As with any business, key to success is advertising. You may have best product anywhere, but if no one knows about it, you'll never be able to get it off ground. This is especially true on Internet. With a "brick & mortar" business, you may get by if you have a great location that gets a lot of foot traffic regardless of how much you advertise. On internet, however, if you don't advertise you won't get any hits at all.

The good news is, there are many different ways to get word out about your site, some for free. The bad news is not all of them work. The most popular form of advertising on Internet is through use of banner exchanges. This kind of advertising may have been effective in past, but today it is perhaps least effective way to advertise.

The biggest downside of banners, aside from fact that they have very low click-through rates, is that many of exchange programs force you to place a reciprocal banner on your site. This is a bad idea for two reasons. First, it cheapens look of your site, and second, you have no control over what your customer sees. Besides, you should never give your customers an opportunity to click away from your site before they've made a purchase.

One thing you need to consider is whether to use a professional host or a free host. I understand desire to keeps expenses down, especially in critical start-up phase of your business. You'll be tempted to cut corners, but there are some corners you just shouldn't cut, and deciding on your web host is one of them.

On Internet, image is everything. Do you want your visitors to see a professional business they can trust, or a business that's too cheap to pay a professional service? Or worse, to be dismissed as an amateur. That's image a free web host conveys. When you weigh in cost of buying software and time involved to do it all yourself, you really aren't saving anything.

On other end of spectrum, there are some web hosts who try to justify charging higher than average prices by offering a vast assortment of extra features. Most people don't have computing skills required to take advantage of all features they offer, and they know it. By offering tons of extras that almost no one will use, they can jack up their rates and gouge their customers. Keep your future needs in mind, but don't pay for services you don't need.

Look for price and volume flexibility. Your host should have ability to expand your services as your business grows. Most good hosts offer different pricing packages and let you upgrade to a larger package as your needs expand. Pricing varies widely, from inexpensive to unaffordable. Remember, you get what you pay for.

Make sure they offer a full range of hosting services. Even though you may not need advanced features now, it's probably a good idea to go with a host who offers them. By time your business expands to point where you need to upgrade to deluxe package, you'll have more than enough money to pay extra costs to incorporate them into your site. Most hosts will even do it for you.

You probably won't need all these features when you are just starting out, but most common ones to look for are: