Starting an online business for a brand new entrepreneur is a lot like falling in love for first time. There is enthusiasm, feeling of a new high in life and determination to make it work at all costs. All superior emotions, but making sure that your business grows will also take a sharp reality check. The reality is that along with enthusiasm and determination, you also need to be a smart marketer to make your business profitable. Marketing for profits has today moved beyond traditional methods to include Internet. A “Brick & Mortar” business works much better if it becomes a “ Click & Mortar” business. Simply put, any business without a web presence is soon going to be yesterday’s news.

Setting up an online business involves creating a well-planned company website to promote your Internet sales as well as your offline business. So key task here is to create a website. A website in effect is your company’s brochure on Internet. It gives information on company’s set up, products and services, promotional offers, new features/ products and information about people spearheading business. The difference here is that website can do more than just be a static information providing page on web. In other words, your website should be an interactive, intelligent brochure for your company. Other than giving information, it should also -

• Maximise total sales
• Generate new business and sales leads
• Build your brand
• Give publicity to offline business

The key here is having a website that will knock socks off your competition. Setting up a site like this doesn’t have to be an overwhelming job, leaving you gasping for oxygen.

Your website can become primary driver for business’s growth, which is why you must take a lot of care while setting it up. Though there are no rules of thumb to do this, here are some suggestions to get you on your way.

I think easiest way to explain it is to walk you through an example of RSS in action. I'm not going to try to explain everything on subject, but this should help get you started.

>> Let's sign you up for Excess Voice RSS Feed

If you want to read Excess Voice newsletter every two weeks you can either read it in your email inbox, or read it in your web browser.

You already know how it works when you subscribe to a newsletter via email. You sign up, hope spam filters don't block some or all issues, and then read newsletter in your email program, whatever that might be.

With RSS, instead of subscribing via email, you subscribe via a web page.

>> Let's walk through subscription process

If you have a Yahoo! account, go to My Yahoo! and click through to Add Content page. On right side of 'Find Content' area you will see a link that reads, Add RSS by URL.

Follow that link and, to add Excess Voice RSS feed, simple paste this url into field provided, http://www.excessvoice.com/excessfeed.xml (Don't click on this link. Cut and paste it.)

Now click Add button and you're done.

If you don't use Yahoo!, register at Bloglines.com and follow same process. Bloglines is a free service and is where I read all RSS feeds to which I have subscribed.

>> What happens now?

Now, whenever you go to My Yahoo! or Bloglines, you will see when Excess Voice feed has been updated. In Yahoo! it tells you how many hours or days ago feed was updated. In Bloglines feed name will appear in bold, and a number after name tells you how many items within feed have been updated since you last checked. (Bloglines is one of several similar services. It's just one I found first and have used ever since.)

>> What you see...

When you check Excess Voice feeds, you will see that with each feed, you don't get complete content...you don't see whole newsletter, complete article or all of review. You see title and first ten lines or so of content. Just enough so you can decide if you are interested or not.