Most online businesses are affected by seasonal lulls in business. There are always peaks and troughs, but sometimes there is a distinct lull when it feels as if the Internet has come to a halt. You could spend this time checking your email inbox and your website stats every half hour or so because you refuse to believe how slow things are. Alternatively you could put this quiet time to good use.

Here are ten things you can do to get your internet based business ready for new business when the lull ends.

Clear out your inbox.

It is probably months since you sorted our your inbox thoroughly. Set up folders for categories of mail and move anything you need to keep into the appropriate folder. Delete anything else that's over a month old that you don't remember reading.

Organise your bookmarks

Be honest, how long is it since you gave your favourites/bookmarks a thorough spring clean? We all start out with the best of intentions for the way we will deal with saving useful websites to our bookmarks and most of us end up in a mess with far too many things stuffed into a handy miscellaneous folder where we can never find what need.

Find new forums

Posting messages on Internet forums is a good way of getting to know new people who might be interested in your products and most give you the chance to post a link to your website as part of your signature. Find new forums that are relevant to your business or interests and get to know the other members.

Write some articles

Writing and distributing articles is still one of the best ways of getting free traffic to your website. Use the quiet spell to write some extra articles. If you have put off article writing, take advantage of the slow down in business and spend time brushing up your writing skills.

Find new article directories

There are new online article directories opening up all the time. Do some online searches to locate new directories and add them to your list of places to post your articles.

Set up a viral advertising system

There are many sources of free viral advertising that will take on a life of their own and continue to grow and spread for years after you have set them up.

Get your website listed in Web Directories

There's no point in trying to rush this task, there are hundreds of web directories and it would be too boring to sit at this work for days on end. Make a habit of "suggesting" your website to a certain number of web directories each day.

Exchange quality links

Even if you have an automatic link exchange system working on your website, it is worthwhile making personal requests to webmasters for "partner" reciprocal links with high PR websites.

Be Sociable

Social networking is a great way to get your website seen without you having to pay for the privilege. As with forums, it is essential to check the rules before you do anything on these sites and, above all, make sure you never spam other members.

Take some time off.

Join the rest of humanity and take a vacation. Everybody benefits from a bit of relaxation and fun. You can go back to being an Internet hermit in a refreshed state of mind and body as soon as the holiday season ends.

Even though a website might not have seasonal content, it can still be affected by the time of year. You can't change this but you can make sure you don't waste time you could be using to improve your business.