There are two kinds of Debian repositories, automatic and trivial archives. The difference between the two is a matter of complexity. Automatic archives are best for repositories which need to manage different architectures. Trivial archives are best for simple repositories which only hold a few packages and in one architecture type.  I only have a few packages all of which are for the i386 architecture, so I opted for the simpler trivial archive structure.

First I copied all my packages tot he location on my public server space where I wanted the repository to be stored. I create a directory called binary and copy the deb files into it.  I issue the following command:

dpkg-scanpackages /path/to/repo/ /dev/null | gzip -9c > Packages.gz

(replace /path/to/repo with appropriate directory)

Now I edited my /etc/apt/sources.list file and entered:

deb file:///path/to/repo

or if it is on a remote server

deb http://example.com/path-to-repo ./

I updated my repositories with apt-get update, fired up synaptic and searched for one of my packages. When I found it I installed it.

NOTE: I found this PDF which explains both and gives details instructions on both

NOTE: I also had to edit the Packages file inside of Packages.gz and remove the paths from my packages filenames when I was using a remote server.

NOTE: you can now use The Public Oojah!Tech Repositories for Debian