1. The safety of your internet access and,

2. The speed of your internet access

You need to apply the same care to your internet access as you do the rest of your business. In fact, if poorly done your days can become very frustrating and your business and reputation can become badly tarnished.

Why do I sound so alarmist about this? Because I see so many people take a careless attitude about their internet access and leave their computers open to viruses and Trojan horses. This is a whole major subject that I will address on my website and in articles but in short, here is what can happen to you if you do not take the right actions:

* Hackers can steal your financial information.

* Hackers can steal your identity

* Hackers can use your computer to launch viruses and Trojan horses.

* Hackers can use your computer to spam others

* Your ISP can shut you down

* You can become black listed on the internet

To minimize the risk of this happening, you need to have a good firewall and antivirus program. You should also take responsibility for maintaining your firewall and for running your anti-virus program at least once a week - preferably more often. If you do these things your computer should be pretty safe.

The next thing you will need is high speed internet access. By high speed internet access, I mean, in the following order of importance: cable, DSL, or satellite. Forget dial-up unless you are on the road and there is absolutely no availability of the other three because it is generally too slow.

"But I live where there is no cable or DSL and satellite is expensive," you say. "My dial-up provider says they have accelerators that give me five times the speed." To be frank, that is flim-flam. They are using a compression technique that is too slow.

If you can't get cable or DSL, a decent satellite internet access will probably cost you about $90.00 a month. Consider that a cost of living where you want to live. If you want to be in business, you need to do the things that keep you in business.

The primary reason that you will need high speed internet access is you are going to need to make changes to your web pages. If you have dial access, an upload can take an hour compared to 3 minutes with high speed. Many times you are going to find that what you uploaded isn't what you thought it would be so now, after you correct the problem, you will have to wait another hour.

That doesn't sound like fun to me.

If you follow these recommendations, you will have your happiest and safest experience on the internet.