EDIT (adding an appropriate - though ancient - quote and reference):
"Internet commerce appeals deceptives (sic) to a particularly male fantasy. Guys like the idea that after a short initial period of programming, a computer will tirelessly slave away for them, making them money 24 hours a day. Set up the site, walk away, and watch the money pile up in your bank account.
You can feed this fantasy by reading articles in the business press about http://amazon.com, the perennial poster children for Internet commerce. They set up what is essentially a front-end to a wholesale book distributor's database, and now they are selling books every few seconds. It sounds like they are rolling in money.
Well, it turns out that I know some people who work at amazon.com. The customers don't always fill out the forms exactly right. The books aren't always in stock like they should be. The customers send e-mail asking when their books are going to be shipped. So instead of one Unix box and a big vault for the cash, the company has 200 employees sucking all the money out of it. And remember, this is the best that anyone has really done: high expenses and high sales. More typical is an Internet store with high expenses and low or no sales."