Dot Dot Dot Start a dot.com . . . twiddle your thumbs . . . the money rolls in--there's a hell of a lot left out of <i>that </i>story.

It seems so simple. Buy a $100 Web-authoring program, pay a fewmore bucks for a domain name and space to put up your site, thenwatch 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 Websites are inadequate; they won't succeed," says JanetAsteroff, 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 least70 percent of Web sites are just up there and don't do much atall," says Wally Bock, a Wilmington, North Carolina,e-commerce consultant.

Keep talking to experts, and the general guesstimate is that atminimum, two in three e-businesses are doomed. Andthat's because it's just not as simple as it seems to erecta smoothly functioning Web site that makes money, too.