There are thousands of web hosts around today with thousands of plans to choose from making what was once a simple procedure seem like a daunting task for both newbie and pro alike.
Whether you’re looking for your first host or looking to move on to a better one there are 7 simple steps you must follow to succeed in choosing a great host.
1. Platform
The first and most crucial step in choosing a web host is determining the platform the web server should run, usually a choice between Unix/Linux and Windows.
Your choice is largely determined by your website and the technologies used to create it, generally a website created with Microsoft technologies (ASP, VB) will run on Windows servers while most other sites using open source technologies (PHP, Perl, Python etc) will run on Linux based systems.
2. Features
Once you’ve chosen your platform the next step is determining the features you’ll need from your web host. Take your time with this step as the feature lists of web hosts are getting longer and longer every day and while some plans may look similar on the surface, a good look at the feature lists may tell another story.
Only you can determine the specific features you’ll need, but some key things to keep an eye on are:
Disk Space
Bandwidth
Backups
Uptime
Money Back Guarantee
Domains Allowed
Databases (Number & type)
CGI, PHP, Perl, Python, SSI
Cron
Email accounts
The list goes on and on, just remember to take your time and make sure your new web host is going to provide you with everything you need.
3. Cost
Often this is the only thing people consider when choosing their first web host, funds are usually tight and on the surface most hosts look very similar. Sometimes you get lucky and choose a good host, but more often than not it turns out to be a horror story.
I can’t stress enough that choosing a web host based on price alone is asking for trouble, remember that the cost of your web hosting is more than just the monthly fee, think about the total cost of ownership. TCO includes lost sales due to downtime & slow speeds, downtime rebates, extra bandwidth charges, setup costs, extra feature costs, and your monthly fee.
Many hosts will require you to pay yearly to get the best price available though there are some that allow you to pay by the month and still get the best price, it’s really a matter of personal choice as to what payment method works best for you.
4. Customer Service
Customer service is another aspect that is often forgotten about until it is too late, something breaks and you need it fixed and those wonderfully handy sales people who were more than helpful in taking your money are now nowhere to be seen, all the while you’re losing out on sales every minute.
You shouldn’t settle for anything less than 24/7/365 service, your website needs to be running all the time so it’s no good if your hosting company doesn’t work during the holidays. Don’t take the web hosting companies word for it, they all claim 24/7 support but few back it up with consistent performance. Be sure to test them out at various times of the day and night via phone, email and live chat if they offer it.
5. Support
An extensive knowledge base or faq can be a real time saver as well as being an indication of the level of customer service support and expertise you can expect to receive. Spend some time browsing the support sections of the website and see for yourself the level of support provided.
Are questions in the knowledge base answered thoroughly? Are real solutions provided or are they just “cut and paste” replies?
6. Longevity
Do a whois on the web host’s domain name and find out the creation date, anything less than a year ago and the risk that they won’t be around next year increases. They could be a great host, but considering more then 95% of new hosts go out of business within a year that really isn’t something you should be taking a chance on.
7. Uptime
It’s a fact of life that a web host cannot be online 100% of the time, servers need to be rebooted for security and software updates and any web host that doesn’t get updated faces the increased risk of being successfully hacked.
99.9% uptime guarantees are pretty standard in the industry however a guarantee is only as good as how it is defined and the company behind it. Look for no less than a full months free hosting should they not meet their guarantee, a prorated refund based on the amount of downtime is virtually worthless. Say you pay $10 for a month of hosting and your site is down for 24 hours. They will refund you for one day of downtime which ends up being about 33 cents.
There you go, 7 simple steps for choosing a great web host. It’s not rocket science, just a little research and investigating that can save a lot of heartache in the future.
Want to develop a direct communication line with your web site visitors without spamming? Develop an opt-in list with a large subscribers’ base. You will be able to send personalized emails to your subscribers who have expressed their willingness to receive informative as well as commercial offerings from you. However, you have to tread a fine line between annoying your visitors and making them volunteer the information you need. Knowing the right strategy and implementing it correctly will decide whether your offerings end up in spamboxes or inboxes. These seven steps will guide you in the right direction.
1. Decide what information you need to collect. Names and email addresses are the minimum. Do you need their home address, their gender, or their age group? Don’t collect information that you don’t have any plan to use. Don’t collect information for any anticipated future use. You may get plenty of chances to collect those information from a revised list of prospects. Keep the information collection to the absolute minimum.
2. Publish a privacy policy and provide a link at the point in the web page where you collect users’ information. Mention in bold letters that you don’t sell their emails to others and practice the same. Your opt-in list is very valuable and don’t sell it to others for a few bucks. Don’t violate the trust of your visitors and ruin your reputation.
3. Provide instant incentives for subscribing to your offerings. Free e-books, report, software, video tutorials, etc. that interest to your target audience are very effective incentives. If you have a paid member’s only area, you can provide time limited access to that section of your web site in exchange for their subscriptions.
4. Publish your past offerings in your website. Each offering should be in the form of a newsletter with quality contents that improve your readers’ quality of life. Conclude your contents with your commercials that explain the benefits of products or services you are selling.
5. Set up a discussion board (forum) at your site and make it available to registered members only. The discussion board should focus on your target market. By scanning the posts and their threads, you will be able to identify problems your visitors are trying to solve. Do your research and find solutions to those problems, organize them and publish those solutions your newsletter.
6. Use Co-registration. This will build your list rapidly in a short amount of time. What is co-registration? It refers to the practice of referring subscriptions or leads for memberships with another registration process. There are several ways of doing this.
When a visitor signs up for a free subscription or other service, give them the chance on the thank-you page to opt-in to another offer. Another way is give the visitors to a website the opportunity to sign up for another opt-in list. These do not need to be your thank-you pages or websites. You need to partner up with another web marketer.
The goal here is to find other website owners who you can joint venture with you to offer your newsletter along with theirs. Do a search via your favorite search engine and directories for similar offers and contact the people to set up your joint venture.
Two additional secrets to this co-registration process. First, make sure you offer more value than the other party involved in your joint venture. Second, offer your leads you get from this process more value than you usually offer by giving them a huge giveaway only available to them.
7. Use Squidoo, a social media website, to create lenses. A lens is a web page on any idea. Provide a RSS feed of your website on your lens. Embellish your lens with YouTube videos and Flickr photos related to your target market. Squidoo splits its revenue with lens creators (or lensmasters). Sign up to donate all your revenue from Squidoo lenses to a non-religious charity. Call for action by announcing that subscribers are helping a charity by joining your list.
A lot of people are down on network marketing businesses (also know as multi-level marketing or MLM), but I’d like to give you 7 reasons why a network marketing business is the best kind of business to own.
1. Your chances for success are better in network marketing.
Yes, some people fail at it. In MLM or network marketing, you will often find that 20% of the people are making 80% of the money. Do you know what? That is exactly the same as the church I belong to– 20% of the people who attend are actively involved and do 80% of the work that needs to be done.
I’m not surprised that it is similar in MLM. People are people. Some of the people who fail at network marketing are not motivated, some aren’t cut out for self employment, some are in the wrong company for them, and some are just not properly trained. But a motivated and trained person in a good company has a great chance of succeeding in their business.
On the other hand, if you start a “traditional” business your odds of success are much lower. According to the SBA, at least 50% of small businesses fail in their first year and 95% fail within the first five years. So, after 5 years of 12 hour days, in debt up to your eyeballs, you only have a 5% chance of succeeding. For some reason that just doesn’t do it for me.
2. The costs are much less to get into a network marketing business.
Most network marketing companies ask for a monthly minimum order to keep an active distributor status, it is true. This is part of what keeps the machine running. It is part of the business operating costs. It may be as much as $100, depending on the company.
Now compare that to the costs of traditional business ownership, like rent, utilities, inventory, insurance, taxes, employees, marketing and advertising, and much more. I think you get the idea.
You don’t have to be rich or go deep in debt to have your own home based network marketing business. It truly is an equalizer, giving everyone a fair chance at succeeding, no matter what the financial background or credit history is.
3. A network marketing business is simpler to run.
If you had your own business hopefully you could afford to hire an accountant and a secretary who would keep all your red-tape, paperwork, receipts, bookkeeping and such. If not, you would spend much of your time doing this.
With MLM, the company you are with handles most of the paperwork. You just need to keep your own financial records for your income taxes. This frees you up to spend your time and energy making money.
4. A network marketing business is easier to market and promote.
Most people who have their own “traditional” business are on their own when it comes to marketing and advertising. They usually try a little of everything to see if something will actually work. Often desperate business owners get taken in by slick sales people who promise results with their newest expensive advertising scheme.
A network marketing company has a proven marketing system that has been tested and used by many people. They will usually have their own marketing material that can be purchased at a lower cost because they can order in larger quantities.
5. You get the business training you need to succeed network marketing.
You don’t need to know anything about business to be successful in MLM. Your company has done all the work and research. They often hire the best marketers in the business to help them develop a training program because really want you to succeed and will do everything in their power to help you.
In traditional business you have to find the training you need on your own.
6. With a home based network marketing business, taxes are on your side.
There are many deductions you can take with a home based network marketing business that will help you reduce your taxes.
On the other hand, the government (federal, state, and local) all seem to have it in for traditional small businesses. And if you have employees, you are really paying much more for them than their salary, as any employer can tell you.
7. Network marketing is the future.
Some people say that network marketing or MLM is a pyramid scheme. That is not true. A pyramid scheme is illegal because it doesn’t work. There is no product, and thus no value to it. The people at the bottom put money in but the value doesn’t flow down to them. It is a scam because only the people who got in at the top make any money. Most of the people get ripped off. A good example of this is chain letters or the airplane game.
A pyramid the natural shape of structure for all businesses, including governments. A network marketing organization is no exception. Network marketing is just a new way to distribute and market goods and services. It is the way of the future. Even many huge traditional companies see this and are jumping on board.
Are you ready to give it a try? There are a lot of great network marketing companies out there. Do some research and try find the company that is right for you.
I found a new online network marketing program that I am excited about. It is called ProWealthSolutions and it is the fastest growing program on the internet according to alexa.com.
ProWealthSolutions is a fully automated online business that provides you with the website, tools, training, and resources to start an online business from home. NO SELLING. NO MEETINGS. NO PRESSURE. You can make up to $1092 a month without ever sponsoring even one person.
Have you ever thought about starting an internet business? It could really be as simple as opening a Yahoo Store, or on the other end of the scale, as complicated as building your own, professional, dynamic, e-commerce website. Regardless of your approach to internet business, to ensure the success of your business, you need to know of, and apply the following 7 key points.
1) Demand–
Lets say for instance, that you have a really amazing product, and a website that looks like a million dollars–but what if you have no demand for your product? In saying that, you aren’t going to be left with a sword in a gun fight. In the online world, there are many ways to advertise and generate demand for your product. There are the choices and possibilities of advertising in Ezines, joint ventures, affiliate programs, referrals, and even as simple as encouraging word of mouth. Remember, without demand, what do you have? No sales. Where does a business without sales end up?
2) Order–
Its all well and good to have visitors to your website, but they don’t do anything for us unless they become a customer. However, its not as easy as it first appears. Now, once your visitor has turned into a customer, you need to ensure that them becoming an actual customer, is as easy as possible. A straightforward and simple ordering process will do wonders for your business. Less clicks and less time it takes for a customer to complete his or her order, the better it is.
3) Payment–
If there was any part of your business that you would not want to get wrong, it would be this–how payment is actually being transferred between you and your customers. Generally, when taking into account online businesses, the most popular method is credit card transactions. Not only are they an easier and quicker method than most other forms of payment, but it also goes to a psychological level. Credit Cards exude a “buy-now, think-later” attitude. Taking this into account, as a business, you’d be making more profit and sales if you accepted credit cards. However, in saying that, it would also be a wise decision to use alternative methods of payment. After all, the easier it is for your customer to find ways to pay you for your product, you’ll see a more efficient increase both in sales and customer numbers.
4) Fulfillment–
Now payment has been received from your customer, the path isn’t clear just yet. This is a mistake often made by new businesses. Your products need to be delivered, remember! Generally, if you sell digital products, the industry standard is for the product to be delivered instantly; generally through a download link. Your customer expects this, so ensure this is in place. Physical products require more attention to detail; namely physical delivery. Ensure that your customer is informed every step of the way. Communication is essential. If at all possible, send your customer a means of tracking the product through the course of its delivery. Feeling insecure is something your customer should never have to experience.
5) Service and Support–
A good and trusted business will always endevour to provide and utilise excellent customer service support. To a decent extent, your online business customer support will determine whether or not you get repeat purchases, or if your customer requests a refund. The support abilities of your internet business should be efficient as possible; after all, this is the industry standard. At the least, a well-structured and timely e-mail support service should be available to the customer. The more professional your online business becomes, so should your support methods. More advanced methods such as utilising online helpdesks, FAQs, live chats, a ticket system, a knowledge base, will help greatly; these are just examples, there are more support methods out there which you can use.
6) Security–
The internet business world is filled with people who are honest, trustworthy, and are willing to do everything to help the customer. But, on the other hand, the opposite is also very true. And as such, the internet community at large are getting more aware of ways to protect themselves from the internets less desirable people and activities. Namely, E-commerce frauds.
Because of this, it is upto you and your business to ensure that your visitors are protected, and to prove to them that they can trust you. Simple things, such as using a secured server to process your payments, can help more than is seen on the surface. A digital certificate can also help your business, so purchase one if you can. Physical mailing addresses, and even a phone number where your customers can contact you. Whatever you can do to provide your customers with some piece of mind.
7) Community–
Your online business has begun to flourish, and you have now received more than just a few sales–by now you should be thinking about starting a community. A community in any sense is about belonging to something; in this case its no different. Use your customers as a community development team for your product. Use their suggestions and comments to develop and change your product(s). Not only is this an excellent way to increase product ideas for your business, but with every new product release or update, you’ll see an increase in sales ratios, and you will also have built a loyal customer base.
Well there you have it! Utilising and practising these 7 keys will not only help your online business grow and flourish, but will also ensure your customers are happy, too!
When a site has outgrown its web host on all counts or when a web host does not keep its promises, moving web hosts becomes imperative. If a web host fails to provide much needed expansion requirements or technical support you need to upgrade to one that can meet your growth needs.
The first step is to ensure that you have all legal documents and contracts with you. Then make sure you have accurate and updated copies of all content, databases, scripts, and clientele lists. A back up needs to be done as a matter of routine not just when you need to move. Trouble can rear it head in the form of hardware failure or unexplained data losses.
Research the market thoroughly before deciding on a new hosting service. List your requirements and look for a host that can exceed your needs. It is not just bandwidth that you need to look at. Consider technical support, upgrading options, as well as whether the host is keeping up with new developments in the field.
It is important to run from the two web hosts simultaneously for a period until all debugging is carried out and problems are solved. Activate your new solution and upload all your pages, databases, and scripts. Use the new IP address provided by the new company and test the site.
Once things function satisfactorily you must transfer the DNS servers from your previous host to the new one. The transition may take around two weeks so it is essential to keep both sites functional during that transition period. Check mails from both sites until such time you don’t receive any communications to the old site. Once you are sure, discontinue your old hosting service.
Be sure to:
• Select a new service that is similar to your old one as far as technology is concerned. And that you are using the latest design software and that the host has the latest server versions. This will maximize site efficacy.
• Check carefully the hosting service agreement pertaining to the new host.
• Choose a dedicated environment that will offer more capacity for dealing with online customers and provide adequate bandwidth allowances.
• Check out the benefits of an annual plan against a monthly one.
• Find out if your new web hosts are reliable, honest, and competent. The people running the web hosting service must comprehend the technology thoroughly and keep abreast of new developments.
• Check forums to see if the new host you have selected has good reviews and whether there are any valid complaints.
• The host must ensure that your site is up and running 24/7 for 365 days. The pages must load instantly; to this end the web host must have state of the art computer systems. CGI routines, autoresponders, PHP, ASP, SSI scripts, credit card gateways, and so on. All systems must function smoothly.
Be a wise and informed mover.