Every business is either selling a product or selling a service. The power of the internet can help you increase your business by dramatically enlarging the size of your audience and allowing you to get your message and products to your customers quicker.

Is Your Website for "Show" or "Sell."

Does Your Business Belong on the Internet?
Every day you are bombarded with stories about the internet. You hear about some huge success story of "amazon" proportions, or hear about some dot-com company with a funny name folding up and losing millions. And each day there's more and more news about it. They're talking about multi-billions of dollars in internet commerce already going on, and you think it can't be all that big -- but somewhere in the back of your mind a little voice keeps telling you if you don't get your business on-line soon, you're destined to be lost forever in a cloud of computer dust. Well, it's hard to say how it will all shake out. But one thing is certain, being on the internet may not be the answer to all your dreams, but it certainly will help.

What Do You Want Your Website To Do For You?
Most businesses hire a web designer to create a clever website, full of flashy graphics (that take forever to load) and pat themselves on the back as they show it to one another. Then the reality hits. They've just paid a bunch of money for something that no one is using, and isn't doing a single thing to increase their business. Don't fall into that same trap. Decide what your website can do to help you, and approach it from that angle first.

The Real Power of the Internet.
The internet does three things very well: (1) It reaches billions of people all over the world (2) It operates almost instantly (3) it costs almost nothing to do it. Now with that kind of a tool available it would be pretty dumb not to look for a good way to use it to run a business. There really is no good excuse for any business not to get online. The real problem businesses face however, is deciding in advance what they want their web site to do for them.

We Already Know What your Customer Wants.
Every business is either selling a product or selling a service. The power of the internet can help you increase your business by dramatically enlarging the size of your audience and allowing you to get your message and products to them quicker. Take advantage of that power, as you develop your website. You'll need to develop a site with your potential customers in mind and fortunately we already know what they want from your website. They want: (1) good information (site content) delivered fast, and (2) a good product or service at a competitive price -- delivered fast. If you can offer those two things then you are ready to look at the final challenge -- Finding ways to get lots of people to find and use your website.

Increasing the Size of the Pie.
In order to really utilize the scope of the internet you're going to need to get a lot more people to visit your website. Since most people find websites by doing a key-word search on one of the web search engines such as Yahoo, Altavista, or Jeeves you'll need to find a way to get listed in the top 10 or 20 listings based on important keywords your customers might use to find you. Use these key words in your web site title, site description, and metatags. Then you must submit your site to the search engines one by one. It's a pain in the neck but well worth the time. There are professional paid site-submitting services that can help a lot, or you can do it yourself. Watch these pages for more information on that later.

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1. Comparing "no-cost" versus "low-cost" web hosting
Free hosting works fine, but make sure you know what you're getting.

2. Do you want your business site to "show" or to "sell?"
Pinpoint the mission of your business web site before you build it.

3. Three key ingredients of every successful business web site
The concept is simple, but you must include all three elements.

4. Reviews of 25 low-cost and no-cost business web hosts
We compare and rate some of the most popular web hosting services.

5. How We Did it - Our Story
If we can do it, anybody can do it.

Additional Reading:
Finding a Niche Target Market
Attracting and Keeping New Website Customers
Increasing Your Website Traffic