Bear in mind, however, that it can take a long time to get your site approved by the Search Engines - weeks, months and sometimes never. But it is something you must do.

There are thousands of Search Engines out there, but in reality, there are only a handful that really matter and which account for some 90% of searches being made. So beware of offers to submit your site to thousands of engines. It is almost always a waste of time - and money.

There are pros and cons in using Search Engines. If you have a particular, or niche market, product or service, then they can be used very well. Just consider whether you would use a Search Engine to find your product or service. If you would, what would you search under?

If you can envisage that most people would try to find you through a Search Engine, then it is probably the best way to promote your site. But not the only way

The organisation we are recommending is a resource for do-it-yourselfers where you can learn to prepare your pages for the Search Engines and then use a sophisticated URL submission robot to submit your web pages to all the important Search Engines and Directories. You will also find tutorials about website promotion, submitting to Yahoo, and much more.

And the best part is that it is very cheap. The owner just asks for a donation! There's dedication for you!

Another step every business should take is to get your site on some good directories.  Directories are used by Search Engines to show on their listings.

We reccomend you try www.dmoz.com and SpotJockey.com Web Directory

First of all it is immediate.

And secondly it costs - but not a lot.

But you can control how much you want to spend. You can decide how much you want to pay for each click to your site, and you can also state the maximum amout you want to pay per day.

So if you have a product or service which is fairly rare, you could pay as little as, say, four pence per hit and and a maximum of one pound per day.

If you have a more common product where there are many other people selling a similar thing, then you would have to increase your bids.

By signing up to Adwords, you create a small ad which is displayed alongside the main items in a Search Engine results page. You've seen them, I'm sure.

There is one well used Ezine that we would recommend called DEMC. It has a large circulation and reaches a very wide band of customers.

We would suggest that you subscribe to it first, so that you can see the kind of ads that are being read.

Animations, clipart, photo galleries. Some of them are free, others there is a small charge. But it is well worth having a browse to see what is available.