Building Successful Internet Businesses.

Product Listing

   Building Successful Internet Businesses   by David Elderbrock and Nitin Borwankar    919 E. Hillsdale Blvd.,   Ste. 400   Foster City, CA 94404   800-434-3422   Fax: 800-550-2747   ISBN: 0-7645-7001-3   360 pages   Price: $39.99 

Written by a pair of technical consultants, Building Successful Internet Businesses puts the emphasis where you would expect: on the "building" part. It's long on technical advice but short on business or marketing savvy.

If you're eager to get down to business, you'll find this book a slow starter. It chronicles in some detail (four chapters) what's currently happening online--not only on the Web, but also via Internet mail, newsgroups, and chat services. These chapters note the potential business uses along the way but fail to explore them in any depth. Most of that comes later, with sections about online publishing and, finally, electronic commerce. It's not until the last quarter of the book that you find chapters on identifying Internet business opportunities, developing a product, and launching an online business.

Aside from a seemingly backward organization, this book suffers from a preoccupation with the technical workings of its marketplace. (It's a little like having a book about catalog selling being more focused on the mail system than on how to sell via direct marketing.) Still, this is a relatively new medium, and if a medium guide is all you really need, then this may be your resource.