Ecommerce Books: Starting Online Business

Reviewer: Vivek Chandran (Bombay, India)

Rather than portray e-business as a huge effort that will consume everything and will transform the world, this is a solid book on getting down to the nuts and bolts of real world. If most e-business books are geared to business suits and theories, this book is down to working uniforms and getting things done without a lot of people or time. It does not assume that you have some fancy systems or technology or that you are a big company with hundreds of IT people. It can fit start up firms and small firms as well. The book provides a detailed roadmap and tells you how to deal with the pitfalls that you will find along the way. The extensive experience of the authors in doing e-business really shows in this book in the issues, lessons learned, and examples. In using the book we have already used 40 of the guidelines and run across over twenty issues. If you want to do e-business, buy this book. If you want theory and vague concepts go elsewhere.


Reviewer: J. Morley (Atlanta, Georgia)

One thing that I liked about the book was the analysis of specific issues across an entire part of the book. There is a chapter on outsourcing as well. The steps in the book can be carried out in parallel. We have been using the book to lay out our project. The book really gets into business and politics as well as technical issues. The book points out that e-business is a program not a project. Commitment from the bottom of the organization is as important as upper management support. This is an important point that the book makes. Another thing--the book does not assume that you have an ERP. A company used the method that had an ERP and found it very useful, however. The book contains little of the "chain" and business model jargon--thankfully. As an example of common sense, the book suggests that you keep searching for the answer to the question "What is success?" This turns out to be critical in e-business since you gain a better understanding as you work your way through installing e-business. The examples and lessons learned in the book are of real use. They are detailed and specific. We have found that there are also good hints on how to manage vendors and consultants and what the roles of consultants and business departments should be. Overall, an excellent read.

Reviewer: Thomas J McGinley Jr (New York, NY USA)

In her book, 101 Best Dot Coms To Start, Lynie Arden does a great job stimulating creative thoughts among those readers interested in starting their own online businesses. In addition to actually gaining some great ideas from the book, I enjoyed learning about the people behind the 101 Best Dot Coms. These are people from all walks of life who have a common bond of having found success on the internet.


Reviewer: Leonard J. Laskowski "President of LJL Seminars (tm)" (Stratford, CT United States)

This books serves as a great reference for those looking to include the internet as part of their business marketing mix. Reading how other companies have used the internet to grow their businesses provides some very interesing insights.
- Lenny Laskowski, professional speaker author of the popular program, "7 Key Decisions Your Website Visitor Needs to Make Before Deciding to Do Business With You" and the book, "10 Days to More Confident Public Speaking"

Reviewer: A reader

This well-written, complte guide to Internet publicity is the culmination of years of experience. Steve O'Keefe has been helping people get online publicity for many years, and he summarizes what he has learned in this outstanding text.


Reviewer: A reader

I wanted to like this book. But I was taken aback by the author's attitude toward email campaigns - he says you'll never get anywhere if you don't use opt-out marketing to build a list. People will complain, but you can find an ISP that ignores their complaints. I was also surprised to find him radically misinformed about search engine traffic. Most people who have a web site in a specialized niche find search engines bring them lots and lots of beautifully targeted visitors, but he says that only sites with megabudgets get search engine traffic. His discussion of meta tags is out of date as well. He has some good ideas, but I hope people don't take him as an authority.


Reviewer: Don Bates (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

Steve O'Keefe's first book, Publicity on the Internet, changed the way people in public relations and marketing, particularly those in the publishing industry, publicized and promoted books, companies, products, services and other endeavors on the World Wide Web. For the first time, someone had outlined -- in great detail and with remarkable candor -- what we had to do to take advantage of the Internet's innumerable opportunities for getting "talked about" in cyberspace and, by extension, in our offices, living rooms and places of play. In his new book, Complete Guide to Internet Publicity -- a complete overhaul of his earlier work -- Steve goes several steps further and makes the art of Internet publicity almost a no-brainer for professionals and non-professionals alike. With a host of specific case examples, he tells us how to harness the power of online news rooms, discussion groups, newsletters, chat tours, online seminars, contests and what he calls "syndication" (a great concept unto itself) to develop positive publicity far beyond what most of us could achieve or afford with traditional public relations or direct mail marketing, as important and impressive as these approaches can be in certain circumstances. But the book is far more than a collection of tactics. Most important, it is salted with expert advice and counsel on how to use the Internet wisely. Steve is a practitioner of what he describes, but he is also a teacher who cares about the values of his readers. He wants us to succeed credibly and accountably with our publicity initiatives, not at all costs. Philosophically, he reverses the old maxim, "the end justifies the means." Like Camus, he thinks "the means justify the end." Still and all, the book is a wonderfully practical primer that helps us to concentrate on creativity and substance in generating the kind of publicity that we only dreamed of a few years back. The book is also well-organized, well-written and well-edited, three qualities that make it not only easy to read, but easy to grasp and easy to translate into action. If there is a "best" book on Internet publicity, this has to be the choice hands down.