jsinger - 1:19 pm on Apr 7, 2008 (gmt 0)

look at how many small players have failed in the last few years.

I haven't noticed that. Certainly, well established small sites aren't closing.

The Dot Com bust was about large publicly owned sites failing. Most never turned a profit and collapsed when venture capital was turned off. OTOH, small e-retailers did very nicely in 2000 thru 2002, the bust period.

>> I you are not planing for million dollar revenue/year, you are pretty much planning to fail

Most sites can survive nicely on $100,000-$400,000 gross margin.

The Dot Com bust resulted from sites/investors planning for unrealistically HIGH sales levels. Can't recall anyone going broke because their cart/back office couldn't handle unexpected revenue growth.