Although it is not necessarily easy to establish your presence on the web it is definately wothwhile to do so. But be prepared for long days as you raise your profile on the internet. Everything starts starts with your website. There are some things to remember in this respect. First, start with a clean design and make your site as easy as possible to navigate around. One method for doing this is to feature a Sitemap on every page of your site. In fact Google now has a section where they discuss the benefits of having a sitemap. Make it as easy as you can to move from page to page. This is key because if your visitors get confused at all they just will not purchase from you. Remember that when you are putting your site together to keep graphics to a minimum to improve load time. Research proves that visitors will not tolerate the slower-loading websites. There is just too much competition out there for them to waste any time on such a site. The slower loading the site is, the swifter the visitor is gone. When you go to review your web statistics to see how long your visitors remained on your site you may be astonished to find out that they have hit the back button on their browser shortly after entering and left skid marks in the process.

You will also need to decide who you are going to trust to have host your wsite. Reliabilty is obviously a major concern so I can't really recommend free hosting services. There are now many free web hosts, and each one appears to have both benefits and limitations. Some of the completely free hosting firms have banners or popunders. You do not get any scripts or database features but you can put a counter on the site from an outside source if you wish.

Normally I only recommend using free web hosting for personal webpages where you only need a simple homepage. There are certain exceptions of course but for most home business operations you really need a dedicated host with adequate disk space, bandwidth and support. Having said that, there are a few free web hosts who are reasonably reliable. And I can recommend such sites for link pages and related uses. They are often automated as well so you don't have to wait to be approved to have a site up and running. You just need a valid e-mail account, generally.
But a negative is that they put a lot of webscripts at the top of your html source (for their advertisements) and this can really screw up yoursite ranking on some search engines, I have noticed. For your first trial site they can be good because they have tutorials and a handy features such as color code programs.
If you are on a slim budget you might want to try one of the many budget hosts that are available on the web. Just type in "budget web hosting" in you favorite search Index and you will get plenty of . But do not choose just anyone. Double check their customer service and uptime. Read through their FAQ section.

Erin Wilson is a Home Business Entrepreneur. More Information can be found at http://www.home-business-match.com and also http://www.home-business-match.com/resources.html