Over recent years the popularity of online banking in the UK has soared, with many consumers enjoying the benefits of being able to conduct their day to day finances and manage their bank accounts from the comfort and privacy of their own homes. These days, many major banks offer online banking facilities to customers, and some banks even operate solely online, reflecting the popularity of banking online.

With online banking many consumers are able to conduct all sorts of transactions online – in fact, pretty much anything other than physically making deposits or withdrawing cash can be done using an online bank account. You can set up or cancel direct debits or standing orders, transfer money, make one off bill payments, check balances, check statements, order stationery such as cheque books, and more.

But just how safe is online banking? Well, the risk of fraud and theft in relation to online banking was once a major concern amongst consumers, and this resulted in many being reluctant to conduct their banking online some years ago. However, banks now use sophisticated software that minimises the risk to the customer, and this has resulted in more and more people enjoying the benefits of online banking whilst also enjoying peace of mind.

Providing you are sensible and exercise caution with regards to your bank account you will find that doing your banking online can be perfectly safe. However, you need to make sure that you do not put yourself at risk through your own actions. For example, although security amongst online banks has become more sophisticated, so have procedures used by fraudsters, and there are some common scams that you need to look out for.

One common scam is known as phishing, and this is where you receive an email that appears to be from your bank, asking you to link to the site and enter your account details. This is something that you should never do, as banks will not send out this type of email. If you have any concerns following the receipt of such an email you should either contact your bank by phone or you should log into your bank account through the search engine and never through the email link, otherwise you will be handing your account details to fraudsters on a plate.

Another thing that you should avoid doing is saving your bank details and password details on a computer that is shared, as this gives others access to your details. Even when the computer is not shared it is safer and more secure to make sure that your details are not saved, and to enter them manually each time you log into your bank account.

Traffic and how to get it… the challenge of having a website. But getting traffic does not guarantee you a successful online business, whether it’s free or not.

That might surprise you but it’s true.

You don’t actually need to get loads of free hits - you just need to get a reasonable amount of QUALIFIED hits.

By qualified I mean people who are already interested in the subject of your site. Getting hits is easy peasy - all you need to do is sign up for a free traffic exchange, surf to earn credits and assign them to your website.

But you won’t make many sales that way.

To get free hits that are worth getting you need to promote yourself in places where your potential customers will be spending their time online. Try social networking sites, forums and chat rooms. You can also find them by attracting them in other ways - use SEO techniques to make your website search engine friendly, build a page on Squidoo to attract them and make more money as well, and create a blog that links to your website.

All your efforts will be rewarded but it does takes time. I set up a web page on Squidoo which gives advice and links to websites concerned with online writing. I also promote some writing related products on that page. By paying attention to my tags, links and keywords I pull in a lot of search engine traffic without even trying to promote my site elsewhere (I do, but the stats are good just for the search engines).

What’s more, because this traffic is already interested in the subject of my web page I get a very high take up rate for affiliate programs, products and so on. It’s a win win situation - and my customers get loads of free information and advice even if they don’t buy a thing.

Lots of people come back time and time again as well, as I keep the page updated and up to the minute. This alone brings more free hits.

Perseverance and experimentation are the best ways to get closer to free hits, and the methods I have described above will get you plenty of extra hits over time.

Good luck, and remember, you’ll get there eventually. Just keep going!