Don't quit your day job. That may sound harsh, but the reality of business on the Internet can be sobering. I have seen many clients who expected customers immediately. The reality of the situation is that it takes time… months, sometimes. Unless you have a huge amount of money to spend on advertising your website and your product, you need to keep your expectations realistic.

First of all, think about how many people are selling your product as well. For example, if you are selling products from one of those gift companies, go out onto the Internet and see just how many other people are selling the same gifts that you are. How stiff is the competition? If there are hundreds of sites selling your product, you are going to have to develop a unique twist to compete with them. How do your graphics compare to the other sites, are they better, faster loading? Or, has some of the competition got you beat there? Are you able to process payments on your site? They can. You have got to make sure that your site is better than 90% of the competition out there to really get the business.

How narrow or broad is your audience? If you are selling a very specific product or service, and/or you can only service customers in your geographic area, this is going to really limit the orders you are going to get on a website. You have got to take into account the millions of people surfing the Internet who are no place near where you are. Then factor in just how many people are looking for your specific product. Out of millions, you are dependant on a few people who live in, say, the Los Angeles area who are looking for your perfect widget. This lowers the odds of hits to your site a lot!

You have also got to take into account how long it takes to get listed on search engines. You are going to need to allow at least 6 weeks to see any hits from search engines, unless you pay them. Even then, you are probably going to have to do some tweaking to get listed very high in searches. It is very difficult to get good placement in all the major search engines without a large budget. You may need to pick the ones you want to target, and just work on getting good placement on a few, instead of trying to make a site that appeals to all of them.

I am not trying to discourage you, or to scare you into not trying. I do want you to be realistic, so that you are not setting yourself up for depression and feelings of failure if you don't get a ton of hits to your site, and a lot of orders right away. Having a business on the Internet takes work. You are going to have to spend time finding free or cheap ways to advertise it. You are going to have to spend time changing some things on your site if you find that they aren't working for you. You are going to have to spend time finding places to put your site's address up on, and finding sites to exchange links with. Keep at it. Don't spend your entire budget in the first weeks. Don't be taken in by every expensive offer you see to get traffic to your site. Just be realistic and remember: in the case of marketing on the Internet, slow and steady wins the race.