As a small business owner (partner, actually), I can address this question
below:
"Manuel Lemos" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
[EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> AFAIK, it costs a lot more money to have any start and operate a
> e-commerce business than a telephone. What is the motivation to spend
> that much money? Internet hype?
On our website, we use PHP/MySQL to serve up our complete schedule plus
juggle event requests from different kinds of people, maintain the look of
the site, and serve up audio clips. There's also a large backend component,
including maintaining our contact lists (very important for a quartet), a
database of all music we know and composers, in order to generate a quick
program, our press kit, etc. The PHP end has over 4000 lines of code and
MySQL has hundreds of tables. We aren't involved in retail, but that may
change.
To start up the website for my string quartet, there were a few sunk costs.
The computer to develop on, the audio equipment to convert audio clips from
recordings to streaming content, and then there is the monthly fee for
hosting.
I already owned the computer, as I use it for other things like having a
computer in the house :).
total extra cost: $0
I bought the audio equipment in order to enable the quartet to master our
own CDs
total relevant cost: $0 (in fact, we saved over what it would cost to go to
a big studio)
The hosting fee is $10/month.
The registration fee for 2 domains (chiaraquartet.net/chiaraquartet.com) is
$70/year
internet access is free through the university we're in residence at. cost:
$0
Total cost: $70+120=$190/year
Total cost for phone line: $30/month without long distance.
Total phone cost: $30*12 = $360/year
There you have it. $360 is most definitely > $190.
Have we gotten any benefit off of the website? After a year of hosting (and
not directly selling anything other than the quartet), several presenters
have approached us through the website to offer concerts that paid much more
than the cost of maintaining the website. We've gotten the same benefit
from having a phone.
So, it is definitely worth it, even for a business completely unrelated to
technology or even retail sales.
Regards,
Greg Beaver
--
The Chiara String Quartet
http://www.chiaraquartet.net
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