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Choosing a good web host when you are starting your online business can be an extremely confusing ordeal if you have no experience with it. There are thousands of different options available to you in this regard. You also, have to be very aware that many of the “so called” free hosing (lol “hosing”..that should be hosing alright..hosing you out of your own profits!) hosting accounts are only out for number one. Guess what? The number one I’m referring to sure is heck isn’t you….

Don’t get me wrong here. If you are the owner of one of these sites that are offering free hosting to people in exchange for your ads being placed on all of the recipients sites spread vastly across the internet then kudos to you. This a great viral marketing ploy. But, if you aren’t the owner of one of these sites, then it’s just going to hurt your own sales and profits. I’m just looking out for your best interest here.

The point is that if you really want to have your own control of your own features and functions of your web sites or blogs, you are simply going to have to pay for it. There are many ways to market without websites using free stuff, but, that’s not really the topic here.

There are many, many reputable hosting companies to choose from for a very reasonable cost, which, will give you all of the functionality you are going to be needing. There are also some solutions that are completely geared with the marketer in mind. Some of these are worth pointing out, since, I’m sure the main reason you are wanting to become involved with creating websites and blogs is for the purpose of growing an online income.

Let’s have a look at some features to be looking for so you won’t be needing “regret dooming therapy” later on down the road.

#1. The hosting account must come with an adequate amount of disk space to handle the sites you are creating, or planning on creating in the future. These days it’s not much of a problem. Hosting accounts these days are offering insane amounts of space for a very reasonable cost. If you look at companies such as Bluehost, Hostgator, Vodahost and a few others, they are up to a whopping 600 gigs of space.

#2. The ability to handle unlimited domains either included in the package, or for a very low fee. Keep in mind that over the course of time with your marketing career you will more than likely be needing many domains. You might as well get this straight from the start.

#3. Unlimited MySql Databases. This is also very important. While most of the more popular hosting companies as previously mentioned have these features, many inferior, and perhaps slightly cheaper companies don’t have features like this. For the sake of saving a couple of dollars…be sure to go with a highly regarded company, as forementioned.

#4. An easy to navigate administration area using Cpanel or something similar. This doesn’t necessarily need to be Cpanel, but, you will want something that is easy to get around in.

#5. Fantastico! Fantastico has a lot of great features you will want to be using eventually. Perhaps, when you are first starting out you won’t realize it, but once you become more familiar with the features and functions over time you will find many uses for it.

Fantastico has many different platforms of website softwares, helpdesk softwares, forum softwares, CMS systems and more. It’s also where you would install the mighty Wordpress from for your blogging. In my opinion, it’s a must have.

#6. CGI, Perl, PHP 5, MySql 5. Previously we mentioned the ability to handle unlimited MySql databases for use with most PHP scripts. But, some other scripts aren’t always based on PHP. Some scripts like CGI scripts are quite different. Be sure your hosting account can handle scripts such as this. While you may not always need a script like this, it’s certainly nice to have the option when needed.

#7. Promotional Extras. This may be extremely important to you depending on what type of business model you are building on the internet. It’s something you should certainly consider in many ways, any way you want to look at it. Some hosting companies are completely geared for the Internet Marketer in mind.

There are companies such as Kiosk which is a very reputable company for marketers. Actually, Mike Filsaime has had his fair share of troubles with hosting and domains in his time. He is using Kiosk now for that very reason. Kiosk understands the needs of marketers. They understand the need sometimes for running some pretty hot scripts, additional bandwidth etc. If you have a spike in your server because of a script or something like that, they won’t just automatically pull the plug on your account. Then, again…I’m quite sure Mike uses a dedicated server.

Nonetheless, if you are planning on being in the business for the long haul points like this are valuable.

Thirdsphere is also very reputable company geared for helping the internet marketer on many levels as well. Thirdsphere uses a variety of tools for helping the marketer. Such as snap in scripts, online ebook creation tools, website promotion tools and much more. Many marketers have switched to using Thirdsphere over their course online because of feature like this. You do pay a little more for services like this, but, you would end up paying for them regardless with other softwares and promotional tools in the long run anyhow. It’s something you may want to consider.

#8. Auto-responders and Email Services. Many hosting companies will give you unlimited auto-responders, email spam control and more. Please be clear on this fact though. Just because it says auto-responders doesn’t mean that they provide an Email Marketing Services solution. Some people get confused on this. An auto-responder is just that, it will auto-respond to a message and send out a one time email. Many people use this type of thing for “gone on vacation” messages or something similar.

Email Marketing Services on the other hand is where you can put your business on autopilot by adding many messages to go out on different days in a sequence. Most marketers eventually require many lists and sequences set up.

There are hosting companies that offer these services sometimes but I would be a little wary of their deliverability rates. The reason most top marketers use companies like Get Response or Aweber separately is that these companies are always working hard to make sure your email gets delivered. They talk to people like Yahoo, Gmail, and others about allowing access through a lot of the heavy spam filters that web based email programs use.

You can also purchase separate Email Marketing solutions and have them installed on your hosting accounts. These are in the form of scripts as I outlined earlier. Be careful here though, there are a lot of “crap” scripts out there and you will end up quite disappointed with their functionality. Again, you get what you pay for. If you pick up an email marketing script for like $30 dollars, don’t expect it to be without a lot of bugs and headaches.

There are great one’s out there. And yes, they do cost a fair bit sometimes, but, you will be happy with their functionality and options. I know Holly Mann uses a solution like this, and she is very pleased with it. The deliverability using these types of scripts can be very good as well. The reason being is that you can assign a domain name that is only tied to you.

If you are using an inferior Email Marketing service other than Get Response or Aweber, or perhaps a free one, expect delivery problems. Many spam filters are set up to pick up on the domains of these services and either bounce or block your emails from getting through.

To help you to understand- If you have a thousand or more marketers sending mail from a particular free service for instance let’s say “SendFree” and messages from the www.sendfree.com domain are getting delivered in thousands upon thousands of accounts through Gmail, or Hotmail it’s going to set off some spam triggers. For this reason they will then add domains to their spam programs to mark emails from that domain as “spam”. Therefore, your emails are not getting through.

Your best bet. Learn from marketers that have already been through it and found the best solutions. In this case, using Get Response, Aweber, or a “GOOD HIGH QUALITY” Email Marketing script installed on your hosting account.

#9. Ease of transfer. This is extremely important.

With most hosting companies you will get your first domain included with their hosting account. While this is great, I personally wouldn’t recommend you register your future domains through your hosting account provider. Many people that have tried to switch hosting accounts later on, have had the hosting company threaten to not release their domain name to them. If it’s become a hugely popular domain, then you want your domain name!

Keep in mind that when using registrar services of domains, technically speaking, you didn’t register it, they did. Some hosting accounts may get PO’d and be offended that you no longer want to use their services, and you are seeking services elswhere. This has happened to a few people I know, and also some very big name marketers. Be sure to do your homework and make sure you are dealing with a highly regarded company.

There are many places outside of your hosting to register domains. Many people use Namecheap.com or GoDaddy, just to name a couple. Personally, I use a company called Dynadot. I’ve been very satisfied with them since I started using them. The prices are reasonable, they are fast, and they care about their customers.

#10. Support. This should be on the top of your priority list. How is your hosting company for reliable support. Again, do a little homework. You can ask around in forums, get in touch with current customers etc.

If you are having a problem with your hosting and you can’t get into your account for some reason, or your sites happen to be offline for a day or two, it could be detrimental to your business. If they are known for not answering support requests for an extended amount of time consider looking elsewhere. When you are relying on the internet for your income, and your sites are offline for a few days it could be thousands of dollars in lost revenue!

Well, those are what I consider to be the top 10 most helpful tips in choosing a webhost and getting your business set up online.

Is there something I should have added? Do you have more helpful tips of your own?

Please let people who need this information know about it…

The greatest in all you do,
Make Success Yours!

Davin
“The Davinator”

Popularity: 4% [?]

When many people are new to marketing online, they really don’t seem to know what is the difference between participating in a forum or spamming the crap out of it. Many people get banned quick, and have no idea why.
Many people also do not realize that there are in fact Free Advertising forums where they can pretty much let anything rip with absolutely no worry of getting banned.

I must admit that in helping Holly with her forum, I’m hard on people that come in and start posting blatant ads all over the place. There are a few reasons I suppose I’m so hard on people, but, one of them is an attempt in teaching what is considered proper forum etiquette and what isn’t. I can usually tell if a person is new, and is merely trying to come in and hope that they can create some interest in the product they are referring people to. Usually, I will try and let people like this gently know to allow the forum some time to get to know them a bit, participate in the topics at hand, and start to begin to build some trust and credibility with the forum. Forums can become a fairly tight knit group of people, and if they feel their family is being invaded by the professional SPAM kings they get pretty agitated.

Most forums will happily welcome you into their “family” with open arms if you take the time to get to know the people a bit. If you are an advanced marketer you can help out by outlining steps or methods in which gave you results or something along those lines. Most advanced marketers are aware of good forum etiquette though, and they are not usually the problem spammers.

If you are a newer marketer it might be a little tougher to show your prowess on a subject, but that’s fine. Forums are a place for you to learn more. The advanced marketers on forums can teach you a lot and you should take advantage of their advice..it’s free! If you are trying to fit in on a particular forum it’s not very difficult. If you are new, begin by asking some questions you are having in regards to your niche or goals etc. You’ll be surprised how much the “old codgers” of a particular forum are more than happy to help you.

There is also the group which I refer to as the “professional spammers”. This is the group that even though they know about forum etiquette they just don’t give a care one way or the other how they get their ad in front of you. Some of these people go to the lengths of creating very visually appealing ads. It’s probably ticks them off sometimes to find out how quickly they are deleted in lots of forums. This is where “Free Advertising Forums” can come in handy.

Free Advertising forums allow practically any type of ad or advertising, even if it comes off as a blatant ad, which most of them do. Many people use them successfully in parts of their marketing campaigns. Many new people also don’t realize these exist, and can be taking advantage of these types of forums. Your success really depends on the product or service you are marketing, and also your technique in which you are going about it.

With the upcoming release of Holly Mann’s Honest Riches 3 book, there will also be included a book from myself aptly titled “The Viral Sanctuary”. Included in part the book I outlined a completely free viral marketing strategy that makes use of many of these forums. While I won’t outlay the steps in the viral process here, I felt some people could use a list of some of the top free advertising forums to help them along with their marketing.

I will also say that Holly Mann’s newest book is going to be one that every serious marketer will want to have in his/her collection to hang onto for years to come. Holly has out done herself with this book it’s it more like a complete marketing novel which she should be very proud of. It’s the most complete manual for marketing that I’ve seen in a long time, and it’s going to be well worth the wait it’s been for people. The release date still isn’t quite set but I will keep you posted.

Here is a list of some top free advertising forums for you. While they are lenient in their rules in these forums, still take the time to check out their terms of service of what is allowed and what is not.

http://www.freeadvertisingforum.com/
http://www.thefreeadforum.com/
http://www.postyouradforfree.com/
http://freeads.biztop.com/
http://postfreeads.free-forums.org/
http://www.freeadvertisingforum4u.com/
http://www.freeadvertisingzone.com/
http://www.make-money-work-from-home.com/
http://www.freepowerboards.com/showyourads/
http://www.freetoadvertise.biz/
http://www.youradvertisingforum.com/

The greatest in all you do,
Make Success Yours!

Davin
“The Davinator”

Popularity: 16% [?]