Dot Dot Dot
Start a dot.com . . . twiddle your thumbs . . . the money rolls in--there's a hell of a lot left out of
that story.
It seems so simple. Buy a $100 Web-authoring program, pay a few
more bucks for a domain name and space to put up your site, then
watch out--you are on the fast track to a cool billion dollars . .
. or at least a couple million. It happened at Amazon.com, eToys,
Autobytel, and more e-businesses than you could click a mouse at.
Except it's not that easy. "I'd say 75 percent of Web
sites are inadequate; they won't succeed," says Janet
Asteroff, director of e-business services with The Concours Group,
a Kingwood, Texas-based e-business consulting company.
Too pessimistic? Not according to some experts. "At least
70 percent of Web sites are just up there and don't do much at
all," says Wally Bock, a Wilmington, North Carolina,
e-commerce consultant.
Keep talking to experts, and the general guesstimate is that at
minimum, two in three e-businesses are doomed. And
that's because it's just not as simple as it seems to erect
a smoothly functioning Web site that makes money, too.
Content Continues Below
Robert McGarvey is Entrepreneur magazine's monthly
"Web" columnist
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