Can you quantify for me how much average costs have dropped since 1998
for an individual entrepreneur looking to start a basic e-commerce web
site?
This would take into account declining prices for things like hosting,
shopping cart software, domain names, online marketing tools, etc.
Also helpful would be any projections on the continued decline in
prices going forward.

I am not a google researcher, but have be 'working' in this area
activley for the last 6 or 7 years do have some experiences which am
happy to share. During the early days of eBusiness Adoptions, (Circa
1997/1998), pricing of major solutions such as OpenMarket's Transact,
Microsoft , Oracles solution were circa £300,000.  Such as the
complexity of these systems, whole organisation reengineering needed
to take place. Technology and business agility has moved on
significantly and now a small business ebusiness enabled solution can
be brought online for circa £10,000. (www.addblox.com /
www.bisblox.com). These systems provide greater flexibility, but are
smaller and more agile then the bigger consultant driven solutions.
Hope this helps...