Category: E-Commerce

Should We Buy “Guaranteed Traffic” or “50,000 visitors”?

By , May 24, 2007

It really is “too good to be true.”  Several dozen web sites promise to deliver 10,000 to 100,000 visitors to your web site, for a low fee — much less than one cent per visitor, which is the cheapest you could ever draw traffic through Google’s AdWords program.

Paying for “guaranteed traffic” is a complete waste of money: Read more »

In the Company of Good and Evil (by Winn & Power)

By , February 21, 2002

February 21, 2002 Last October, I praised an extraordinary book called Dot.Bomb, an entertaining chronicle of the rise and fall of Value America by J. David Kuo. At that time, I wished for more information about Value America’s technology, and a more detailed account of the pre-IPO days. Be careful what you wish for. Read more »

Dot.Con (John Cassidy): Worthless

By , February 10, 2002

February 10, 2002 — Late last year, I read a truly awful book: Stephan Paternot’s A Very Public Offering, a poorly-written account of the rise and fall of TheGlobe.com.  The company has consistently been cited by critics as one of the worst/best examples of absurd internet-stock mania, but this book by the company’s founder offered no real apologies, and provided very little insight.  I don’t blame Paternot, a young man who was willingly manipulated by “market makers,” and who clearly is not a professional writer.

But John Cassidy can make no such excuses for Dot.Con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. Cassidy offers no insight, and even fails to identify the “con” promised by the book’s title. And his sloppy writing, riddled with factual and typographical errors, insures that the book can’t be accepted even as a “digest” of the events he reports. Read more »

Dot.Bomb (J. David Kuo)

By , October 26, 2001

(October 26, 2001) I read a great book today, cover-to-cover, and I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wonders what really happened in the dot-com explosion and collapse.  Indeed, I’d recommend it to anyone who is interested in business; heck, I recommend it to anyone, period.

The book is called “Dot.Bomb ” (beware, it’s one of two books released this fall with the same title). The full title is “Dot.Bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet Goliath,” by J. David Kuo. (I decided to buy the book after reading a brief comment about it in the fall issue of Brill’s Content magazine.) Read more »

E-Commerce Business: Focus, Focus, Focus

By , October 19, 2001

October 29, 2001 Last week, when I read the book Dot.Bomb (by J. David Kuo), one amusing recurring theme was quite familiar. It seemed that every few pages, Kuo’s CEO would “announce” (or another employee would “suggest”) a drastic new direction for Value America, which was started as an internet retailer. Read more »

Blown to Bits (Evans & Wurster)

By , December 28, 1999

(December 28, 1999) You must read this book, “Blown to Bits.”

I rarely recommend books to others. Read more »

Thoughts on Priceline.com and LastMinuteTravel.com

By , December 11, 1999

December 11, 1999 Priceline.com claims to offer a unique, useful, consumer-helpful “angle” on travel.  I find it useless. Read more »

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