E-commerce, Honesty and re-inventing the wheel

Lonna, here goes:

The guy I was talking to has a 30,000 item catalog.  Everybody I know farms
stuff like that out ("outsources", if you prefer). I know of no one in his
or her right mind who would even attempt to do a 30,000 item catalog as a
Web Wiz. Converting databases to catalogs is what geeks get paid for. They
get paid well, and they are worth every dime we pay them.

The problem is: what if I hadn't asked him up front how many items in his
catalog? I'd be working for free until I died and never see daylight again,
or else I'd have quoted a price that didn't include the sub-contracting and
wound up paying money for the privilege of creating his new Web Site.

I told him up front that I was going to hire help. Not that I HAD to hire
help because I don't know it ALL, but that I CHOOSE to because that's the
way I do it.

What a really dumb thing to do, telling every potential client that you're
not a left-brain-super-geek/hacker who knows it all in order to feel
"honest." Nobody expects anybody to know it all, they just expect to get a
good product on time and within expectations. Michelangelo was hired to
paint the Sistine Chapel, but I really doubt if he was expected to re-invent
paint or that he made all his own chisels to sculpt David.

If you were an architect building an office complex would you be dishonest
in not telling your client that you weren't going to make all your own nails
and drive every last one yourself? Of course not. Would you make your own
hammer too?

If you did say you were going to do it all yourself, the client would think
you were a moron.

Whose idea was it that you had to be the carpenter, the plumber and the
electrician as well as the designer? Programmers and such have a place in
the world too, and I didn't get started in this just to go to night school
for the rest of my life and put perfectly good people out of work.


For a start with shopping carts and catalog software, go here and read this:

http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol2/hosting_no5.htm

An excerpt:
<snip>
Software licenses for e-commerce catalog applications range from $249 to
$3,500 at the low end, and can cost many times that if you need
customization, or serve a very large number of customers.
<snip>

Jim

----- Original Message -----
From: Lonna Poland <lonna(at)granbury.com>
To: Hwg-Graphics <hwg-graphics(at)hwg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 1999 1:45 PM
Subject: e-commerce




Everybody wants on the Web but few want to pay for it. I just told a
>guy yesterday that the license for the catalogue software specific to his
>e-commerce site would cost $3,500

Is this the software for "shopping cart" technology?  I have been asked
about the shopping cart sites, but I haven't heard the term, "e-commerce".
Is this the same thing?  Also, what is the name of the software to set up
shopping cart capabilities, and is $3500 the approximate cost for it?

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