Conventional methods have produced good results in the past but the costs involved are so much more than can be achieved with using a website on the net.

The cost of designing and printing full colour brochures, purchasing mailing lists and sending out a mail shot is much costlier in most cases than using a web site. Added to this the costs are further compounded when you have to make product or pricing changes which results in the whole process starting again.

The whole concept is based around the postal system, which we all know is expensive, slow and unreliable.

I realise that marketing your business on the Internet might be a bit daunting for some people especially if your knowledge of computers is limited but if approached in the right way you will find that you don't have to be a geek or whiz kid to achieve your goals.

If you have little or no experience then I would suggest you engage the services of a reasonably priced, preferably recommended, professional web design business. These can usually offer you a selection of packages of varying complexity and prices to suit your type of business.

If you do have some experience and would like to save yourself the extra expense then the process is not that difficult. There are basically three steps you initially need to take, register a domain name, engage a web hosting company and design your site.

Log on to Google or any good search engine and type in Web Hosting. Check out the top few for price and service. Chose one that will allow you to search and register your domain name as well as host your site for you. Your domain name will be the name of your business or company and you will be able to check if this is available to register.

The next hurdle is to design your web site yourself with a suitable software package such as Dreamweaver or use a simple program like WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). If this part is outside your scope try to get a local freelance designer to help you.

There are a number of considerations to bear in mind when designing your site. Keep it simple and uncluttered and make sure all the pages are linked. Get your message across on the home page clearly and concisely as it is a given fact that if your visitor is not interested and hooked within the first five to ten seconds they are very likely to move on to another site.

Make sure that any photographs of your products are of the highest quality and if writing sales copy is not your strongest point, get a professional copywriter to produce one for you.

If you intend to sell your product or service from your new site then you will need to have a facility for receiving credit card payments. If you already have this organised with your existing business thats great but if not it is a simple process to sign up with Paypal or Clickbank, who will receive payment on your behalf and you will be charged a very small commission for their services.

Most marketers will tell you that the one important thing to possess is the email list of you customers and that your priority is to build your list constantly so that you are able to email them with special offers and news of new products you may produce, not to mention the all important back end offer.

With this in mind it is important that you either offer them a free gift or the chance to subscribe to your free newsletter, which you could produce on a weekly or monthly basis about your particular niche market or service. You could easily write, or have written, as your gift, an ebook in PDF also about your niche, which they could download from your site.

If you are completely new to this and know nothing about bulk email then you will need to subscribe to an auto-responder and email broadcasting service. You can also do a search to find one for a small monthly subscription. You will also be able to use their facilities to produce your opt-in box script to put on your web site, which will capture the name and email address of your prospective customers.

You will find that having such a facility is invaluable to your business as the auto-responders will allow you to write a series of emails which can be sent out on different days or weeks depending on whether you are doing follow ups to sales or a series for your newsletter. The other great advantage is that they broadcast all your emails, which gives you more time to concentrate on progressing your business.

I have only covered the essential basics here but I hope I have encouraged you to take the bull by the horns and get your business on the net which I am sure you will agree is the only place to be in the future.