My first job was for a sketchy knock off autoparts company that was a glorified drop shipper. I built a dozen websites and a database of a few million rows. I was proud of it at the time.
Then I started reading customer support emails, took a few phone calls from disgruntled customers, and it turns out the company was just cycling cash. Would charge 100 orders and float the cash as it trickled out refunds.
I ended up leaving, and the company sold for a couple million a year later. I was left with a bad taste for e-commerce that has only recently went away.
it was half way an outright scam, but we built a database of parts and their suppliers for an otherwise unprovided for market in the US. That database alone was worth the cost (the new place got rid of the company and just used the database + domain names.)
Then I started reading customer support emails, took a few phone calls from disgruntled customers, and it turns out the company was just cycling cash. Would charge 100 orders and float the cash as it trickled out refunds.
I ended up leaving, and the company sold for a couple million a year later. I was left with a bad taste for e-commerce that has only recently went away.