Even though the pint-sized megalomaniac meant it as an insult, if he had been around today he would have probably harangued the Isle of Man for being nothing more than an island of e-tailers.

But how hard is it to set-up an online shop?

The answer is: not very.

'But Sherrilynne' I hear you ask yourself, 'is it wise in this economic climate?'

Quite simply: yes. Online retailing, or e-tailing, is a growth industry in the UK, even in the depths of this icy recession.

According to figures from Google, the UK is Europe's largest online market, with Brits spending 33 hours per month online.

And what are we mainly doing online? Why, we shop if course. Last year, for every pound we spent, 17 pence was online.

So, as I mentioned earlier, becoming an e-tailer is easy and there are a number of ways that you can get yourself online for free, or for next to nothing.

One way is eBay. Amazingly the online auction house celebrated its 10th birthday in the UK this month, but even more significantly was its revelation that more than half of its sales are now fixed price transactions, the vast majority being through its network of e-tailing shops.

Setting up as an eBay e-tailer could not be simpler.

Go to the website and register your business.

Then provide a UK address or landline phone number so they can confirm your details.

Next, set-up a PayPal account that will allow you to receive and make payments without the need of having to deal with your customers' financial details.

Finally, begin to sell. You can even register your VAT number – if you have one – enabling you to become VAT-exempt on everything you sell.

Along with the simplicity of the whole process and the free sellers' tools that are designed to allow you to maximise your online shop front and marketing, another real reason to consider eBay is the sheer number of users it attracts: 14 million in the UK alone.

However, the sheer scale of the site can also be its downfall.

There are 178,000 e-tailers registered with eBay, meaning that you would have to work extremely hard to differentiate your product from your eBay-based competitors.

You can of course set-up independently.

There are thousands of free website templates available for all styles of online shop, and these are easily found with a simple search request.
You can tailor these to suit your own business and update them without the need of any specialist software.

However, you would then need to establish some kind of payments system, which can be time-consuming initially.

You would also need to buy a URL for your company and research a suitable hosting company.

Again, while cheap and free services are widely available, the sheer number to choose from can be off-putting. You can also just pay another company to do all of this for you, with some charging less than £1,000 to buy the domain name, design a website with up to 10 pages and host everything for you.

However, some people that have gone down this route have reported that they then found it difficult to move their URL to another hosting company, as it was actually purchased by their initial supplier, not them.

There is also a third way that Isle of Man retailers can get online, and that is through the Department of Trade and Industry-funded Independent Retailer Internet Shopping Scheme.

Through the scheme retailers are given direct help with all aspects of setting up and marketing their website, regardless of their level of technical expertise.

Each site is then linked to the new Isle of Man shopping portal – www.shopiom.com – which provides visitors with a quick way to access Island-based e-tailers.

The scheme charges a one-off fee of £250, with the £50 per month hosting fee waived until 2015. Fear not if you have already gone to the time and expense of launching a website, as the scheme will happily link you to the new portal.

So, even though the media has begun to report that this recession is beginning to show signs of mortality, is now the time to really be thinking about launching a website, or even buffing up your existing one?

I think yes for two reasons.

Firstly it has never been simpler: you don't need any specialist technical knowledge or deep funding to get your retail business online.

Secondly, it is undoubtedly one of the world's few growth sectors at the moment, with spending this year still set to increase upwards.

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Sherrilynne Starkie is the managing partner of Strive Public Relations, a strategic communications consultancy serving the Isle of Man. Visit her business blog, www.strivepr.com/notes or follow her on twitter.com/sherrilynne