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Article 210
Picking The Right Web
Host
May Be a Life Or Death Experience
by Terry Dean
When I discuss
with people how to make money online and how to build a long-term business
online, I am often shocked in how they are trying to build a long-term business
online WITHOUT owning their own web domain...
Whenever I
started training someone how to make money online, the VERY first thing we do is
start with their websites. A website should be considered a home base so to
speak. It is your online store location and the base of operations for
everything else that you do online.
Let's think
about the different online advertising methods...Search Engines, Banner
Advertising, Ezine Advertising, Newsgroup/Mailing List participation, and
Classified advertising. I know that doesn't cover everything, BUT It is the
major source of advertising online. Think about each of those advertising
methods.
Search Engines
are the #1 traffic generator on the web right now and they absolutely REQUIRE
that you have a website. Many online experts estimate 95% of your traffic could
come from search engines. YOU are leaving out 95% of your business by not being
able to take advantage of search engines...
You may think
that just getting a free server such as FreeYellow or Angelfire might take care
of this problem, BUT it doesn't. Through helping other people advertise their
websites I came to an alarming discovery. Both of the above mentioned web hosts
are being BLOCKED out of some of the search engines such as Infoseek. You can
still place them on most of the search engines, BUT registering web pages from
them is becoming extremely difficult.
With banner
advertising, You obviously have to have a website...Both for Free Banner
Exchanges and For Paid Banner Advertising.
With Ezine
Advertising, You can use an autoresponder, BUT your response rate goes UP when
you include BOTH an autoresponder and a website in the classified ad. The same
rules go for classified advertising. You should have both an email address and
website in your ads for MAXIMUM effectiveness.
When
participating in online discussion, the best form of advertising (Accepted in
every online group) is the signature file. This gives you space for a short 4 -
5 line ad for yourself. The best approach is to tell them your name, phone,
email, and website address along with a basic idea of what you do. Your website
address needs to be there so that they can go somewhere to find out more
information immediately.
In all of these
advertising forms, a website or domain is absolutely essential to your success.
I personally favor a domain for many reasons...
Name
Recognition - It is much easier for people to remember a name like http://www.bizpromo.com
than http://www.freeyellow.com/members2/bizpromo/
Stability
- Having your own domain gives an image of more stability to people when they
see it. It appears that you will be around for a while.
Secure
Ordering - In most cases you cannot get orders online through a website
because there are no secure ordering options. Currently, 80% or more of our
orders come in through our secure ordering pages!
Growth -
It will be much easier to grow when you own your own domain...If you have just a
website and you run out of space or you start having trouble with your host, you
are stuck. If you leave, all of the traffic you built will be going to
FreeYellow not your new domain...If you own your own domain, if you move
everything comes with you to your new host.
Selling
Multiple Products - This hooks up with the above, but it needs to be
mentioned again...A Domain is perfect for adding more products to and selling
more items. You spend money and/or time to get traffic to your site. You need to
make sure you are taking advantage of it as much as possible by offering
multiple products and/or services.
All of these
benefits are EXTREMELY important to making your online marketing a success. I
honestly think everyone should purchase a domain upfront in their marketing
avenue and then start driving traffic to it immediately. Instead of wasting
their time and money by losing their traffic they worked SO hard for and
upgrading later.
Now, the next
problem I ran into was that some of my clients were operating on an extremely
small budget - around $100 or so.
The domains I
had been recommending cost AT LEAST $400 to get setup...So I had to go in search
of a web host which was both HIGH quality and low cost to get setup and running.
What I found was
a company named Virtualis which fit the bill perfectly...It has all of the
options...They sell smaller domains at a size of 15 MB with 5 different types
all the way up to your own server...Plus, there are NO upgrade fees when you
expand from one domain to another.
To get a domain
started there only costs $36 instead of the $400 I had been recommending. I
highly suggest that you go there now to check out all of the options available:
http://www.hosting.com/
Now, a person on
a low budget will be able to get a website and start producing traffic to it
(And with good design - Sales) for under $100...
For those of you
who would like to offer this same type of service to your customers, they also
have a free reseller option which you can take a look at by clicking on reseller
at the bottom right hand of the above page. I was more than happy to find a
company that offered good quality service at low prices, and it also would pay
me to refer them to my clients. I am not against earning extra money while
recommending the best options to all of my members.
All in all, the
very first thing you should do when marketing online is to setup your own
domain...Your home base. Now, there is a low cost option for doing so that
everyone can take this opportunity to develop an effective online marketing
campaign instead of throwing time and money down a blackhole of marketing
without a home base.
Terry Dean, a 5
year veteran of Internet marketing, will Take You By The Hand and Show You Exact
Results of All the Internet Marketing Techniques he tests and Uses Every Single
Month" Click here to Find Out More:
http://www.netbreakthroughs.com
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