According to a recent Associated Press article in The Sun, nine out of ten children have access to computers and more than 2 million people are going online for the first time each month.

The article goes on to say more than half of all households now have an Internet subscription from home, up from one-quarter of all households in Dec. 1998.

Furthermore, the number of people using their computer to check e-mail, research products and services and make online purchases are increasing across the board.

In other words, we, as business owners, have been given a new arena to find customers and sell our goods and services. And, it's cheap!

Of course, there is an initial investment to develop a Web site or Internet presence, but the ongoing monthly costs will barely dent your advertising budget.

In general, you can expect to incur three separate costs for your Web site project.

The first is the main investment for the initial development of your Web site. This development covers the design and html coding of your various Web pages, as well as registering your domain name and setting up the Web server.

The Web server is a dedicated computer which displays Web sites every time someone types in your domain name or finds your address through links or search engines.

For a basic Web site with a professional look and feel, you can expect to pay around $1000. However, as more advanced, interactive features are introduced, it is common to pay closer to $3000 or more, especially if you plan on selling products through your site.

The second cost is called the hosting fee. This fee is usually paid monthly and covers the maintenance of the Web server. It is common for hosting companies to include features like e-mail addresses and Web site statistics.

You can expect to pay around $40 per month for a reliable server offering enough advanced features to support most professional Web sites. Other options can be cheaper or more expensive, but those tend to either be much less reliable for just a small price savings or overkill for most businesses.

The third, which many don't plan for, is promotion. Today, some of the major search engines have started a trend of forcing new Web sites to pay to be included in their directory. The upside is, for this fee, you are listed quickly and accurately, which was a big problem in the past.

For example, Yahoo! now changes a $299 one-time fee to include any commercial Web site. That gets you listed in your category within seven business days and will get people looking at your site in a hurry.

In addition to tradition forms of promoting your Web site, there are also new opportunities where you can purchase keyword search results. So, each time someone types in keywords matching your business, you can pay to be listed at the top of those results.

Technically, the promotional aspect of your Web site is optional, but, just like a successful business, successful Web sites rely on strong marketing plans.

In the end, most businesses find that the majority of fees are one-time costs and, over time, the small monthly costs to maintain a professional Web site far outweigh the investment for the initial setup.

And, as companies realize the potential to increase sales from the consistently increasing group of customers researching and purchasing products over the Internet, they can't wait to get their business online.