Web Hosting – An Investment Or an Expense?

December 19th, 2011 Posted in web hosting
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Is having your own website an investment or an expense? The following article will help you gain clarity on this issue.

First of all, let us consider the costs of having a website. A domain name with sufficient amount of space (that also includes a database support for interactive websites) costs under $30 per annum. This is roughly $2.5 / month.

Then comes the designing and maintenance costs. Depending on your requirement, web design can cost as little as $50-$100. There is no upper limit; it can go into several thousands depending on what exactly you want and who is doing it. Ideally, you should ask your friends and associates to refer web designers who have done a good job for them and also charged reasonably. Prepare your requirements in advance before taking quotes. Be very clear on what exactly you want for your website. This will save you a lot of pain. Be sure to cross check the quotes with sites like Elance. Discuss the maintenance charges also, if you need to update your site often.

There is another option where you can save on web design costs if you don’t need a very fancy / customized design. Most hosting providers will offer you site builder options at a nominal cost. In fact, you can even use a blog platform like WordPress or a CMS platform like Joomla and Drupal. Most hosting providers will offer fantastic support, which enables you to install these open source softwares with a few mouse clicks. I would advice you to first go with one of these options, preferably the WordPress / CMS option before you spend on web design.

Once you’ve worked out these costs, you now need to consider the returns. Business is all about ROI (Return On Investment) and you should seriously track all leads and / or orders you receive through your website. First of all, you need to accept the fact that you won’t start getting orders the moment your website is live. “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t work here. You need to work towards promoting your website.

There are several online and offline ways to do this. For offline promotion, you should include your website URL in every piece of communication as you can, like visiting cards, yellow page ads, invoices, quotations, etc.

For online promotion, you should first make it a point to include your URL in email signatures and forum post signatures. Next, you should consider spending a little on PPC (Pay Per Click) ads. The most important online promotion is free traffic from search engines. If you want to win the SEO game, there are only three things that you really need to concentrate on:

1. Unique content: Don’t ever copy content from other websites, create your own. If required, hire a decent copywriter, but first start on your own.

2. Updated content: Search engines love websites which have new content added regularly, so make it a point to add something new to your website at least once a week. If there are no new products or services that you add, consider adding some latest news in your industry. Or you can simply add useful tips that cater to your industry.

3. Backlinks: The more websites that link to yours, the more weight search engines give to your ranking. So try to get more websites linking to you, preferably from related content sites. You can also write articles that are beneficial to your targeted audience and submit them at article directories. Remember to add your website link in the author’s bio (you are seeing this in action right now; check out the bio following this article).

These are the three pillars that SEO stands on. If you do nothing else except follow these, you will get much more targeted traffic than your competitors. You don’t even need an SEO consultant.

If you can generate enough business from your website, it makes sense in continuing it. It then becomes an investment with good returns. You should give it a try for at least 2 years, to track proper ROI. Once you’re fairly successful, you can think of other ways to improve your website. If you’re making more than you’re spending, its time to take your website to the next level. Start by hiring / outsourcing people to write content for you. Use lead generation tactics by giving away free reports in exchange for people to sign up to your mailing list.

While your website is certainly an investment worth making, you can also claim the costs as business expenses! Consult your accountant for details.

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Hosting Your Website – Dot It Yourself in 7 Easy Steps

December 19th, 2011 Posted in hosting website
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First, let me clarify something. There are many reasons why you would want to have your website professionally hosted. However, people in certain situations are better off hosting their site themselves. For example, if you are starting a new business or playing with an idea that you are not sure will work, you might not want to pay a hosting company to host your site, at first. Hosting the site yourself will allow you to save money that you can use to grow your business. Once your business starts growing and your site starts getting a lot of visitors, then you will find it necessary to pay a web hosting company to host it for you, but until then, you need to test the waters.

If you have a computer and a high speed internet connection (DSL/Cable) you can host your own website. You will need to keep your computer on and online 24/7, which should be no big deal. Besides this, you need only to follow the 7 steps I describe below, to make your website available to users on the internet:

1) Install a web server: Most Windows operating systems either come with a web server, or one can be downloaded for free depending on the version of Windows. The web server is the program that runs in the background on your computer listening to requests from people on the internet. It’s the software that finds your pages in your computer and sends them to the users requesting it.

2) Configure the web server: In this step you simply tell your web server where to find your website that is sitting somewhere in your computer.

3) Get a domain name: In this step you decide on the name that you want for your site and buy it from a provider. Domain names are cheap and you pay the fee only once a year.

4) Configure DNS: This is where you associate your website name with the IP address of your computer so users are transferred to your computer when typing the name of your website.

5) Configure your router: Your router needs to know about the computer that has the web page so it knows where to forward users to.

6) Dynamic IP solution: Most people have a dynamic IP address given to them by their ISP. This means the IP address of your computer might change. This is a problem because DNS needs to know the IP address of the computer that people need to be forwarded to when typing a domain name. There is a way to solve this problem without having to pay your ISP more money for a static IP. There are applications that will automatically update DNS when your IP changes.

7) Securing your server: The last step is to make sure your computer is protected from malicious programs on the internet by having the necessary software installed and configured.

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Web Hosting – Common Problems and Troubleshooting

December 19th, 2011 Posted in web hosting
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Every website that is created needs a location or an address where it can reside. In order to achieve this, the user is required to go through a hosting company. A hosting company provider the user with a web address, server space, bandwidth and a loads of other tools and applications required to host a website. In the process, users may find themselves grappling with various web hosting problems and issues that would come the fore. Listed below are a few common problems with web hosting companies that you may have to deal with:

Lack of technical and/or customer support: A quality web hosting service would offer 24/7 technical and customer support. So, no matter what time difference you are residing in, you should always have access to an open line customer service representative in order to troubleshoot technical/common problems. Make sure that a real person takes your call and it should not be an automated or recorded message on the other end. This would reflect the reliability and credibility of the web hosting company.

Pricing structures, reliability and uptime guarantee: While some web-hosting companies offer dearth cheap hosting services, their services are often deficit of 100% uptime, reliability and speed. These are a few issues that the user must brace himself from, before registering with a company that fails to guarantee a minimum uptime of 99%. Also ensure that the company is offering all the essential features and tools for smooth functioning of the website.

Hidden Costs and lack of add-on features: While the hosting company may offer all the essential tools and application support, ensure that these are offered within the price range of the package selected. Otherwise, you may find yourself shelling out additional money for add-on tools that are usually offered by other web hosting services. Ensure that no hidden costs are involved and all the essential features are in place for your website to function smoothly.

There are a few hosting companies that do not offer the “control panel” which is vital for a web hosting account. The control panel comes equipped with a whole lot of goodies including PGP secure e-mail, shopping carts; log analysis, database creation, etc.

Lack of high-tech servers: The user must ensure that the hosting company that they are about to register with employs the latest technology and expertise in order to provide superior services to their users.

It is therefore imperative to delve into the seemingly intricate aspects of the company before you open a hosting account with them. Do not get lured into cheap deals and ads like “unlimited bandwidth” etc. Weigh your requirements carefully and set yourself a monthly budget. If your website has a potential for growth or is e-commerce enabled, your website requirements would greatly differ as compared to hosting just a simple web page.

Speak to experienced users; get involved in forums and blogs and read unbiased user reviews. This would give you an idea of the level of services offered by the web hosting company.

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