Here's a great business article

dno
> Thats very interesting. I liked the way he
> won the hearts and minds of the reader to
> his viewpoint, then went for the throat with
> his own product.

> Actually I have a little real world
> experience with the area Dien mentions.
> A lot of car dealers get sold into co-op
> sites that are pretty pricey monthly fees,
> that come with training, support etc. We had
> a couple of clients, one selling boats, one
> selling aircraft, who wanted the functions,
> but not the price. I set up a copy of
> phpwebsite for them as a demo, wrote a
> tutorial and let them rip. Oh God what a
> nightmare. They would try to upload photos
> straight out of the megapixel camera and
> tell us the software didnt work cos it
> wouldnt take their photos. They needed to
> learn simple formatting tags, like (B) for
> bold, which seemed to create a brain freeze.
> They would try to upload word docs as text
> etc etc. The support was a nightmare. In the
> end it was easier to let them continue
> emailing mega photos and word docs and do it
> for them. If they had paid for a system like
> the car dealers used, it would have been
> viable. Without extensive training and
> handholding it is just impossible to get the
> non net savvy small business person to
> operate a system like this. Add the human
> support and your price goes up, regardless
> of the software you use.