Brina.com was started several years ago in an attempt to save precious publicity.

Here's what happened. I decided to quit my 9 to 5 job and start an ecommerce web site. This was a few years ago and the market was relatively unflooded. I found a company back East that would drop-ship my electronics orders. I spent three months setting up the catalog and established costly merchant accounts for credit card processing.

I was using a piece of software called "Merchandizer" to set up the shopping cart catalog and because I used their tech support so often, the owners got to know me well. So when Steve Bass of PC World magazine contacted Merchandizer about a piece on do-it-yourself ecommerce merchants, they pointed him towards me.

It was very exciting. We scheduled a photographer to come out to the house and take a photo shoot of me at my computer hard at work. We conducted three interviews where Steve asked me why I had been so successful and probed my mind for the secrets of a true visionary. I called everyone I knew and bragged about how I was going to be in PC World magazine and would they like a signed copy?

That's about the time the store I had created, Galaxy Alley, was opening its virtual doors. I checked my email every three minutes awaiting my first order. On the third day, the first order had been placed.

It was for over $4,000 worth of consumer electronics. It was placed using a stolen credit card from an Eastern block country.

Two days later, another bogus order. And then another.

The problem was that every time an online transaction was made, I was charged a hefty percentage in fees. Of course these charges had to be refunded and then I was charged another transaction fee. This was costing me a ton - about $20 every time.

I agonized about what to do. The business had already had cost me a fortune in time and money. But worst of all, what about the free publicity I was to receive when the May issue of PC World came out? What should I do?

I called Steve Bass and we talked about my predicament. He told me that he could possibly spin the story at the end to talk about the problems a new ecommerce store might face. He also agreed to add a plug for my new web site - which had yet to be created. The new site would be called Brina.com and it would help new merchants avoid the same stupid mistakes I had made. Wanna read the article?

I built a darn good web site - similar to this version, chalked full of advice from a seasoned web veteran (I have been in the ecommerce field since 1996). I still receive hits from that article to this day.

They never came out to take my picture. :( Here's the section of the article:

E-Commerce Merchant Beware
Galaxy Alley claimed to be "The Best Place to Buy Electronics in the Galaxy." Too bad this promising e-commerce start-up had to close its virtual doors prematurely.

"I have some bad news. Galaxy Alley is closing its doors." So said the e-mail from Brina Friedman, owner of Galaxy Alley, a site that in its heyday last fall sold electronic goods to online customers. Friedman's site caught my eye when I was researching an article about setting up shop online for PC World magazine. I was hoping to spotlight Galaxy Alley in the article to demonstrate to readers how an intriguing design could lure customers to a site and compel them to read on.

But even the best Web stores don't exist in vacuums. Problems from the real world can do more damage to an online store than the seemingly insurmountable snags that crop up in HTML codes. In Friedman's case, after placing her first two orders with her hired fulfillment house, she learned that the cupboard was bare--literally. The fulfillment house didn't actually stock any of her products.

"I've been duped big time," she grieved. "You'll have to take me out of your story." But journalistic loss was the least of my concerns. Friedman had invested three months of her time--as well as a sizable chunk of her money--in building the foundation for her virtual store. Now there was nothing more than a digital facade of a shop floating through cyberspace.

What Went Wrong
The problem, Friedman found, is that there is a huge shortage of distributors willing to fulfill orders for third-party merchants. And those that exist can't handle the unpredictably high volume of sales sometimes generated on the Internet.

"Once we started to promote the site aggressively," Friedman said, "we received three orders totaling over $3000 in less than a week." She called the distributor only to find that it had none of the goods in stock. Worse, it would take at least 21 days to ship the items once they'd arrived.

Friedman had to tell her newfound customers the bad news, and not surprisingly, they asked for refunds. "Not only did we lose the profit, we also had to pay the transaction fees for both the sales and the refunds," she said.

And things could have been worse.

Two of Galaxy Alley's large orders came from Eastern Europe. After talking with other e-merchants, Friedman suspected the orders were fraudulent. "We checked and found that one order was placed from Belarus, in Russia, with a credit card from the Netherlands. The other order came from Romania, using a credit card from the States," she said.

When the credit card authorization company agreed that her fears were justified, Friedman didn't fill the orders. "When I contacted the two faux customers, they didn't respond," she said. According to Yahoo's founder, Paul Graham, Internet fraud from Eastern block countries is on the rise. All of which goes to show that when you can't see your customers it's hard to know if they're "for real."

An Ounce of Online Prevention
I heard the same advice from most e-commerce merchants: It's imperative you don't concentrate on your Web site so much that you stop paying attention to real-world concerns of doing business. Here are some tips to keep your business running offline as well as on.

Start with a business plan that outlines clear, attainable goals. For help read Business Plan: Road Map to Success at the Small Business Association's site.

Make sure you understand all the charges when you place an order with a fulfillment house. Look for minimum order service charges, restocking fees, and special order assessments.

Use reputable distributors. Before you enter into a business relationship with any company, ask for--and contact--at least three current customers. It's also worth the time and money to open an account with Dun & Bradstreet and see what it has to say about the company you want to do business with.

Use a credit card when you order items for resale. You may have to pay an extra service charge, but your credit card company should protect you if something goes awry. To learn more, check out Don't Be Victimized by Online Credit Card Fraud on the ScamBusters site.

As we went to press, Friedman was thinking of filing a lawsuit against the fulfillment house. But while Galaxy Alley's doors were slamming shut, she was also optimistically opening Brina.com, a site at which she hopes to help others learn from her e-commerce mistakes. In short she wants to give other merchants advice on how to avoid being duped big time. This time, at least Friedman knows there's a limitless supply of material for her site.