The reason for my visit was to get a better understanding of how some eCommerce websites are published to the internet, what kind of web hosting is employed as well as to get an idea of how my newly purchased eCommerce website should look.

I purchased an online (eCommerce) business a few months ago from a "Popular Offline Advertiser of Online Businesses" and my objective is obviously to make the business work, so the visit was a necessary step toward that objective.

Amazon was rated number 1 in the "best overall" category, Dell number 2 and IQVC was number 3, so I felt pretty good because there were highly successful models that I could emulate.

Prior to visiting the eCommerce review site mentioned above, I visited a different kind of review site, Reviewopedia, founded and operated by Steven Albright, which provides visitors with a forum to post their comments and opinions about online businesses and internet success programs they had purchased.

Of the businesses commented about, our "Popular Offline Advertiser of Online (eCommerce) Businesses" happened to be one. There were fourteen sites/businesses reviewed and rated at the time of my visit with a combined 1,329 comments and opinions posted about them. The higher rating a business received the less comments were posted about it.

I was most interested in getting a consensus of opinion about the company I purchased from and this seemed to be the place to get it because of the total number of eCommerce businesses reviewed (39) between the two sites I visited, our "Popular Offline Advertiser of Online (eCommerce) Businesses" received a healthy dose of commentary.

Reviewopedia employed a "star" rating system where a single star equated to a poor rating (scam is mentioned often) and five stars equated to excellent or legitimate online business. The average rating attributed to our "Popular Offline Advertiser of Online (eCommerce) Businesses" from which I purchased was a single star and a half rating along with 243 comments, second highest of all the sites reviewed and rated at the reviewopedia location.

The fact that only 7% of opinions posted were high reviews from customers satisfied with the companies from which they purchased eCommerce businesses and spent their money with, and about 2% giving a "fair" (21/2 stars) rating, indicates that 91% of the participants were dissatisfied and harbored very low opinions of the companies they spent money with.

They were unhappy! Many were seeking refunds, although getting an actual refund may be a rather difficult undertaking if the "30 day after purchase refund period" had expired.

My reaction was pretty mixed because on the one hand I saw what a successful eCommerce business could be if the right combination of time, marketing & promotion, continued education and luck are applied. On the other hand I saw a lot of discontent on the part of some folks who invested in eCommerce businesses, so I had enough information on which to base a sensible decision.

I made the decision to join Wealthy Affiliate in order to learn the techniques necessary to promote my eCommerce business. It was really a strike of good luck that I discovered WA because I learned more about Internet Marketing (IM) in 5 weeks with WA than I learned in the previous 16 months from a variety of so-called internet marketing "Gurus".