Keep working on your website. A bunch of ants in a glass box is not a big attraction, but when you add ants and make whole thing an interactive experience by throwing in a few orange peels and educating people on how things work in ant world, now that's big fun! A great idea alone will not allow you to be successful, you must also persist in making your dream, your vision, a reality. You've got to be able to teach people about your product or service, and that will take some trial and error and every effort will turn up more obstacles. Keep your goal firmly in mind and keep moving forward.

Communication and passion are your knockout punches. Talking and sharing your thoughts and goals for your business accomplishes two things. First, you will continue to keep your business foremost in your thoughts, which helps you maintain your vision for your business. Second, your enthusiasm is one of best promotion tools you have. According to "The World Wide Internet Opinion Survey," a joint project of @d:tech and Talk City, respondents said that after using search engines, word of mouth was vehicle that most drives them to new web sites. If you talk about your website to people you're in touch with, and include your website address in your signature information at end of your email messages, you are going to generate traffic to your site. People are curious and will want to see what is fueling your excitement. It's your passion that will inspire other people to come see your cool new ant condo.

There are many skills and characteristics that will contribute to your success on Internet, but vision, persistence, and passion are indispensable to your success.

The Internet has magnified niche trend. Suddenly cost of reaching special-interest community has been drastically reduced. Instead of creating a storefront or direct mail catalogs, specialized retailers can launch Web stores. There is more competition in an Internet niche than their was in catalog niche, but cost of competing effectively on Web is considerably lower than competing with catalogs and pricey mailing lists.

Plus, you can do it from home. Plus, you can test business before you commit full-time to idea.

eBay has provided a wonderfully convenient testing ground for specialized retail businesses. Thousands of small entrepreneurs are using eBay to find customers and build communities of niche consumers, all without buying mailing lists that are 98 percent useless at best. I saw this firsthand over summer as my thirteen-year-old son used his babysitting money to buy and sell video games.

Many of game retails were entrepreneurs who had Web sites displaying full lines of goods. They would buy games in quantity, sell them in eBay auctions, then invite their customers to their Web sites for additional sales. The cost of obtaining a potential customer was virtually nil. All they needed were a few products to sell on eBay and a few more products at their Web sores.

The beauty of testing a business idea on eBay is you don't even need ability to take credit cards. You can ask your customers to use PayPal (www.paypal.com) to transfer dollars (without transaction fees) from their checking account to yours. You can trade in collectible-like used products, buy cut-out products or purchase new goods in large quantities to sell below retail price. You can do it from home part-time. If it works, you're in business. And your odds for succeeding now are better than even.