From a technical standpoint, e-commerce pertains to "setting up and maintaining shop" on the web.
Be advised though that an "electronic business card" may be all you really need (at this time) to gain
a presence on the Internet for you or your employer/client. One option is a Starter Web Site from Network Solutions/Verisign, which is very easy to use and
set up.
In The Business of E-Commerce: From Corporate Strategy to Technology, author Paul May hits the nail on the head: the important thing is delivering what people want or need - it is not really about the technology per se. He does a superb job describing the different ecommerce venues, such as business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C). Quite humorous, this book is an excellent reference for those investigating ebusiness and the supporting technological plumbing.
Have you heard of affiliate marketing? You must find out more about this very popular business sales model for the Internet.
These companies provide a variety of services to support your e-commerce initiatives:
Beginning E-Commerce with Visual Basic, ASP, SQL Server 7.0 and MTS - this book provides a step-by-step construction of "Jo's Coffee," a fictitious Web storefront that winds up at the end of the book with a sophisticated order-processing pipeline, online discussion groups, XML integration with outside systems, and more. The book does a great job of providing complete commentary for each stage of the development process. It walks you through defining an application object model, implementing it with VB COM components, interfacing with a SQL Server database, and adding a number of sophisticated features. Using the example in this book, developers could construct custom pipelines for every commerce site they build. The author does assume that you are familiar with these Microsoft applications.