Archive for the ‘Web Hosting’ Category

Web hosting accounts are very inexpensive these days.  Professional web hosting companies may charge a little more than the bargain web hosting accounts, but even those fees are extremely reasonable.

Free Hosting Accounts ($0) – There are free web hosting services such as WordPress.com.  These typically work well for enthusiast sites and many nonprofits.  Most of them do not provide email hosting, have strict limitations to prevent abuse, and may not allow you to use your own domain name.   Servers are typically overloaded.  Support is typically very limited or non-existent.  What do you expect for nothing?

http://www.WordPress.com is excellent for zero budget websites.

Discount Hosting Services ($0-$100/yr) – These are the dominant providers out there.  Companies such as GoDaddy.com, BlueHost.com, and many others all seem to offer ridiculous amounts of space, bandwidth, and other services.  Be aware that every one of these has limits.  The common limitation is on CPU utilization.  If your website is too active, they will shut down your account.  Do you want to learn that the hard way after placing some ads?  Probably not.  They probably will not run backups of your site either, so you better watch out for yourself.  This is a big issue if you use databases which require special steps to backup.

http://www.Godaddy.com is excellent for discounted hosting services.

Commercial Hosting Services ($100-$250/yr) – Commercial hosting companies will typically have better servers that are not overloaded.  Some will have mirrored disks.  Most will run backups.  Most will not have CPU restrictions.  Customer support services will usually be excellent.  While these will cost slightly more, it is well worth it to have a professionally managed server.

http://www.AnythingInternet.com – of course I have to recommend my own company.

Premium Value Added Services ($200/yr and up) – These hosting companies are the type that offer special features that require you to host with them.  Marketing companies might have a special database or a special statistics package.   Companies like this will offer special features, typically industry specific.  These packages are very expensive, but you are paying for the special services.

This category will include services specific to your industry.  Direct sales companies provide these types of websites.  Franchises, financial companies, industry sites, such as www.har.com , or niche market sites such as http://www.clubrunner.com .

Choosing a Hosting Company

Know Your Needs – Do you need email hosting?  Does your website require special database or operating system requirements?  Do you want the company to run backups?  Is your site a high traffic site?  Do you need extreme amounts of online storage?

Contact Technical Support – Do not call the pre-sales number.  Salesmen always answer the phone and make big promises.  Try to call or email the tech support team and ask questions there first.  They are the people you will deal with once your account is open.  Call them or email them a few different times.  Get a feel for them.

Try Different Companies – If you have more than one website, put them with different companies for a while.

Read the Forums – Most web hosting companies have a forum where existing customers chat with each other.  Always read the forums before you sign up.  The customers who are unhappy will be complaining really loudly there.  These are great testimonials.  Of course every company will have unhappy customers, but if you see that dozens of customers are all complaining about the same issue, consider those conversations carefully.

Testimonials from Friends – My least favorite point on this list is asking your friends what they do.  Their needs may be different and they may not be qualified to know they are getting treated poorly.  Ask your friends, but consider the source as you evaluate their advice.

Desirable domain names are a hot commodity and the prices are going up, up, up!  Have you tried to register a domain name just to find out it has already been taken?  Desirable domain names, also called Premium Domain Names, are being marketed more aggressively than ever and people are paying a fortune for some of them.  We are not talking about the multimillion-dollar domain names here, we are talking about every day names that you might want to use for your business.

If you have a company name or product name and that name is available already, that is an obvious choice.  This article is about what to do when your first choice brand name is not available.

What Makes a Good Domain Name?

There are two important goals for most websites.  First is to be memorable to visitors.  Brand recognition and stickiness is very important.  Second is to help train Google.com in order to get more visitors redirected from the search engines.   To be clear, your domain name is a very small part of your overall search marketing strategy, but it is an important one.

To train Google.com, your domain name should include useful keywords.  If you are an attorney that specializes in divorces, some of your keywords would be:  divorce, attorney, lawyer, custody, settlement, alimony, etc.  You could choose a domain name by combining good keywords, such as: DivorceAttorney.com, DivorceLawyer.com, etc.  Those are very memorable and include great keywords.  Of course, someone else already registered those names.  What happens if you use more keywords, such as DivorceAttorneySettlementChildCustodyLawyerSpousalAbuseAlimonyFamilyLawOffice.com? That has many keywords in it, but it hardly solves our first objective of being memorable.  Well, it is very memorable, but not easily memorized.

What Variations Should I Try?

If you have decided on an one or two ideal domain names and they are no longer available, what do you do?  The first thing to do is to try a few variations.  Try and stay with .com style names.  Avoid adding dashes.  Add things like "Houston", "Texas", "My", "Your", "Offices", "Blog", "Store", etc.  This gives you a lot more options.  Using our example domain, DivorceAttorney.com, we have a lot more options: HoustonDivorceAttorney.com, MyDivorceAttorney.com, DivorceAttorneyOffices.com, and so on.

There are many alternatives to the .com extension.  These are less desirable for several reasons.  Mainly that your customers will probably go to the .com version.  It is not as big of an issue as it used to be, but .com names are still considered the premium choice with .net, .us, .biz, and .tv as decent second choices.  Do not choose .org unless you are a non-profit because that is what people expect from a .org site.

How do I Buy a Premium Domain Name?

You can easily determine who owns an existing domain name using a service called "WHOIS".  The "WHOIS" data is available from many places including most companies who provide domain registration services.  Send an email or call the official contacts associated with that domain name and see if the domain is for sale.

Many domain names are registered for the purpose of being resold at a profit.  You can usually tell from what happens when you try to visit the website.  The site looks strange and there is a link to inquire about purchasing the domain name.

Once you contact the domain owner, they will either say "not for sale" or they will give you a price.  Negotiate that price.  I’ve talked down every domain I’ve ever purchased.  One domain was offered at $5000 but I paid $1000.  Another domain was $1800 and I paid $800.

You can also purchase a domain name appraisal from GoDaddy.com for a few bucks and that will give you negotiation ammunition if someone’s asking price is too high.  There are a number of factors considered in pricing a domain name.  Use of popular keywords, extension, and many other factors influence the price.

How do I Pay and Not Get Ripped Off?

Never pay someone for a domain name without protecting yourself.  Many domain sellers are overseas and taking legal action against someone in another country will not be worth the trouble.  If you are buying from a reputable company such as GoDaddy.com, then there is little to worry about.  But if you are buying from an individual, you MUST use an escrow service.  I suggest www.escrow.com .  They charge about 3% and they manage the transaction.

An escrow service takes your payment, but will not release the payment to the seller until the domain name is properly transferred.  It also protects the seller because you cannot get your money back very easily either.  There are dispute resolution processes if necessary.  Generally both parties feel safer with an escrow service holding the money during the domain transfer process.

Transferring the Domain Name

Finally, there are some administrative headaches in transferring a domain name.  This takes an attention to detail and a little experience is helpful.  You should get the help of someone technical just to make sure everything is properly transferred and to confirm you have 100% complete control of the domain name before releasing escrow.  There may be several steps to the process.  The exact steps will vary from registrar to registrar. It is usually a process.