Once you have built and uploaded your home business website the next step is to start promoting it both offline and online. Offline methods include putting your web address on your business cards, stationary, brochures, flyers, pamplets, home sign, automobile or whatever literature you can. Online methods generally start with submitting your home business website to search engines and directories.

For those of you who either have a website now or are planning to have one in the future, you will obviously want your website to be found in these search engines and directories.

You will therefore have to at some point decide whether you want to submit your site to each individual engine and directory manually, pay a submission service to do it for you, buy site submission software, or use one of the free submission services on the internet.

Submitting to each individual search engine and directory manually is quite easy to do but can be somewhat time consuming. To do this, you simply visit each site individually and look for the "Add URL" or "add a website" link which is usually located at the very top or bottom of each site. Then just click the button and add your URL. In some cases you will have to add a title, description and possibly other information. For the directories such as Yahoo and Open Directory Project, also known as DMOZ, you will be required to visit the relevant category first. Be careful to choose the right category. If you pay a submission service to do this for you they can save you a lot of time and will usually do a slightly better job with the keywords and descriptions based on their know-how. If you choose to do it yourself, a good place to start is directoryguide dot com and searchenginecolossus dot com.

Another method is to buy software such as Submit Wolf. If you are only promoting a single site, I do not recommend purchasing this software because it is rather expensive and time consuming for a novice to learn. If you have an older computer this software will chew up a

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