Starting a business online can be very frustrating. First you have a wonderful idea, mine was the Baby Zen and Twin Zen meditation CD for pregnant women, with an emphasis on high-risk pregnancies and twin pregnancy. You work really hard and long hours creating a great product that people will love, and then spending months putting together a nice looking website. The site is finished, your product is finished and everything is ready to go. Finally, you publish your site and you’re so very proud. Then what? Well, link exchanges are the first step to driving traffic to your website. The problem is, there are so many companies and websites out there that promise to put their links on your site, but the catch is that you have to put their link on your site first and they will get back to you within 24 to 48 hours. Guess what? There’s a lot of unethical behavior out there! I spent days putting only very relevant related baby sites and pregnancy sites on my website only to find that people out there really only want to get something for nothing and they just don‘t respond, leaving you hanging. What a horrible way to do business!

My suggestion to all you newbies with brand new sites out there is create an "Exchange Links" page on your website so that other people can find your site that may be relevant to their site. Create a Link title and explanation of your site, or create an html code for an advertisement your would like added to their site first. Have them add your link to their site with an explanation of where your link is on their website, and have them give you their link title and URL, and then let them know you will respond back within 24 to 48 hours. But unlike many, many sites and companies out there, be ethical, no matter how small and new the link exchange requester may be, give that person the courtesy of an e-mail response back, whether you decide to exchange links with that website or not, at least let them know where they stand in a diplomatic and courteous way. Just because a company is new and trying to get their start doesn’t mean bigger and longer-branded websites should treat the little guy with no courtesy at all. After all, we should maintain ethical business practices no matter how big or small a company might be.

We are all connected in this world to help each other, and if everyone in business would look to each other for a helping hand and use courteous business tactics, I believe our economy in America would be a lot better. So lend a helping hand to your fellow Internet business, be courteous and all can strive. There are no limits to what the universe can supply to us. We, however, limit ourselves by limiting others.

So for you newbies out there, take my advice on the links exchange page; and remember, after becoming successful, remember the little guy and that you too were once that little guy, and lend that helping hand.