Hosting
It took me a long time to find this out – but unless you have a truly exceptional website with massive traffic, you are unlikely to need more than 100-200Mb of space. Don't be bamboozled by trying to compare the massive gigabyte offers of disk space and bandwidth being offered.
Some of them are clearly offering their entire internet connection to every customer and banking on the fact that not everybody is going to be requiring service at the same time.
There are two considerations to bear in mind when deciding where to host your site. It is a simple fact that sites load faster when the server is geographically closer. It's just a case of fewer miles of cable for the signals to travel along.
Both Google and your visitor likes landing pages to load quickly where you only have a few seconds to grab your visitors attention. If they spend those precious seconds waiting for your page to load that is not going to do you any good at all. This is especially important if you are spending money on Pay Per Click advertising like Google Adwords and sending your prospects to a landing page.
The conclusion is therefore to try to host your site in the territory of your target market. In most cases where you are approaching a global market this is likely to be in the USA which still represents the largest internet market. However, if you are selling to a regional market or advertising on local eBay or Amazon sites then bear this fact in mind.
I used to saay that hosting outside the USA is likely to cost more – until I recently became aware of eUKHost which offers some astonishingly cheap packages.
Control your own destiny. Many hosts offer various services, website design, shopping carts, email, autoresponders etc. These almost invariably tie you in to the hosting service. After all, the hosting service is not a charity.
For independence, I would suggest that you select 'best of breed' services for autoresponders, shopping carts and website design services that you can host anywhere. That way you and only you have control over your website and how it works.
Control panel/user interface. If you are new to hosting then spend a little time investigating whether or not your host offers a commonly used control panel. When you start to open other hosting accounts with other providers it is very useful if you can select one with the same user interface – saves you having to go through another learning curve!
I have settled on cPanel if only because pretty well every video tutorial you watch on marketing has the presenter using cPanel. So if it's good enough for established marketers it's good enough for me.
Kiosk
I came across Kiosk quite late but am glad I did. Not only for my own purposes but I have since found that it is the recommended host of Mike Filsaime and they don't come with a stronger recommendation than that.
Hosting Secrets Revealed
If you would like to lay your hands on Hosting Secrets Revealed for absolutely nothing and listen to an interview between Mike Filsaime and Joel Therien, the owner of Kiosk, in which they discuss many of the ins and outs of hosting then just click on the image to the right.
The other major benefit is that when you are going to host several domains on the one account it allows you straight into the .whm (Web Hosting Manager) interface instead of forcing you to go through another master domain name as many Reseller accounts do. So you just have one userid/password step to go through instead of two.
They also provide a bunch of free marketing tools directly accessible from your account – and a good affiliate system.
Find out more by clicking on Kiosk
is probably the biggest host in the UK and I have heard good things said about them by serious marketers who report no problems and good service.
HostGator:
Most people report good experience . A range of packages with the standard being the $9.95/month. No contract required so you can pay and commit monthly. Consider the Reseller package as your requirements grow. As many domains as you like for $25/month.
Bluehost:
Similar experience/pricing to HostGator. Reliable host with cpanel front end.
HostMonster
(unlimited domains) Recommended by friends of mine.
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Comments on Hosting
This is a fantastic site and I love it here. The information is informative and extremely helpful that I will be able to use growing my writing business. I am a newbie and excited to be jump starting my writing since I have been writing forever.
Thanks for offering to host my first ever to have web site and I am so truly grateful and excited for you generous and kind offer to help me.
SMCC family member
Your site is terrific and I love it and the information is really useful to me and I will be visiting here often.
Bruce, this site is soooo informative for newbies I think i'm gonna be spending more & more time here reveiwing info. THANKS. It's great to see there is help for those feeling like they're standing in the middle of peak hour traffic with no one to help them get safely to the other side safely….. this site is the refuge island in the middle of the internet highway!
Maxiboy,
Glad the information was useful for you. It is simply the result of accumulated experience – and an example for all internet marketers that every bad experience is not all bad – it actually turns into useful knowledge.