How To Start a Web Hosting Business

Posted On Dec 14, 2012 Reseller Training 0 Views : 9583

Web hosting is a very lucrative business, but it isn’t easy. This course is designed to help those who are interested in becoming web hosting resellers get started and flourish in the business of web hosting. We will be continually adding articles, so be sure to book mark this page.

Getting Started

Selecting a Name for Your Web Hosting Business

Posted On Jun 26, 2012 Getting Started 0 Views : 5660

A lot of people who are looking to enter the web hosting industry put a great emphasis on selecting a name and rightfully so — however, you should not kill yourself over the name. Customers won’t sign up with your hosting service solely based on how cool your name is. They will however sign up to your service based on the reputation you create for the name.

Here are a few pointers to go by when choosing a name for your web hosting business:

Pick a domain that has been around for some time.
It’s smart to invest in a good domain name that has at least been registered for a couple of years. While customers are looking into your brand, they won’t see that it’s just been registered. Customers will want to know how long you have been in business, and they won’t ask you directly but rather check on the WHOIS data. So it’s better to get a domain name that has been around for a while.You can find already registered domain names at sites such as BuyDomains.com, Sedo.com, GreatDomains.com.It’s not the end of the world if you’re unable to find an already established domain. There’s nothing wrong with starting out with a fresh domain name. Selecting an existing name only helps you in case your potential customers are wondering how long you have been in business.
An easy to remember domain nameThis one is quite simple, pick a name that is easy to pronounce, spell and remember. Word of mouth is a huge part of the business and if you have a extremely long domain name or a domain that sounds alike, then you’re losing business. I’m sure you’ve heard of “KISS” before — Keep It Simple Stupid.

SEO Friendly Name
Try to include a keyword in the domain name that you’re targeting, say for example you’re selling web hosting to Lawyers, you could have a domain like www.laywerwebhost.com or www.lawyerhosting.com. This in some cases will give you a better chance of getting listed prominently for your niche keyword. However, it doesn’t mean anything if you do not have any one linking to you… so while it’s good to have it’s not extremely important.

Selecting the Right Hosting Platform for Your Hosting Business

Posted On Jun 26, 2012 Getting Started 0 Views : 2894

Starting with the right platform from the start will save you a lot of hassles later down the road. There are tons of options such as reseller hosting, VPS or a dedicated server, but it’s suggested that you use reseller hosting to start off with. It’s the solution that makes the most sense when starting out, it is inexpensive ($19 to $25/month) and has all the features and tools you would need to make your web hosting business succeed.
You may be asking what about VPS and dedicated servers? Well, there is no point in overspending on resources unless you’ve got many clients. It’s easy to upgrade down the road with the right hosting provider. There’s also a learning curve involved with those technologies, so it is best to start with a reseller hosting account and work your way up.
There are several reseller hosting options on the market, but the most popular one is WHM/cPanel.
The WHM/cPanel Reseller Hosting Account
The industry’s most popular reseller account is powered WHM/cPanel. There’s only a couple of draw backs 1) It does not support Windows hosting, not yet anyway and 2) customers could easily backup and move to another cPanel-powered host — but that will make it easy for you to take customers as well. Besides that, WHM/cPanel will be your best friend in this industry. The control panel cPanel is the most commonly used web hosting control panel on the planet and that means that if there is ever a problem, you can simply search it on Google and find a fix.
In addition to that, because WHM/cPanel is so widely used, there are tons of 3rd party applications that integrate and make life easier on the web host and on the end-user, increasing customer satisfaction.
A lot of people who set out to start their web hosting business look at price as the only determining factor when choosing a reseller hosting provider to depend on. It’s highly recommended that you avoid doing that and focus on quality and reputation of the hosts you’re looking at. You and your business need to depend on the hosting provider, cheaping out is going to only cause you problems in the future.
When setting out to select a dependable reseller host, make sure you do your research. Be sure to check out GreenGeeks, as we offer exceptional quality, affordability and reputation for web hosting businesses to depend on including easy upgrades, support and more.
The Turn-key Reseller Account
It’s strongly suggested that you stay away from turn-key solutions that are provided by GoDaddy or Enom. They create ready-made sites that all you to sell everything under the sun. While this may sound great, it’s not. These types of solutions make it impossible to actually grow your business to anything respectable and on top of that you wouldn’t learn a thing except for how to make a sale by sending traffic to sites that look and work exactly like your competitors — except the logo is different.
You lose the freedom of being independent. You’re limited to what they offer and don’t offer. Your pricing is determined by their wholesale price along with a whole bunch of other limitations.
In the end, the decision is yours. If you’re serious about your web hosting business, stay away from turn key solutions.

How does Reseller Hosting work?

After signing up for a reseller hosting account with GreenGeeks, you will receive the login information for the GreenGeeks reseller control panel called Web Host Manager (aka WHM). WHM allows you to manage and provide your customers with their own end-user control panel (aka cPanel), which will allow them to manage e-mails, web site files, statistics, domain names, etc without requring you to do these tasks. In the event that you run into an issue, we are available 24/7/365 to help our resellers.

Each reseller account comes with...

UNLIMITED Disk Space
UNLIMITED Bandwidth
UNLIMITED Parked Domains
UNLIMITED E-mail Accounts
UNLIMITED MySQL Databases

UNLIMITED Sub Domains
UNLIMITED FTP Accounts
FREE Site Builder
PRIVATE Name Servers
FREE Billing Software

FREE Domain Reseller Account
FREE eNom Reseller Account
FREE cPanel Migration
FREE Anonymous Name Servers
& hundreds more features!

Enterprise Quality Servers, Network & Data Center!

	- Intel Dual Quad Core E5 Processors with 24 GB RAM - RAID-10 Hardware RAID Array's for Maximum Storage Performance & Reliability - Multiple Gigabit Connectivity with BGP Routing for Ultimate Network Connectivity - 24/7/365 Server, Network and Data Center Monitoring by Remote & On-Site Staff - Nightly Backups & SAS 70 Type II certified Data Center in Chicago, IL.

Reseller Web Hosting Features

	- Unlimited Web Space and Data Transfer (Bandwidth) - Unlimited Sub-domains, add-ons, and e-mail addresses - Fast & Easy to use Control Panel & Web Host Manager - 99.9% Service Uptime, No commitment with 30-Day Money Back Guarantee - Private Name Servers, Anonymous Server Names, Brandable Control Panel & more

Free With Each Plan

	- FREE eNom Reseller Account ($1650 value) - FREE Web Site Builder with 600+ Templates - FREE Web Site Migration. We'll move everything for you. ($100 value) (See Details) - FREE Marketing Credits ($50 value) - FREE Auto-installation of over 150 scripts (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc)

Control Panel Features

	- Latest version of cPanel Control Panel - Fantastico: Installation of Blogs, Forums, CMS, Formmail & more - Unlimited FTP Accounts, File Manager, DNS Entry Editor, Redirects, Cronjobs & more - Password Protected Directories and Custom Error Pages - Website Statistics: Raw logs, AwStats, Webalizer, Access Logs, Error Logs

Programming & Database Features (LAMP Ready)

	- Programming Languages: CGI, PHP 5, Python, Fast CGI, SSI, Perl - Unlimited MySQL Databases with PhpMyAdmin - Programming Modules: Curl, GD Library, ImageMagick & More - System Management: Secure Shell (SSH) and Cron Jobs - FrontPage Extensions, Dreamweaver & iWeb Ready

E-mail Features

	- Unlimited IMAP/POP3 E-mail accounts with your own STMP server - Unlimited Auto Responders, Forwaders, Aliases, Mailing lists - Webmail access via Horde, SquirrelMail and Roundcube - Receive e-mails to your phone with IMAP or POP3 - Spam Prevention with SpamAssassin and Boxtrapper

24/7/365 North American Support

	- 24/7/365 Access to Support via Phone, Ticket System (E-mail) and Live Chat - 24/7/365 Pro-active and Re-active Server Monitoring - Quality Assurance team to enforce customer satisfaction. - Access to self-help Knowledge Base, FAQ's, Video Tutorials and Help Articles - Support Agents located across the United States and Canada.

Green Web Hosting

	- Latest Generation Intel Processors draw less power. - 300% Wind Powered, Certified REC's through Bonneville Environmental Foundation - Telecommuting Staff to save on Carbon Emissions emitted driving to/from the office. - On-going commitment to Green Programs across the Globe. - United States EPA Recognized Green Power Partner

Selecting a Domain Reseller Provider

Posted On Aug 18, 2012 Getting Started, Reseller Training 0 Views : 2103

When providing web hosting services it is natural to offer domain registration services as well. Just like when you purchase a cell phone plan, it is easier to just buy the phone with the cell phone provider.
There are a dozens of domain reseller providers but the most popular and most complete is eNom, which will allow you to register all the major TLD’s. When you purchase reseller hosting service with GreenGeeks, you get a free enom domain reseller account, this saves you $1600 in set up fees with eNom.
API vs Turn-Key Resellers
There are two main types of domain reseller accounts in the industry, turn-key and then there is the API version.
The Turn-Key Reseller Account provides you with a custom ”clone” of the domain registrar’s full working website and from here you’ll be able to sell domain names. This method is fairly simple in that you simply send customers to this portal and they will be able to buy domains. The customer will pay the registrar directly and not you and then you’ll be able to collect the accumulated funds from the registrar.
This solution is great for those who do not intend to start a true web hosting business. The solution that is recommended for operating a real web hosting business is the API version.
The API version which is offered by most reseller services that offer Turn-Key Reseller accounts allows you to seamlessly integrate into your order flow/billing system. This means a bit more work upfront but in the end it will allow you to experience seamless growth and a positive experience for the customer.
As mentioned earlier, eNom is the preferred domain reseller provider. They offer both the turn-key account, which is called Instant Reseller. While this may be the quickest way to start selling domains, it also leaves you without any behind the scenes work and that means you’re left without the experience.
It’s recommended that you use eNom’s API which will allow you to seamlessly sell domains to customers. The great part is, if you’re using popular client management systems like WHMCS or ClientExec, you just have to insert a username and password to enable the API (all the actual coding work is already done).
Now with eNom you have to be an Enom Technology Partner and can cost you up to $1600 plus deposits to be used towards domain registrations and to get their wholesale pricing. The good news is that there are a lot of web hosting providers who can set up sub-resellers where you can save the initial cost of becoming an Enom Technology Partner. For example, with GreenGeeks, you’re able to enom reseller account saving the initial setup cost.
You can also search for it on Google by typing in “enom reseller account”.

Web Hosting Client Management and Billing System

Posted On Dec 14, 2012 Getting Started, Reseller Training 0 Views : 2688

Web Hosting Client Management and Billing System

If you’re going to be servicing multiple customers, it pays to automate client management and billing. With a web hosting client management and billing system you can perform the following tasks:

Take orders and process them with ease
Automatically invoice and charge your customers
Automatically integrate to register, transfer and renew domain names for your customers
Automatically manage their web hosting subscription by creating, suspending, un-suspending and terminating web hosting accounts on your servers
Enable you to have customer support through a help desk and knowledge base
Manage a whole slew of other items that make your life easier.

There are a lot of web hosting client management systems available on the Internet for your use, some are free and some are not. Here are a few that are popular:

ClientExec
AWBS
HostBill
WHMCS

It’s highly recommend that you use WHMCS because they have proven to be a very reliable company and are always advancing. Recently, cPanel has also purchased stake in the company which further solidifies the company. In this training course, we will be using WHMCS as the system of choice.

Selecting the Right Payment Gateway

Posted On Dec 14, 2012 Getting Started, Reseller Training 0 Views : 8143

This is an important part of the web hosting business, after all it is where the money is being collected! There are two main types of payment gateways:

Merchant Account

This is where you have an account directly with the merchant banks and charges appear in your name on the customers credit card bill.

Merchant accounts provide you with flexibility which you don’t really get with 3rd party processors. There are a lot of merchant account providers that will provide you with a merchant account for businesses based in the United States. For the most part you must have a US business presence, however this is not always the case. It’s best to check with the merchant account provider.

Here are some merchant account providers:

PayPal Pro Services
E-OnlineData.com (recommended)
FirstData.com

3rd Party Payment Processor

This is where another company processes the payment for you and then sends you the funds on a set time period. The customer sees a different name on the credit card statement.

For beginners, this is almost always the best way to go as anyone can get going through the use of PayPal to start accepting payments. PayPal is easy because a lot of client management and billing systems integrate into PayPal out of the box, this makes getting going very easy.

When funds are collected with PayPal, they sit in the PayPal account, almost like a bank account. You can then withdraw at anytime to your bank account. Be sure to check to ensure that you’re able to withdraw from them to your local bank.

Here are some other 3rd party providers:

2CheckOut.com
WorldPay.com

Selecting an SSL Reseller Provider

Posted On Dec 15, 2012 Getting Started, Reseller Training 0 Views : 1499

Your customers will want to sell stuff online and in order for them to make transactions secure, you as the web host must sell SSL (secure socket layer) certificates to the customer. This ensures that the customers website is secure and information that is sent is encrypted.
It’s recommended that when you are selling web hosting, like domains you sell SSL certificates. This is a value added service and makes it easier on the customer to purchase everything they need in one spot.
When it comes to selecting the right SSL reseller provider, just stick with eNom as you do with your domains. They offer small website certificates from $9.95 and range all the way up to 500 per year for premium SSL certificates. This is your cost, you can then mark it up and sell to your customer.
Generally, you want to charge around $30-40 per certificate. This is the standard price for SSL certificates. Don’t be afraid to charge those who are making money with their websites a little money to run their websites.
If you’re a GreenGeeks customer, you get a free eNom reseller account that will get you access to sell SSL certificates. Here’s how you can obtain the eNom reseller account. Alternatively, you can search for “enom reseller account” on Google.
Remember that you also set up an SSL certificate for your site as well. This will bring confidence to online buyers. Without an SSL certificate (that lock in the browser), customers may be turned away thinking their information can be easily hacked in

Starting a Web Site Hosting Business

By Om Thoke, About.com Guide

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Starting a web-site hosting company is one of the easiest options, which is pretty viable without really spending a fortune.

Website hosting business doesn't require any infrastructural investment, and if you decide to take a reseller hosting package or VPS, you won't even have to put in a lot of initial investment either. Here are some basic tips to start a website hosting business.

Difficulty: Average

Time Required: 7 Days

Here's How:

Buying a Reseller/VPS/Dedicated Hosting Package: You can take cheap reseller hosting packages to start off, but I'd advise you to take a decent package so that you don't need to monitor the disk space usage, and bandwidth for few months.

When your business needs grow bigger, you can think of buying a VPS, or opt for dedicated hosting, or even setting up your own infrastructure.
Branding and Advertising to Attract Global Customers: The beauty of a web site hosting business is that your business is not limited to geographical bounds, and you can attract customers from different parts of the world. All that you need to do is to create a good rapport in the market, get some positive feedback from existing customers in form of testimonials.

Using the power of search engine optimization, or advertising programs like Google AdWords, you can easily rank well in search engines for keyword phrases related to your niche such as "web site hosting", "small business web hosting", "best web hosting provider", and get lot of customers.

Remember, you must create a professional-looking website to vow the customers, if you really want to become a successful web hosting provider.
Billing Software, Payment Gateway & Support System: To manage your customer-base, a good billing software is a must-have, and you can easily integrate online payment gateways seamlessly to be able to accept various form of payments such as PayPal, Credit/Debit Card payment, bank-wire transfer.

The popular billing software include Whmautopilot, Clientexec, Accounts lab pro, Modernbill, and the likes of them.

It's noteworthy that most of the reseller web hosting providers offer free automated billing software as a part of their services.

Support Software: Apart from automated billing software, you'd also require a software system such as Perldesk, Cereberus, Deskpro, or Kayako Esupport to facilitate a 24x7 support ticket system for your customers.

Tips:

One of the important things to remember is that a web site hosting business isn't a part time affair, and it requires full time attention, as well as lot of patience.
You must always ensure that you don't lose your rapport in the market by giving poor customer service, or disappointing your customers in terms of hosting services. Far worse, you must never run out of disk space or bandwidth with a cheap reseller account, as it'd definitely hamper your rapport very badly.

What You Need

Reseller/VPS/Dedicated Hosting
A Good Website
Automated Billing Software
Automated Support Software
Payment Gateway & Integration

· Part I.(1) How to Start Your Own Web Hosting Company

·
Are you planning to set up your own web hosting company? After all, the sheer number of hosting companies out there must mean that they're on to something. Maybe there's money to be made off it? And the fact that quite a few hosting operations are run by young guns, probably has you thinking, 'How hard can it be?'

Well, before you even start 'fantasizing' of a life of leisure, spending money you've earned off your hosting venture, here's a reality check. Not only is running a web hosting company a trial, starting one is even more challenging.

How challenging?

To begin with, here are some things to consider:

* Money - Or how much of it you're willing to spend. Even if you could find 'free' software, hardware does cost money, not to mention personnel if you don't have,

* Technical Know-How - Have you done your research on the latest hardware & software and how they work?

* Time - Or how much of it you're willing to devote to the business. After all, many hosting clients demand 24/7 support.

Okay, let's say you've thought about the above considerations at length and still want to go ahead, what do you need to start?

1. Company registration - you need to register your trade (Doing Business As) name before you can even start operating.

2. Servers - Lease, rent or buy, it's still going to cost you.*

3. Space - Where do you keep the servers (and run it from)?*

*These two are intertwined:

* If you buy: it's going to be really expensive but you can get them custom built to suit you exact needs (as desktop quality PCs aren't really recommended.). Consider: :
o Running from Home: Although you'll have more control over your servers, keeping them in your garage is really NOT recommended, unless you can ensure, among other things: uninterrupted power; climate control; security; and decent network connection

o Colocation: Your hardware is kept in a data center where you have 24/7 physical access and the data center merely provides electric and fast connection to the internet.
+ Pros: very flexible; you can build your own servers and determine how network is set up; easy set-up of a private network or a firewall; offers you free reign over hardware configuration

+ Cons: expensive; you're responsible for your own hardware (repairs and replacements)

* If you rent: The data server owns the hardware and rents it to you.
o Pros: they're responsible for the hardware; faster repair times than collocation since there are always techs there to perform them for you; data centers are also able to buy servers in bulk so hardware costs are considerably lower.

* If you lease: Consider:
o Lease-to- own: plans are available from such companies as Dell or Gateway

o Resellers: You get a special shared account on the server, with a web-based control panel (usually cPanel) for adding domains and accounts.
+ Pros: ideal if you're just starting and have not-so-strong system administration skills
+ Cons: no root level access; you're responsible for what your customers do on the server; your service is only as good as your host's

o Virtual Dedicated Servers: Acts like its own unique server.
+ Pros: with root level access; has many of the strengths of a reseller arrangement with greater flexibility

4. Bandwidth - DSL or cable just won't cut it. You need at least a T1 connection to satisfy your clients' speed requirements.

5. Personnel - If you're not really savvy about how servers run and how their associated software work, you need to either hire people for tech/customer support or outsource them. This is also essential if you can't devote 24/7 to answer customer queries etc.
6. Software - To automate all your hosting tasks. Includes (but not limited to):
Operating Systems; Control Panels; Customer Support/Tracking/Management

Whew! Quite a list huh? But wait! We're not through yet.

More things to consider in Part II.

Picking A Host for Your Small Business Website (Infographic)

BY Bob Anderson | October 12, 2011|

39 Comments |

118

489

When it comes to launching or re-launching a website, there's a big difference between renting and buying.
Most business websites are renters -- meaning that they live inside of a Web hosting company rather than on a computer that's owned and operated by the business. This scenario, known as "shared hosting," provides reliability, security and performance for a relatively low price.
But having roommates may not be right for every business. Some sites need more room to roam, faster road access, high security walls or the freedom to do some major renovations. In that case, a dedicated server or a "virtual private server" -- which is a term used to describe partitioning a single server, or computer, to work more like a separate physical computer -- may be a better fit.

Click to Enlarge+

Picking A Host for Your Small Business Website (Infographic)

Shared hosting is the most affordable of the three options. The service typically costs anywhere from $3 to $15 per month. The difference in price usually reflects the quality and availability of customer support and the companies' willingness to lose money on your account in your first year.

For $40 to $150 a month, a virtual private server, which behaves much like a dedicated server, can be yours. For those who need more performance than shared hosting can provide but are still cost-sensitive, it's the way to go.
Then, dedicated hosting -- that is, operating your own physical computer -- typically starts at $200 per month or $2,400 a year and goes up from there. It's more expensive, but you're getting a server-class machine, located in a data center with fast, redundant internet connections and support staff to keep things up-and-running.
If you're still not sure which to choose, here are five questions to ponder:

Which type of Web hosting service did you choose? Tell us why in the comments section.
-Bob Anderson is director of marketing for InMotion Hosting, a Los Angeles based Web hosting provider serving more than 100,000 small businesses and consumers.

People start a Hosting business for various reasons. Some treat it as a second source of income. Some prefer it as a Run from home type of job. Some choose it for its reasonably low startup costs.

There are some reasons though, why you shouldn't get into the Hosting business. Do not come into this business if you want a stress free life. Someone's site going down is certainly not a piece of cake, especially when the customer is on the phone with you. This business is stressful, if you are a small business or if you have a million dollar hosting business. Web Hosts who have grown big are still stressed out, even if they have employees to take care of things.

Do not come into this business if you have strict time restrictions. This is a 24/7 business. Be prepared to sacrifice your social life if need be. Customers have problems at all times. Servers can go down anytime. Hackers are working on cracking your servers overtime. A Web Host doesn't sleep easy.

Do not come into this business with visions of making big money in no time. A frighteningly large percentage of Web Hosts go bust or become dormant because they haven't gotten their Return on Investment (ROI). Many are those who have underestimated the cost or overestimated the ROI. These Web Hosts quietly fold their businesses and suffer the losses. If money is your motivation, then prepare to be demotivated. Money doesn't come easy in this business and requires a lot of work to get a decent amount.

What should you bring to the table

Ideally a new entrepreneur would bring in some Business experience to the table. If you have run some sort of Technical business such as computer sales, ISP, website design or E-business, it can give you a good start, because you would already know about how to run a Company in your area, accounts, taxes and legalities. If you have every owned a Website and have managed it, that would be pretty useful. If you have been working in a 9-5 job, you may want to brush up on Business basics, before you go further. This link can help you get started http://www.bankrate.com/brm/bizsteps.asp

Technical knowledge would be a must. The hosting industry is filled with 14 year olds running their hosting companies quite successfully. What they have primarily is Technical knowledge. You should have preferably installed and studied about Linux and Windows. You should have some understanding of the various technical components of a Internet server and control panel software. If you have an idea of HTML and some scripting, it would be very useful.

It goes without saying that you should be a avid Internet surfer and be comfortable with running your business in front of your computer. A stable broadband connection is also needed for you to be online full time.

Choosing your Server

The real estate of the Web Hosting business lies in the servers you lease or own. Space on your server is what you sell. For example if your server has 50G of Disk space, discounting the Operating system and Control panel software, you can resell maybe 30G of it.

When you start your business, you need to get a Server so that you can host websites on it. Many newbies get confused here. Should they lease a server, should they go Colo, or should they start as a basic Reseller.

Your choices centre around Co location hosting (where you put your server in a data-center. The data-center provides bandwidth and physical space.), Dedicated server (lease a managed server from the Data-center) and Reseller hosting ( A reseller is a middle-man who sells web space on somebody else's server. The most common form of reselling is something like this - Say the actual price of a hosting account is $10, the reseller gets it at $5, and can resell at whatever prices he wants. )

If you are starting on a budget, and have lesser than best Technical knowledge, you would be best taking on Reseller hosting. Its cheap, starting on an investment of under $100 for a reseller account. You would be managing the front end technical support of your clients, but will be spared the high end technical administration of your server. On the flip side though, you have no real control of your and your clients websites. Should the server go down, all you can do is tell your Web Host and patiently wait, all the while fielding calls from your clients.

Once you cross around 100 domains, you could graduate to Dedicated servers or Colo. In case you are getting into Web Hosting big time, it would be advisable to always buy a Web Hosting business. You get a ready clientele and can be spared initial hiccups. The going rate for a web hosting business is generally 1x to 2x times revenue. Make sure to check that the customers are happy, that they are all on monthly or quarterly plans, there is competent technical support in place and the servers are stable.

Remember your entire business plan is based on the Disk space and bandwidth that you are selling. No matter what server you are purchasing, remember a server can hold up to 300-500 accounts. This is the ideal figure. DO NOT base your business model on the premise that you can squeeze in 1000s of accounts into one server. Keep aside about 10% of your disk space and bandwidth for emergencies. The equation for disk space works like this

Saleable disk space = Total server space - 10% free space - Space for Operating system and software

Choosing Software

You need Control panel software, Billing software and Helpdesk software.

Control Panel software helps automate several Administration tasks. A large number of WebHosts use control panel software and customers expect to have a Client side control panel by default. Control panels available are Plesk, cPanel.net, Hsphere.com, Ensim.com and more. https://bobcares.com/page-117.html has a Cost and Features Comparison available to help you choose. Anyway, expect to spend $500-600 a year per server on your control panel. Of course, if you are a reseller, this cost is borne by your Hosting provider.

Some control panels, do not come with a good Billing software . If so you need to buy or lease Billing software. ModernBill and Ubersmith are some well known Billing softwares which can be integrated with popular control panels.

You may need Helpdesk software if your control panel doesn't have them. Cerberus, Kayako, Ubersmith and Perldesk are some good Helpdesk software. Helpdesk software help you track and solve issues that your customers send.

Technical support and maintenance

Once you start your Web Hosting biz, you will get customers calling with complaints like ``my email is not working'', ``the website has gone down'' or Requests for help like ``How do I get my PHP script up and running'', ``How do I use Frontpage and ftp to upload my website''. The kind of questions you can expect to get can range from the absurd to the most complex.

Make no mistake about this. If you don't know Internet server troubleshooting and Linux/Windows in detail, DO NOT go about playing on the server. It can cause unacceptable Service downtime and worse.. Loss of Precious Customer data. Many Web host owners learn tech skills on their servers and customers(This is a scary thought). Such people actually play with the trust that their customers place on them.

If you are not a trained and Experienced Sysadmin, you can either hire local Sysadmins to help you, or you can outsource at a relatively cheaper cost to Outsourced Tech support companies like Bobcares.com. These companies have trained Engineers (Bachelors in Computer Science) who will take 10 mins to do something an untrained person may take over an hour.

24/7 Technical support with average response times of 1 hour or less is the expected Industry standard. In the dog eat dog world of Web Hosting, the only way you can differentiate yourself is through your customer support. If you choose to Outsource your support, take a good long look at the Testimonials and Plans of the provider. Cost shouldn't be the only criteria when you choose to outsource. To save a few dollars, you may push your unsuspecting customers into Tech support nightmare. To check for Quality, look for company certifications like the ISO 9001:2000 standard which ensure that you get what you are told.

Go to https://bobcares.com/page-99.html for more on Customer Support for Web Hosting newbies.

Credit card charges

If your clientele is global, expect to get paid via Credit cards online. Web Hosting providers generally use 3rdparty Payment Gateways like WorldPay.com, Authorize.net, Paypal.com and 2Checkout.com to accept credit cards. These Gateways provide an interface for your customers to securely enter the credit card information. In many cases, as a merchant, you won't even see the credit card numbers, which makes it safer.

If you are a US business, your credit card fees should be around 2-3% of your transaction volumes plus a per sale value(like $0.50 cents a transaction). Some have monthly fees as well. International business will typically face a higher transaction value of around 5%-6%. However as your volumes go up, the rates come down.

Marketing your website

Once you put up your site, you need to effectively market it, if you need to be seen anywhere above the millions of hosts who are already out there.

Submit your site to dmoz.org, Yahoo and hundreds of Hosting directories like www.websitehostdirectory.com , hostreview.com, thewhir.com (there are many more).

If your site is the same every time google comes to your site, It's going to crawl it a lot less frequently - because it realizes you don't update it as often - and there is no need to come a lot. So Make sure your site has a lot of relevant information, a lot of links and information has to be added and changed at least once a week. Adding a news section shows that your site is regularly updated.

Another way to promote your website is to use Pay Per click programs like Google ad words and Overture. Hosting is an expensive keyword and expect to pay $2 or more per click.

One interesting method that Web Hosts can inexpensively use is giving away Free Web Hosting to Popular websites in return of them displaying your link on their main page. This is a great way to generate Back links from popular pages, and is an easy way to push you up the Google ranks. Popular websites rarely pay for their Hosting charges, because Web Hosts line up to sponsor hosting for them.

If your client base is local, you could give away free hosting to locally popular institutions like Churches or schools.

Minding the Competition

There are thousands of Web Hosts out there and too many of them play the Cheapest host card. If this is your business plan, then stay away from Web Hosting. You'll get your fingers burnt real quick. One Web Host famously said that he went from being the cheapest web host to the most expensive web host in One year without even changing his plan prices. Thats how bad things are.

The best way would be to identify Niche areas of hosting and be the masters of that niche. For example, Web Hosts provide Application hosting, like Oracle hosting.

Others provide Service hosting like Email or Data hosting.

Some others provide Hosting to certain Special needs customers. For example, Speciality hosting for Churches, Hosting for educational institutions.

The best thing about Niche Hosting is that you can establish your brand faster, and spend lesser on marketing. Many web hosts have different websites for various Niches areas. for example nicheareaoracle.com or nicheareaemail.com or whatever. Always find a way where you are special and different and be the best in that niche.

Understanding Web Host Plans: 7 Terms to Know

By Christopher Null, PCWorld

Feb 6, 2012 6:30 PM
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Understanding Web Host Plans: 7 Terms to Know

If you’re new to Web hosting, the bevy of plans available from many providers may confuse you. Here’s a quick primer on what’s what in the world of Web hosting.

Shared hosting: In this arrangement, a single Web server box usually handles hundreds or thousands of websites. This is possible because each of those sites is probably very small and uses minimal bandwidth--which is why providers can offer such a service for just $4 or $5 a month. We looked exclusively at shared hosting in our Web host roundup.

Linux hosting: Along with shared hosting, this service is probably what you want, as the vast majority of Web development tools (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and more) are all designed for Linux. For sites that use PHP, Perl, or most other programming code, Linux is almost essential. But don’t panic: You don’t need to know Linux to use a Linux Web hosting service, since Web hosts provide a graphical interface to help you find your way around. All the hosts we looked at in our roundup are Linux hosts.

Windows hosting: A commonly available alternative is Windows hosting, which allows you to use Microsoft tools to manage and publish your site. For sites that employ Microsoft-specific tools, such as ASP, Windows is essential. Usually Windows hosting is more expensive than Linux options.

VPS hosting: A virtual private server is designed for higher-traffic sites, and provides a virtualized server that runs only your website and no others--the benefit being that you can manage or reboot the site individually without affecting (or being affected by) other sites. At the same time, however, the server is hosted on shared equipment that is running many such VPSs, so a hardware failure will still take all the sites down.

Dedicated hosting: With a dedicated host, you get one computer (or more) to host your website. Other sites are hosted elsewhere, so they can’t crash your site or bog it down if they receive a lot of traffic. Sounds nice, but this service gets expensive quickly.

Managed hosting: In a managed hosting situation, the host provides staff members to help keep an eye on your website, manually restarting failed servers and providing technical expertise, sometimes at additional cost. Many hosting plans--shared or dedicated--can also be managed.

Colocation: Although colocation is similar to dedicated hosting, it uses hardware and software that you provide personally, giving you complete control over the site. The Web host doesn’t touch the server except to make sure that it’s still turned on. Everything else is up to you. This service is the most complicated--and usually the most expensive--way to run a website.

Consumer Watch: Find a Good Home for Your Home Page

By Anne Kandra, PCWorld

Feb 21, 2006 6:00 PM
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Photograph: Scott IndermaurJennifer Sullivan Cassidy learned the hard way that there's more to choosing a Web host than beating the budget.

Cassidy selected the first Web host for her Kansas City, Missouri-area design and consulting company based on its bargain-basement price. "I was just starting my business, and I needed to save pennies," she explains.
Cassidy's Web storefront was gaining steam and making some sales when the host's server went down over a long holiday weekend. She was unable to reach anyone in tech support to fix the problem until the following Tuesday--and her Web woes were only beginning. The company's self-touted 24/7 tech support turned out to be more like 24/5 since the support staff was never available on weekends. Even on weekdays, getting a response often took hours.
Cassidy decided she wanted out when she realized she had more than a dozen unanswered support calls pending. "I had to plead for a month's refund due to their server issues," she says. She has since migrated to a new hosting service that has proved more dependable.
The most cursory online search will turn up countless hosting companies, most of which promise next-to-perfect server reliability, round-the-clock service and support, bulletproof security, and more. But how can you tell which hosts actually live up to their promises?

Paying for Ratings

It isn't easy, admits Ron Dunlap, Editor of Webhost magazine, an online publication that tests and evaluates Web hosting companies based on criteria including support, reliability, features, security, and value. To complicate matters, Dunlap adds, a plethora of Web sites rate these services without testing them.
"Many of the so-called host review sites look like they provide real reviews, but in fact their top reviews are based on ad revenue," says Dunlap. In other words, the more a hosting service has paid a review site, the higher its ranking.
The moral? Don't trust host review sites that are littered with ads, that don't say how they test hosts, or that publish reviews that read like advertising copy--that's probably exactly what they are.

Get What You Need

Before shopping for a hosting service, determine what features your site will require. For example, if you're planning a business site, make sure a potential host provides adequate and affordable disk space and bandwidth--but don't trust a site that promises unlimited quantities of either: If you check the fine print, you'll probably figure out how the service weasels out of it. Also investigate its e-mail and file transfer options, e-commerce and payment tools, security options, and support for the scripts and extensions your site uses.
For example, one popular host offers plans ranging from about $4 to $15 a month (add a $30 setup fee if you opt for less than a year's service contract). At the top end, you get 15GB of storage, 500GB of bandwidth, FrontPage extensions, a shopping cart, an FTP manager, and other e-commerce features.
In contrast, a personal or family site can probably get by with a bare-bones plan costing less than $10 a month (or the free hosting included in some ISP plans). Free hosting from a third-party firm usually involves putting up with ads festooned across your pages.
For tips on bandwidth, disk space, and other requirements, check out sites such as Web Hosters or Findmyhosting.com. Then go to a site that lets you search for Web hosts by criteria such as features, server platform, and price. Ask friends and colleagues for their recommendations.
To evaluate contenders, start by looking for contact information on each site. Along with street and general e-mail addresses, look for names of company principals, working phone numbers, and active e-mail links to tech support, customer service, sales, and the like.
Test the support e-mail addresses and phone numbers at different times of day, especially if the company boasts of 24/7 support--and don't be afraid to ask lots of questions. If a host isn't prompt and courteous in responding to a query from a potential customer, it's unlikely to be more accessible once it has your money.
Find out how long the company has been in business. New services aren't necessarily untrustworthy, but one that has been around for several years is probably doing something right. Avoid companies that don't provide references.

Backup Plans

Ask how the company expects to keep your site up and running in the event of a power failure or a hardware crash. It should have a backup plan, such as an alternative power source. Ask how often the service backs up files--anything less than daily should make you think twice.
Carefully review service and support policies. Is there a money-back guarantee if you're not satisfied? Can you try out the service before signing a long-term contract? If you want to leave before the contract expires, can you get a refund? Does the service make transitioning to a competitor difficult?
Aside from verifying round-the-clock service (if promised), look for live online chat, a good FAQ and/or knowledge base, and prompt response to e-mail.
To augment your own research, look for user comments (as well as practical advice) on forums such as Hostsearch Forums, Webhosting Forums, or Webhosting Chat. There are dozens of these sites, so if you look long enough, chances are you'll find someone who has comments about even the most obscure hosting service.
All this investigation takes effort and patience. But with luck, your up-front investment will pay off by helping you find a Web host that will take good care of you for a long time.

Anne Kandra is a contributing editor for PC World. E-mail her at

The Web Marketing Checklist: 37 Ways to Promote Your Website

April 20, 2011 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

How can you get more visitors to your website? What can you do to stimulate traffic? Here’s a checklist of 37 items you need to consider. Many of these may be doing already; others you meant to do and forgot about; still others you’ve never heard of. Of course, a great deal has been written about this. You’ll find many articles about website promotion on our site.
This article is designed to introduce you to website promotion — getting consumers to come to your website. It gives you the basic information, which you can then explore through links to other resources, many of them free. As one of our most popular articles, this was revised most recently on April 19, 2011.
While I’m not breaking any new ground here, I’ve tried to summarize some of the most important techniques.

Search Engine Strategies

Perhaps the most important — and inexpensive — strategy is to rank high for your preferred keywords on the main search engines in “organic” or “natural” searches (as opposed to paid ads). Search engines send robot “spiders” to index the content of your webpage, so let’s begin with steps to prepare your webpages for optimal indexing. The idea here is not to trick the search engines, but to leave them abundant clues as to what your webpage is about. This approach is called “search engine optimization,” abbreviated as SEO.
1. Write a Keyword-Rich Page Title. Write a descriptive title for each page — rich in keywords you want people to find you with — using 5 to 8 words. Remove as many “filler” words from the title (such as “the,” “and,” etc.) as possible, while still making it readable. This page title will appear hyperlinked on the search engines when your page is found. Entice searchers to click on the title by making it a bit provocative. Place this at the top of the webpage between the <HEAD></HEAD> tags, in this format: <TITLE>Web Marketing Checklist — 37 Ways to Promote Your Website</TITLE>. (It also shows on the blue bar at the top of your web browser.)
Plan to use some descriptive keywords along with your business name on your home page. If you specialize in silver bullets and that’s what people will be searching for, don’t just use your company name “Acme Ammunition, Inc.,” use “Silver and Platinum Bullets — Acme Ammunition, Inc.” The words people are most likely to search on should appear first in the title (called “keyword prominence”). Remember, this title is your identity on the search engines. The more people see that interests them in the blue hyperlinked words on the search engine, the more likely they are to click on the link.
2. Write a Description META Tag. Some search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title in the search results. The description should be a sentence or two describing the content of the webpage, using the main keywords and key phrases on this page. Don’t include keywords that don’t appear on the webpage. Place the Description META Tag at the top of the webpage, between the <HEAD></HEAD> tags, in this format:
<META NAME=”DESCRIPTION” CONTENT=”Increase visitor hits, attract traffic through submitting URLs, META tags, news releases, banner ads, and reciprocal links.”>
The maximum number of characters should be about 255; just be aware that only the first 60 or so are visible on Google, though more may be indexed.
When I prepare a webpage, I write the article first, and then develop a keyword-rich title (#1 above). Then I write a description of the content in that article in a sentence or two, using each of the important keywords and key phrases included in the article. This goes into the description META tag.
Next, I strip out the common words, leaving just the meaty keywords and phrases and insert those into the keywords META tag. It’s no longer used much for ranking, but I’m leaving it in anyway. I think it may have some minor value. So to summarize so far, every webpage in your site should have a distinct title and META description tag. If you implement these two points, you’re well on your way to better search engine ranking. But there’s more that will help your ranking….
3. Include Your Keywords in Headers (H1, H2, H3). Search engines consider keywords that appear in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrases appear in one or two header tags. Don’t expect the search engine to parse your Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to figure out which are the headlines — it won’t. Instead, use keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to provide clues to the search engine. (Note: Some designers no longer use the H1, H2 tags. That’s a big mistake. Make sure your designer defines these tags in the CSS rather than creating headline tags with other names.)
4. Position Your Keywords in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text. Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document — where most people write an introduction to the content of the page. You don’t want to just artificially stuff keywords here, however. More is not better. Google might expect a keyword density in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high, so don’t overdo it.
5. Include Descriptive Keywords in the ALT Attribute of Image Tags. This helps your site be more accessible to site-impaired visitors and gives additional clues to the search engines. The ALT attributes dohelp get your images ranked higher for image search (see #12 below).
6. Use Keywords in Hyperlinks. Search engines are looking for clues to the focus of your webpage. When they see words hyperlinked in your body text, they consider these potentially important, so hyperlink your important keywords and key phrases. To emphasize it even more, the webpage you are linking to could have a page name with the keyword or key phrase, such as blue-widget.htm– another clue for the search engine.
7. Make Your Navigation System Search Engine Friendly. You want search engine robots to find all the pages in your site. JavaScript and Flash navigation menus that appear when you hover are great for humans, but search engines don’t read JavaScript and Flash very well. Therefore, supplement JavaScript and Flash menus with regular HTML links at the bottom of the page, ensuring that a chain of hyperlinks exists that take a search engine spider from your home page to every page in your site. Don’t set up your navigation system using HTML frames (an old, outdated approach); they can cause severe indexing problems.
Some content management systems and e-commerce catalogs produce dynamic, made-on-the-fly webpages, often recognizable by question marks in the URLs followed by long strings of numbers or letters. Overworked search engines sometimes have trouble parsing long URLs and may stop at the question mark, refusing to go farther. If you find the search engines aren’t indexing your interior pages, you might consider URL rewriting, a site map, or commercial solutions.
8. Create a Site Map. A site map page with links to all your pages can help search engines (and visitors) find all your pages, particularly if you have a larger site. You can use free tools, XML-Sitemaps.com to create XML sitemaps that are used by the major search engines to index your webpages accurately. Upload your sitemap to your website. Then submit your XML sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing (formerly MSN), following instructions on their sites. By the way, Google Webmaster Central has lots of tools to help you get ranked higher. Be sure to set up a free account and explore what they have to offer.
9. Develop Webpages Focused on Each Your Target Keywords. SEO specialists no longer recommend using external doorway or gateway pages, since nearly duplicate webpages might get you penalized. Rather, develop several webpages on your site, each of which is focused on a target keyword or key phrase for which you would like a high ranking. Let’s say you sell teddy bears. Use Google Insights for Search or the free keyword suggestion tool on Wordtracker to find the related keywords people search on. In this case: write a separate webpage featuring the keyword “teddy bear,” “teddy bears,” “vermont teddy bears,” “vermont bears,” “the teddy bears,” teddy bears picnic,” “teddy bears pictures,” etc. You’ll write a completely different article on each topic. You can’t fully optimize all the webpages in your site, but for each of these focused-content webpages, spend lots of time tweaking to improve its ranking, as described in point #10.
10. Fine-tune with Careful Search Engine Optimization. Now fine-tune your focused-content pages and perhaps your home page, by making a series of minor adjustments to help them rank higher. Software such as WebPosition allows you to check your current ranking and compare your webpages against your top keyword competitors. I use it regularly. WebPosition’s Page Critic tool provides analysis of a search engine’s preferred statistics for each part of your webpage, with specific recommendations of what minor changes to make. The best set of SEO tools is Bruce Clay’s SEOToolSet. You can find links to many SEO articles on this site.
Frankly, this kind of SEO fine-tuning is time-consuming, painstaking work that takes a lot of specialized knowledge. For this reason, many small and large businesses outsource search engine optimization. If you’ll explain your needs to me on my online form, I can refer you to appropriate SEO firms that I know and trust.
11. Promote Your Local Business on the Internet. These days many people search for local businesses on the Internet. To make sure they find you, include on every page of your website the street address, zip code, phone number, and the five or 10 other local community place names your business serves. If you can, include place names in the title tag, too. When you seek links to your site (see #15 below), you should request links from local businesses with place names in the communities you serve and complementary businesses in your industry nationwide.
Also create a free listing for your local business on Google Places for Business, Yahoo! Local, and Bing Local Listing Center. That way your business can show up on a map when people do a local search. For more information, see articles on local marketing on my site.
12. Promote Your Video, Images, and Audio Content. Google’s “universal search” displays not only webpage content, but also often displays near the top of the page relevant listings for images, videos, local businesses (see #11 above), and audio clips. Therefore, consider creating such content appropriate to your business and then optimizing it so it can be ranked high enough to help you. For example, if you were to get a top-ranking, informative video on YouTube that mentions your site, it could drive a lot of traffic to your site. For more information, search on “optimizing images” or “optimizing videos.” You can see how I use videos to promote my business on my Web Marketing Today YouTube Channel.

Linking Strategies

Links to your site from other sites drive additional traffic. But since Google and other major search engines consider the number of incoming links to your website (“link popularity”) as an important indicator of relevance, more links will help you rank higher in the search engines. Google has a measure called PageRank that reflects the quantity and quality of incoming links. All links aren’t all equal. Links from trusted, popular sites help your site rank higher than links from lower traffic sites. You’ll find articles on linking strategies on our site.
13. Submit Your Site to Key Directories, since a link from a directory will help your ranking — and get you traffic. A directory is not a search engine. Rather, it is a hierarchical listing of sites sorted according to category and subcategory. Be sure to list your site in the free Open Directory Project, overseen by overworked volunteer editors. But if you don’t get listed right away, don’t be impatient and resubmit, or you’ll go to the end of the queue. A link in this directory will help you a lot.
Yahoo! Directory is another important directory. Real humans read submissions; so be careful to follow the instruction given. Hint: Use somewhat less than the maximum number of characters allowable, so you don’t have wordy text that will tempt the Yahoo! editor to begin chopping. Yahoo! Directory Submit requires a $299 annual recurring fee to have your site considered for inclusion within seven business days. Other paid business directories that might help are About.com and Business.com.
14. Submit Your Site to Trade Organization Sites and Specialized Directories. Some directories focused on particular industries, such as education or finance. You probably belong to various trade associations that feature member directories. Ask for a link. Even if you have to pay something for a link from the organization, it may help boost your PageRank.
Marginal directories, however, come and go very quickly, making it hard to keep up, so don’t try to be exhaustive here. Beware of directories that solicit you for “upgraded listings.” Unless a directory is widely used in your field, a premium ad is a waste of money — but the (free) link itself will help boost your PageRank and hence your search engine ranking.
SubmitWolf is a directory submission tool I’ve used with good success. You complete a listing form in the software interface. Then they submit your listing to all the appropriate directories they know of, plus links to sites that require manual submission. It’s a timesaver and works well. Just be careful to submit only to actual directories, not “linking sites.”
15. Request Reciprocal Links. Find websites in your general niche and request a reciprocal link to your site (especially to your free service, if you offer one, see #24 below). Develop an out-of-the way page where you put links to other sites — so you don’t send people out the back door as fast as you bring them in the front door. Your best results will be from sites that generate a similar amount of traffic as your own site. High-traffic site webmasters are too busy to answer your requests for a link and don’t have anything to gain. Look for smaller sites that may have linking pages.
Check out Ken Evoy’s free SiteSell Value Exchange. It (1) registers your site as willing to exchange links with other sites that have a similar theme/topic content and (2) searches for sites with similar topical content. Additionally, two automated link-building software programs stand out — Zeus and IBP Link Builder. Both of these search the web for complementary sites, help you maintain a link directory, and manage reciprocal links. However, use these programs to identify the complementary sites, not to send impersonal automated email spam to site owners.
When you locate sites, send a personal email using the contact email on the site or to the administrative contact listed in a Whois Directory. If email doesn’t get a response, try a phone call. As a warning, only link to complementary sites, no matter how often you are bombarded with requests to exchange links with a mortgage site that has nothing to do with your teddy bear store. One way Google determines what your site is about is who you link to and who links to you. It’s not just links, but quality links you seek. Reciprocal linking as hard, tedious work, but it doesn’t cost you a dime out of pocket! Keep working at this continuously, a little bit at a time. Patience and persistence will get you some good links, so keep at it.
16. Write Articles for Others to Use in Websites and Newsletters. You can dramatically increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise and distribute them to editors as free content for their email newsletters or their websites. Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article. This is an effective “viral” approach that can produce hundreds of links to your site over time. You’ll find lots of information on how to do this from the most popular article-marketing site, EzineArticles.com. When you create a free membership account, they begin sending you instructions and ideas each week.
17. Issue News Releases. Find newsworthy events and send news releases to print and Web periodicals in your industry. The links to your site in online news databases may remain for several months and will temporarily improve traffic to your site and increase link popularity. Use an online news release service such as PR Web. Placing your website URL in online copies of your press release may increase link popularity temporarily.
Two additional linking strategies, discussed below, are to ask visitors to bookmark your webpage (#20) and to develop a free service (#23), which will greatly stimulate links to your site.

Social Media

Our next type of website promotion comes from the mushrooming field of social media, in which people are encouraged to interact with each other, and respond to each other’s blog postings and comments. You should be aware of four types of social media: (1) blogs, (2) social networking sites, (3) social bookmarking sites, and (4) forums. Don’t be upset if the distinctions between types of social media tend to blur. Social media help promote your site by sending direct traffic, producing links to your site, and generating awareness. The subject is too diverse to go into detail here. You can learn more in our social media articles on this site.
18. Begin a Business Blog. Want links to your site? Begin a business blog on your website, hosted on your own domain. If you offer excellent content and regular industry comment, people are likely to link to it, increasing your site’s PageRank. Consistency and having something to say are key. If you have a blog on a third-party blog site, occasionally find reasons to talk about and link to your own domain.
19. Become Part of a Social Media Community. Some of the best online communities for business include Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. In addition, you may want to participate in a social bookmarking community in which members share with each other information about websites, articles, or news items that they like (or don’t like). These include Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, and Google Bookmarks. Search engine spiders troll these sites looking for links to something new and relevant. You can usually place a link to your website in your profile, but the biggest gain comes when other people mention you (which generates traffic to your site), link to you (which increases your PageRank and brings traffic), or bookmark you (which increases your PageRank and brings traffic, see #21 below).
One important reminder, don’t join a community to spam them or talk incessantly about your business. Like any community you must listen, comment, and make a genuine contribution for the good of others. Don’t hog the conversation. Otherwise, your self-serving links and comments will hurt your reputation.
Don’t bother with groups consisting of pure spam. Instead, find groups where a serious dialog is taking place. Don’t use aggressive marketing and overtly plug your product or service. Rather, add to the discussion in a helpful way and let the “signature” at the end of your email message do your marketing for you. People will gradually get to know and trust you, visit your site, and do business with you.
20. Promote Your Site in Online Forums and Discussion Lists — “old school” social media. The Internet offers thousands of very targeted email based discussion lists, online forums, and groups made up of people with very specialized interests. Use Google Groups to find appropriate groups. Search online for blogs or other forums.
21. Ask Visitors to Bookmark Your Site. It seems simple, but ask visitors to bookmark your site or save it in their Favorites list. I use a widget called AddThis. When you put the AddThis JavaScript on your webpage, it automatically determines the title and URL of that page. When visitors click the button on your page, they are automatically taken to a page that allows them to choose which bookmarking service they prefer, and then pre-populates the appropriate form with the title and URL of your webpage. I use AddThis throughout my website, as well as in my newsletters. If you have good content that people want to bookmark, this can generate hundreds of links to your site and significantly raise your rankings.

Traditional Strategies

Just because “old media” strategies aren’t on the Internet doesn’t mean they aren’t effective. A mixed media approach can be very effective.
22. Include Your URL on Stationery, Cards, and Literature. Make sure that all business cards, stationery, brochures, and literature contain your company’s URL. And see that your printer gets the URL syntax correct. In print, I recommend leaving off the “http://” part and including only the www.domain.com portion.
23. Promote using traditional media. Don’t discontinue print advertising that you’ve found effective. But be sure to include your URL in any display or classified ads you purchase in trade journals, newspapers, yellow pages, etc. View your website as an information adjunct to the ad. Use a two-step approach: (1) capture readers’ attention with the ad, (2) then refer them to a URL where they can obtain more information and perhaps place an order. Look carefully at small display or classified ads in the back of narrowly targeted magazines or trade periodicals. Sometimes these ads are more targeted, more effective, and less expensive than online advertising. Consider other traditional media to drive people to your site, such as direct mail, classifieds, post cards, etc. TV can be used to promote websites, especially in a local market.
24. Develop a Free Service. It’s boring to invite people, “Come to our site and learn about our business.” It’s quite another to say “Use the free kitchen remodeling calculator available exclusively on our site.” Make no mistake, it’s expensive in time and energy to develop free resources, but it is very rewarding in increased traffic to your site — and a motivation to link to the site! Make sure that your free service is closely related to what you are selling so the visitors you attract will be good prospects for your business. Give visitors multiple opportunities and links to cross over to the sales portion of your site.

Email Strategies

Don’t neglect email as an important way to bring people to your website. Just don’t spam, that is, don’t send bulk unsolicited emails without permission to people with whom you have no relationship. Many countries have anti-spam laws.
I’ll mention just a few important elements here. You can learn more from our articles on email marketing.
25. Install a “Signature” in your Email Program to help potential customers get in touch with you. Most email programs allow you to designate a “signature” to appear at the end of each message you send. Limit it to 6 to 8 lines: Company name, address, phone number, URL, email address, and a one-phrase description of your unique business offering. Look for examples on email messages sent to you.
26. Publish an Email Newsletter. While it requires a commitment of time, creating a monthly email publication is one of the most important promotion techniques. It could be a newsletter (“ezine”), list of tips, industry updates, or new product information — whatever you believe your customers will appreciate. This is a great way to keep in touch with your prospects, generate trust, develop brand awareness, and build future business. It also helps you collect email addresses from those who visit your site, but aren’t yet ready to make a purchase. You distribute your newsletter inexpensively using email marketing services such as: iContact, ConstantContact, and AWeber. If you have a very small list, some of these services let you use their services free until you grow larger. Blogs are very popular, but don’t really replace email newsletters. You have to go to a blog to read it, while an email newsletter appears in your inbox asking to be read.
27. Aggressively Ask for Email Sign-ups. If you want to get subscribers to your email newsletter, you’ll need to work hard at it. Include a subscription form on every page of your website. Promote sign-ups through free whitepapers, e-books, or other products. If you have a local business, ask customers to sign up for your email list to get “special Internet only offers.” Also ask other businesspeople when they give you a business card if you can send them your email newsletter. While only the email address itself is necessary, I always ask for a first name also, so I can personalize the newsletter and the email subject line with the recipient’s name.
28. Send Transactional and Reminder Emails. A transactional email is sent to an existing customer to initiate, remind, confirm, or thank the person. Be creative. If you keep careful records, you can send emails to customers on their birthday to remind them to return to your site. Subscription confirmation emails can also mention several popular products. You might remind customers that it has been three months since their last order and ask if it’s time for a refill. Thank you for your purchase emails can offer a coupon to bring your customer back for a future sale. Use your imagination, but don’t pester your customers. You’re there to serve them, not the other way around.
29. Send Offers to Your Visitors and Customers. Your own list of customers and site visitors who have given you permission to contact them will be your most productive list. Send special offers, coupon specials, product updates, etc. They often initiate another visit to your site. If you have a regular newsletter, you can include many of these in your regular emailing.
30. Exchange Email Mentions with Complementary Businesses. You might consider exchanging email newsletter mentions with complementary businesses to reach new audiences. Just be sure that your partners are careful where they get their mailing list so you don’t get in trouble with the anti-spam laws in your country.
I’ll mention renting email lists in #37 below under Paid Advertising approaches.

Miscellaneous Strategies

Here are a couple of strategies that don’t fit elsewhere.
31. Announce a Contest. People like getting something free. If you publicize a contest or drawing available on your site, you’ll generate more traffic than normal. Make sure your sweepstakes rules are legal in all states and countries you are targeting. Prizes should be designed to attract individuals who fit a demographic profile describing your best customers.
32. Devise Viral Marketing Promotion Techniques. So-called viral marketing uses existing communication networks to spread the word exponentially. Word-of-mouth, PR, creating “buzz,” and network marketing are offline models. Promotion strategy #16 above, “Write Articles for Others to Use for Website and Newsletter Content,” is a kind of viral approach.
The key to the best viral marketing, however, is create something that generates buzz and is so cute / fascinating / fun / bizarre that it gets passed by viewers to their friends via email and social networks — thousands of times — so that it propels more and more people to your website, and, hopefully, helps enhance your brand, produce sales, and ultimately boost profits. Internet marketers often seek to launch viral campaigns on Digg or YouTube. Digg is a social bookmarking site with such power, that if enough people “Digg” you, you appear on the Digg front page and receive a huge number of visitors in a few hours. If your video goes viral on YouTube, you could get tens of thousands of visits to the site you promote in the video. However, viral marketing is difficult to do well.

Paid Advertising Strategies

None of the approaches described above is “free,” since each takes time and energy. But if you want to grow your business more rapidly, there comes a point when you need to pay for increased traffic. Advertising is sold in one of three ways: (1) traditional CPM (cost per thousand views), (2) pay per click (PPC), and (3) pay per action (PPA) or cost per action (CPA) approaches. Examples of the latter are affiliate program and lead generation programs. Banner ads get such a low click-through rate (0.2%) that I don’t recommend paying much for them. Banner ads typically cost about 50 to $1 per thousand page views, except on targeted sites. Do some small tests first to determine response. Then calculate your return on investment (ROI) before spending large amounts. Here are some methods to explore:
33. Advertise in an Email Newsletter. Some of the best buys are small text ads in email newsletters targeted at audiences likely to be interested in your products or services. Many small publishers aren’t sophisticated about advertising and offer very attractive rates.
More effective (and more expensive) is to send out an appropriate solo email to the targeted list’s subscribers. These often get a good response.
34. Begin an Affiliate Program. Essentially, a retailer’s affiliate program is a CPA program that pays a commission to other site owners whose links to the retailer’s products result in an actual sale. The goal is to build a network of affiliates who have a financial stake in promoting your site. If you’re a merchant, you need to (1) determine the commission you are willing to pay (consider it your advertising cost), (2) select a company to set up the technical details of your program, and (3) promote your program to get the right kind of affiliates who will link to your site. Software and service companies are available to facilitate the process. The problem is getting enough affiliates who will actually work hard to promote your products or services. These “super affiliates” will probably consist of only 1% to 3% of your total number of affiliates.
35. Purchase Pay Per Click (PPC) ads with Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, or Microsoft adCenter. This strategy is way down the list, but it is vitally important. Most Internet businesses will want to explore using Google AdWords to drive targeted traffic to their websites.
These PPC ads appear on the search engine results page, typically both above and to the right of the organic or natural search engine results. Since they are keyword-driven, they can be quite relevant to what a searcher is trying to find. Your ranking in this list of paid text ads is determined by (1) how much you have bid for a particular search word compared to other businesses, (2) the click-through rate on your ad, and (3) your Quality Score, which reflects the relevancy and quality of your ad and the landing page it points to.
PPC ads can be a cost-effective way to get targeted traffic, since you only pay when someone actually clicks on the link. But I strongly recommend that you study this carefully and expect a learning curve before you invest large sums of money in PPC advertising. You can find articles on Paid Search on our site.
36. List Your Products with Shopping Comparison Bots and Auction Sites. If you’re an online merchant, you’ll want to consider this. Shopping bots compare your products and prices to others. Some work on a PPC (Pay Per Click) basis, others on a CPA (Cost Per Action) basis, perhaps with a listing fee. Bots to consider include mySimon, BizRate, PriceGrabber, and Shopping.com. Shopping sites that include comparison features include: eBay, Yahoo! Shopping, and Amazon Marketplace. You pay to acquire first-time customers, but hopefully you can sell to them a second, third, and fourth time, later on.
37. Rent targeted, commercial email lists. The last website promotion technique I’ll mention is renting targeted email lists. We abhor “spam,” bulk untargeted, unsolicited email, and you’ll pay a very stiff price in a ruined reputation and cancelled services if you yield to temptation here. But the direct marketing industry has developed targeted email lists you can rent — lists consisting of people who have agreed to receive commercial email messages. These lists cost $40 to $400 per thousand or 4 to 40 per name. Do a smaller test first to determine the quality of the list. Your best bet is to find an email list broker to help you with this project. You’ll save money and get experienced help for no additional cost. Realize, however, that due to the high cost of renting lists, many businesses won’t generate enough businesses to justify the cost. Run the numbers before you invest.

Summary

Whew! That’s it. We certainly haven’t exhausted ways to promote your site, but these will get you started. To effectively market your site, you need to spend time adapting these strategies to your own market and capacity. Right now, why don’t you make an appointment to go over this checklist with someone in your organization? Make this Checklist jump-start for your new Internet marketing strategy.

30 Free Ways To Market Your Small Business Site

Carrie Hill, June 26, 2012 79 Comments

• SIM Partners technology empowers major brands to maximize digital marketing results at a local level.

Are you looking for ways to market your small business website with a limited budget?

Whether it’s with established sites such as Google and Facebook, or newer outlets like Pinterest, there are plenty of options available to promote your site.

There are at least 30 ways to market your website with a time investment and no credit card required. Some of these are oldies but goodies, while others are newer and exciting avenues you may not have tried out yet.

Here are 30 things you can do today to get started marketing your website for free.

Press releases still work. Granted a submission to PRWeb or a Vocus account make the pickup and link benefit much easier, but those cost dollars – so for this article lets reiterate the best free press release sources:

Send the press release to your local media outlets, or any niche media outlets that may be interested in what you do.
Claim, verify, and update your Google Local Business listing. This is extremely important. Google Local Listings have been absorbed into Google+, so be sure to check out this great resource over at Blumenthals.com to keep up to date on how to manage your Google Local Listing.
Find a niche social media site that pertains to your exact business and participate. Be helpful, provide relevant and useful information, and your word of mouth advertising will grow from that engagement.

Examples:

Travel or hospitality business – Tripadvisor.com forums
Photography store – Photo.net or RockTheShotForum.com
Wedding Planning or Favor site – Brides.com or Onewed.com forums
Search your niche or service plus forums to find ideas. If there isn’t a forum out there, consider starting one.

Build a Google+ page for your business and follow businesses that are related to your product or service niche. Share informative and relative content and link to your profile from your website. You should also consider allowing users to +1 your content on a page by page basis.
Setting up joint benefit with local businesses or others in your niche can help you reach eyes you never did before. Be sure to answer the question "Will my user find this information beneficial as they shop and purchase?" every time you link to a resource, or request a link or listing on another site.
Comment and offer original, well thought out, sensible information, opinion and help on blogs that are relevant to your website's topic and be sure to leave your URL. Even if a nofollow tag is attached, you could gain a bit of traffic and some credibility as an authority on the subject matter. This is not blog comment spamming, this is engaging in a conversation relevant to your website's topic.
Set up and verify a Webmaster Central Account at Google.
Set up a Bing Webmaster Tools account and verify it.
Update or create your XML sitemap and upload it to Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Write a "how-to" article that addresses your niche for Wikihow.com or Answers.com. This is kind of fun and a good resource for getting mentions and links. Looking at your product or service in a step-by-step manner is often enlightening in several ways. It can help you better explain your products and services on your own website. I will say I don’t know why some of these sites still rank well, many of them are junk. I do like most of the answers on the two sites mentioned above. Be picky with where you participate.
Write unique HTML page titles for all of your pages. This is still extremely important, don’t skimp on this one.
Share your photos at Flickr – get a profile, write descriptions, and link to your website. Don't share photos you don't own or have permission to use.
Start a blog. There's nothing wrong with getting the basics of blogging down by using a free service from Blogger or WordPress.
Make sure your Bing and Yahoo Local listings are up to date.
Update and optimize your description and URL at YP.com. They'll try to get you to spend money on an upgraded listing or some other search marketing options. Don't bother with that, but make sure the information is accurate and fresh.
Use your Bing Webmaster Tools account to look at your incoming links. How do they look? Are all of the sites relevant and on-topic? If not, reevaluate your link building practices and start contacting any of the irrelevant sites you can and ask them to take down your link. A clean and relevant incoming link profile is important; cleaning up bad links is a necessity until we can tell Google and Bing which links we want them to ignore.
Make a slideshow of your products or record an original how-to video and upload to YouTube. Be sure to optimize your title and descriptions. Once it's uploaded, write a new page and embed the video on your own Web site. Add a transcription of the video if possible.
Try a new free keyword tool for researching website optimization, then see #20.
Add a page to your site focused on a top keyword phrase you found in #19.
Build a Facebook Page and work to engage those that are interested in your product or service. Facebook is so much more robust than it ever was! Create groups, events, and photo albums. Link to your Facebook profile from your site and allow visitors to your site to like and share your content.
Install Google Analytics if you don’t have any tracking software. The program is pretty amazing and it's free. You need to do this if you haven’t already. It's that important.
Start Twittering or start doing it much better than you are now – it's a great way to network with like-minded individuals.
Pinterest is hot right now. If you have visually stimulating content that is relevant to the site's demographic, you can find great success right now. Be sure you're using solid practices for marketing on Pinterest as you get started.
Create a new list in Twitter and follow profiles of industry experts you know and trust. Use this as your modern feed reader. I don’t use RSS feed readers anymore. I like content that has been vetted by my peers and is worthy of a tweet or two.
Try a new way to write an ad for a struggling PPC ad group or campaign.
Review your Google Analytics In-Page insights and take note of how users are interacting with your page. Where to they click, what is getting ignored. Make changes based on this knowledge.
Set up a Google Content Experiment through your Analytics account and test with the information you obtained and changes you made in number 27.
Build a map at Google Maps and add descriptions for your storefront, locations, and nearby useful points of interest. Make your map public and embed it on your own website. Add links back to relevant content on your site if possible to each point of interest.
Keep reading Search Engine Watch for more free tips and tricks.

There you have it – 30 ways to market your website. Get to work and make something happen! There's no reason to say you can't be successful because you don’t have a huge advertising budget. Time is all you need.

More Inexpensive Marketing Ideas

Thursday, September 12, 2013

HOSTING BUSINESS