1. Go to godaddy.com or 1and1.com, buy a domain name (e.g. www.yourname.com) for less than $10 a year. Be creative when you select a domain name because you will find most names you want already taken.
2. Once you got a name, wait a day or two, go to Microsoft small office live to open an account (FREE), sign up for its small office hosting plan (FREE), follow its direction to point your domain name registered at godaddy or 1x1 to Microsoft (trust me, it's simple and easy to do).
3. Use MSFT Live's template to create your own website (very easy, just need to plan ahead and play around it, it's fun to do it too).
4. If you want to sell stuff online and accept payment online, open a Paypal account, create a Buy it Now button, copy the codes for the button and paste in your MSFT hosted website (you can find how to do it at MSFT Live's help forum).
5. Your online store is open, FREE!
6. Now the hard part begins, attract customers to your store ...