We've heard of enormous profit by companies like Google and EBay but actual gains on the web are slim and hard fought. 

Make a fortune from home selling items that you never see, don't ship and never touch... RIGHT! Only shipping companies like UPS, Federal Express and the Post Office are making big bucks from that group.

SHOPPING CARTS: Maintaining a credit card portal costs around $25 monthly. That's the maintenance fee with no sales, even after you purchase the software package (roughly $600). Additionally, each credit card company charges a percent of the sale. 

These are the very reasons Google Checkout, Pay Pal, Amazon and Yahoo Stores! found their niche. Amazon will offer no items that lack a bar code. Typically all of these companies take 40% to 60% of the sale.

Plenty of artists and entrepreneurs purchased start up webs that included credit card portals and they never made a dime. Those webs have become on-line brochures. A reference web that displays your capabilities.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization - Many firms offer this service and portend to guarantee your sight will appear in top search results. Here's a quote from Google's SEO page:

"Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or through the Webmaster Tools and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever." 

You can always sign up for 'pay per click' ad results. Certainly Google would appreciate the added income!

META-TAGS: Within the HTML code of each web page are messages that provide search robots with keywords, related topics, official names, tag lines and specific terms regarding site content. The truth is that the keyword (or key phrase) protocol has been abused in desparation. 

Web designers have 'stacked' so many irrelevant terms into the keyword code that search results wander indiscriminately. Google and Yahoo both offer keyword search optimization tools any designer may access at no charge. Do not be deceived!

PHP and MySQL: If you plan to host a site where visitors upload content or if you plan to offer an enormous variety of items for sale that will require a searchable data base this scripting is for you. This combination is perfect for social networking and/or ECommerce web designs. 

Be certain that you will have a great volume of traffic.