Your investment
Not only does setting up a website involve the technical aspects, it also requires time & effort, and usually a bit of money, to not only get it up and running, but to grow and get better as well.
Time investment
You don't need to plan on working on your website 24/7/365. You don't need to make it a full time job. Depending on how busy it is and how involved it is, you could spend from several hours a day to almost no time at all on your website once it is set up. But, if you're going to pretty much leave it to survive on its own, don't bet on the idea of your site becoming popular, well trafficked, or anywhere close to meeting the goals you have for it.
In some cases, it is possible to have an established site pretty much run on automatic, but this depends on what the site actually does, what it requires to operate properly, and a setup that doesn't require constant monitoring by you. If your site is mostly informational, and you plan to make few changes to it, chances are you won't need to invest much time in it down the road. But, if you go for a website that has a member community, sells products that change frequently, utilizes customer service programs, etc., chances are you'll be interacting with it on a regular basis. Even after you're up and running, there are other areas like optimization for search engines, link exchanges, marketing and so forth that you may want, or need to, invest time in as well. You'll need to keep this in mind when deciding to set up your website, as the time that you are able and/or willing to work on it can be a big factor in how well it does.
Monetary investment
It takes money to make money, as the saying goes. Even if you aren't trying to replace your current income by setting up a website, there is usually some type of upfront cost to get things going. Notice we said usually. There are ways to get a free website set up, and we'll cover those areas in our "Building Your Site" area. But for now, let's plan on needing a financial investment to get going.
Depending on your website, you could start out with a minimum investment of @ $25.00 to get started. That is assuming that you choose a nicely priced hosting company and design/build a basic website yourself. If you want something custom designed and programmed by professionals, plan on dishing out thousands, and possibly tens of thousands, of dollars depending on what you want done.
Your monetary budget, and your sites income potential in the future, will be huge influences on what you can setup. Even if you start with something basic, you can always add additional features and programming in the future.