Rule 2 : Ask your friends to do it!

"Friend is doing it for me"

In general, alot of SMEs tend to look for "friends" to handle their IT solutions. It could be the same vendor that does their PCs to networking to web hosting, anything IT related. Alot of people didn't realised that "IT" itself is cover various aspects, not to mentioned "Internet".

Asking friend to help out to do an ecommerce website could be a good idea as it may help you save costs and the requirments may not be rigid.

However, on the other hand, it could be a drastic results that it may turn out to be. More often, "friend" will turn out to be the worst candidate!

For example, normally such friend are helping out on a vounlteeraily basis (ie, no payment), he or she may not be fully committeed to develop or maintain the website. While times token sum are given, it may not be enough to cover the time and effort put in.

In some cases, the friend may not really understand the needs and solutions. Out of friendship, he or she may simple try to help to develop a solution that is not suitable.

It will be good to listen to recommendation by friends, but do beware of any potential idden risks or cost.

In some cases, an IT-savvy "friend" may be roped in as part of the team. However, the risks invovled is the person may put things like domain name under personal rather than under the business. At such, if there is any argue/fallout, the person will still retain the "ownership" of all the contents. To prevent such case, it would be good to always insists to know the registrar details and ask how many years it had been in this line.