What type of home/small businesses are looking for a web presence?
Where do they look? What are they paying?

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Clarification of Question by neoalec2k-ga on 02 Nov 2002 14:16 PST

I am not looking for a web site myself, I'm a web developer looking
for market insight.

Small businesses with customers in many states/countries can benefit
from the web. Local companies typicaly do miminal web sites and use
non-web advertising to inform local people of their URL. It doesnot
make much sence to invite the whole world to come eat a hamberger at
Joe's if the only shop is in Lizzard Lick, North Carolina, USA, and
Joe does not intend to syndicate.

I am president of a chamber of commerce and know a great many small
businesses.  A small or home based business can benefit greatly by a
web site.  The more unusual the business, the more important the site
will be.  For example, if you make life jackets for dogs, someone may
search all over the country for your product.  If you are one of 500
sales people in your city selling the same franchised product, the
site will be less successful.

Small sites can cost as low as say $500.00 to build to several
thousand dollers.  For the do it yourselfer, microsoft sells
Frontpage.  It has pre designed "theams" that makes it easy to create
a simple site that looks good. You can also learn how to program HTML
and do the site from scratch, but I don't recomend that.  The learning
curve is too steep.

You will also pay a hosting company between 8 and 35 dollers a month
to host the site.  The cheep ones don't offer much in terms of
support.  A company Micronetix www.micronetix.com hosts for around
15.00 a month and has telephone support.  I host several sites with
them and find them helpful.  I had used cheeper services in the past,
but when something went wrong, I could not contact them by phone.

You need to register your domane name.  This costs around 20 bucks a
year.

One other point.  Even if the site does not bring you customers, you
can educate your customers with information on your site.  You can
post background information on your business, and detailed information
on your products.  You can send your customers to the site to learn
more about your products.

Russ