheesy language. Does the book do its job at teaching you to "Start Your Own E-Business"? In a general way, yes. You go through the process of identifying a niche market and then acting quickly to meet their needs.
This is a pre-Google book, so many of the specific details are obsolete. For example, it advises getting websites indexed in search engines by "Add URL", and it never mentions the possible uses of PayPal or Google AdSense. Critical technology for a modern website.
Finally, understand this- the book is somewhat targeted towards people who want to try and build the next $100,000,000 company through venture capital. At least 50% of the book is dedicated to discussions about investors, and it unfortunately has a pie-in-the-sky feel to it at times.
Overall, I give it 3 stars, which is fair, because there are legitimate shortcomings that other reviewers have neglected to tell you about.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great book to read when you want to add a Web site to your business' marketing mix
Comment: eBusiness supposedly refers to all business processes that take place across electronic networks. I'm not sure this book is really about starting your own ebusiness. It clearly is not a step-by-step guide to success. Instead, it is a wonderful book on just about all aspects a business should consider when establishing an Internet presence.
The issues covered are:
1. Should a business sell goods and/or services via a Web site while also doing so through a bricks and mortar storefront? Will one distribution vehicle steal business from the other? Will they complement each other? Is one better than the other?
2. What is involved in putting together a simple Web site yourself? How about paying someone else to put one together for you?
3. The nuts and bolts of Web hosts and domains.
4. Are affiliate programs good?
5. Search engines: their purpose, and how to get indexed by them.
6. Having credit card payment options.
There was some coverage of getting your small business financed. Should you go it alone, contact angel investors, or deal with venture capitalists? I thought this material was well presented.
I also thought the real world examples and the interviews of people who have been successful with having an Internet presence was great.
I've been studying Web sites and online marketing since 1998 when I purchased a copy of Frontpage 98. A lot of what I have learned over the years is covered in this book. Sure, there could have been more written about affiliate programs and other pay-per-click schemes, but at least this book covered the subject. There could have been more about low cost Web hosting solutions, but at least this books covered the subject. And there could have been more about the need to understand graphics programs if you decide to build your own simple Web site. But all in all this was a wonderful book and I highly recommend that small business owners definitely give this one a read. It's getting 5 stars because its content is great.
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