Now let's do same thing for 'charm bracelets'. At time of this article Google returned 1,950,000 competing sites and Overture returned a count of 50417. The result was 38.67 (1,950,000 / 50417 = 38.67).

Charm bracelets is winner because ratio between searches and number of competing sites will make it easier for your site to be found.

This is online demand in it's simplest form but it can give you a good idea of what you are up against.

Next you must research your competition

Always know what your competing sites are doing and how they are doing it. Let's say you decide to sell those charm bracelets. Type 'charm bracelets' into Google and take a good look at first few pages of listings that come up. Look at each site and study it. Make a chart and note following for each site.

- What products do they offer? - What are strengths and weaknesses of each site? - What information or services does each site provide? - What did you like or dislike about each site?

Once you've compiled your chart this will help you determine how you can make your site better and what information or services you might want to include that would offer better value and/or service. The key here is to find out what is out there and how you might deliver it better. What kind of profit can you make?

Profit is calculated after all your expenses are met. It's basic business 101 but sometimes online business owners forget that.

If your porcelain doll cost you $10 and you sold it for $30 you may have made $20 but your profit may be lower. You also need to take into account what it cost you to make that sale, advertising, website costs, merchant account costs, shipping, etc.

After expenses, 30-50% can be very good. Anything more would be ideal, however if you can't show a profit after expenses it won't be worth your time.

Study your competition, keep your costs down ,keep your price competitive, offer something free if you can, stress your value and be sure to take all facets of cost into account.

Elizabeth McGee has spent 20 years in the service and support industry. She has moved her expertise to the world wide web helping businesses find trusted tools, enhance customer service, build confidence and increase sales. You can visit Elizabeth's sites at: http://www.homenotion.com http://www.pro-marketing-online.com

ISPs tend to enforce a bandwidth cap on both DSL and cable modem services.

The first cap is on data transferred per service period (usually per month). From my experience, DSL data transfer caps are more rigidly controlled than cable services. Your data cap may be as little as 1 gigabyte per month or, in case of most cable modem services, unlimited.

Both cable and DSL services have a cap on bandwidth. Your service provider may promise you a certain downstream limit and a certain upstream limit. This means that you will generally be able to sustain a certain bit rate while downloading or receiving data and a different bit rate while uploading information.

In general, because of far greater capacity of coaxial cable and fact that only a certain number of lines exist connecting you to your switch, cable modems, if uncapped would provide advantages in bandwidth over DSL modems. In real world, this is not case. Both DSL and Cable companies limit bandwidths at both modem level and at service provider.

Shop Around. If you are shopping around for a service or thinking of changing services, best advice I have for you is to ask other users about their service. One of best web sites I've seen for sharing this data is broadbandreports.com. This site provides user-submitted reviews of their broadband service and charts day-to-day service fluctuations. Speed tests and other tools for optimizing your connection are available as well.