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One of the great American dreams is owning your own business. But the process of starting a business and running it can be extremely daunting and costly. Not to mention time consuming as well.

These days however many people share a different version of this dream, and that's to own a business that they can run from home and work at their schedule instead of someone else's.

The invention of the Internet has made that dream a lot easier to achieve and countless thousands and even possibly millions of people are realizing that dream. It is estimated that everyday there are over 50,000 new web pages uploaded to the Internet. Many of those are for new businesses.

Having an online business eliminates many of the trials and hardships that a "brick and mortar" establishment poses. Its easier to maintain and if need be shift gears and take the business into a completely different direction almost overnight.

But even a home based business has its pitfalls and learning curves. Some of them can be quite costly and disheartening to the new online business owner.

Costs can be controlled and in many cases very little investment or cost is actually even involved into the start up of the business. However one thing is still present with online businesses as well as the traditional brick and mortar ones and thats the element of focus and time management.

Without proper focus and time management running a home based business can be more of a chore than it needs to be.

The second crucial part of a home based online business is garnering traffic to the business's website. There are actually three methods or categories rather of getting this traffic.

1. Free - Low Yield Traffic Generation

2. Low Cost - Medium Yield Traffic Generation

3. High Cost - High Yield Traffic Generation

For most people a mixture of the first two and the methods we choose. Traffic Exchanges offer the biggest boost in traffic to a business's website but also offers the least useful as the traffic is for the most part untargeted.

Participating in banner exchanges is another useful option for businesses just starting out. Banners advertising is usually sold in lots of 1000 impressions but unlike traffic exchanges the banners impressions can be targeted depending on who you work with.

Eventually however any business that is to survive must allot some investment into the higher costing high yield traffic generation methods.

In summary an online business fulfills a lot of people's dreams of owning a business. The drive to work from home is what fuels a lot of these desires and dreams. However even an online business can be tough to get started and running properly because it shares some of the similar problems of offline businesses of requiring focus and time management to be in place.

All businesses whether, online or offline, require traffic (customers). This is the life blood of any business. Getting this traffic or customers is a time and cost management decision the business owner must be aware of from the beginning.