The biggest mistake new e-businesses make is not initially putting enough money into venture. Just because it's Internet majority of new businesses do not put kind of resources behind it that they would any other endeavor. Many try free hosting, hiring a nephew to do design, using free shopping cart scripts, etc. The hard truth is while Net is great for reaching a global audience it also makes for global competition. If your selling books you're no longer competing with other book store in town or on same street - you are now competing with Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

The flip side is that if you plan well enough (or contract a reputable firm) you can minimize long term cost of running a successful enterprise. By choosing right infrastructure you can minimize time it takes for design and information updates, inventory management and pricing changes, and all other aspects of managing entire operation. One solution is to set up a data base solution in conjunction with a series of programs to handle everything from displaying your sites pages to handling ordering process. And while this does take more time to set up, you can get a data base that will handle all but largest businesses for free called MySQL - trick is to know when to use a free solution and when to pay piper. This is where learning from others mistakes comes in.