This paper was written to assist institutions in understanding the costs associated with providing online courses. An accompanying Web site was created to allow users to enter data specific to their institution in order to estimate costs associated with a venture into online courses. The paper addresses: (1) background of online courses (definitions and why they are important); (2) costs involved in developing and teaching online courses (determining categories for costs, technology-specific costs, support personnel costs, faculty development costs, hidden costs, development costs, teaching costs, sample of Marshall University's costs); (3) revenue for online courses; (4) what is important for this type of education to be successful; (5) the interactive Web site; and (6) results from surveys on developing, teaching, and taking online courses. Appendices contain survey materials. (Contains 28 references.) (EV)