If you're thinking of starting a website for personal or business use you should know of some very cost effective ways to get you up and running on all fronts. It is possibly for very minimal investment to get web hosting, advertising and even design out of the way. Doing this leaves you with more time to focus on the core of your business or hobby.

Web hosting is an obvious essential for the online business and for any website. The options for web hosting are nothing short of astounding these days. You can get all the features, free domain names, free SSL certificates and much more for under $80 many times. This alone makes online business very tempting for many. A physical storefront is many times an impossible solution for anyone with less than 5 digits of income stashed away somewhere. An online business can give you unlimited advertising space, a broader market if you're in a remote area, and very small overhead.

Add to this the fact that some hosting providers offer free pay per click advertising credit with many of their hosting plans and you have a definite winner. This means you can secure a domain name and hosting many times for less than $80 and get free advertising credit to start your marketing endeavors once you get your website up and running. This is beneficial for personal sites as well. Free traffic is free traffic.

Hosting companies many times offer coupons or vouchers for Adwords, YSEM and Adcenter. These credits usually range in value between $35 and $250 when they're all added up. Aside from free advertising, these credits also give you the oppurtunity to practise and learn pay per click search engine marketing strategies without having to shell out too much cash up front.

As for quick and painless design, there is an answer for that too depending on your needs. There are many large template sites out there offering quality web templates for open source scripts. The scripts I'm talking about are free and cover just about any commercial or personal need imaged on a web page. Scripts like Zen Cart, osCommerce, WordPress, Joomla and others will allow you to implement ecommerce, blogging, content management and many other features that would usually cost a fair amount of money to implement. A combination of one of these and a professional template can get you up and running in a hurry.

As an example, osCommerce is a powerful open source ecommerce platform with support for multiple shipping and payment methods. osCommerce is free, easy to install and templates on Templatemonster go for about $150 apiece. With $150 and $90 for good web hosting you can be up and running and have advertising credit for a total of $240. If you have trouble with installation or need help then open a MySiteFix account for free. Putting in a ticket for oscommerce install will run about $35 and leave you with an easy and cost effective support solution for your small business.

In conclusion, look before you leap. Take the time to do your research and you may find that you get alot for a little. The chance for hosting, domain, design, advertising all in one or two quick purchases makes good sense.