Browsing the shelves of my local library I came upon the book: 101 Internet Businesses You Can Start from Home, by Susan Sweeney (Maximum Press). I checked it out hopeful that the book would be full of advice and ideas that would lead to a successful e-Business.

Part one of the 316 page book is an introduction to doing business on line. It offers short passages of a paragraph or two about storefront features, payment process methods and customer expectations. It’s important to note that this section offers basic information about the features your website should offer, but there is no information about how to set-up or obtain the recommended services for your website.

Part two includes an individual listing of each business and offers an overview of some of the things necessary to start each e-business. Every business has its own section which includes a business model, needed skills, costs to start, number of employees needed, international potential, marketing techniques and online examples.

While each section covers important points, each heading typically offers only 1 - 5 sentences of basic advice or information. There is no in-depth or detailed information. It is mainly a summary of the points you need to consider before you take the next step of investigating the requirements of your chosen business.

The projected start-up costs for most of these e-businesses cover a wide range from $2,000 up to $160,000, with an average of $5,000 to $10,000. There is no indication how these estimates were reached and no information about the type of expenses you should expect to incur. Many of the businesses require special skills or equipment and would be impracticable for someone with no experience to start.

There was very limited information on how to actually build an e-business. Although Ms. Sweeney tells you what you need, she offers no direction on how or where to obtain these things. It would have been nice if information on how to register a domain name, obtain payment processing services, set up shipping or join affiliate programs would have been covered in the relevant sections.

101 Internet Businesses You Can Start from Home is available from Amazon.com