You Host Your Work From Home Website

If you have - or are wanting to start - any kind of work from home business then you have probably given some thought to your home business web hosting.

Or maybe you haven't.

It just doesn't make sense to have a home based business without a website. You probably already know that. But before you jump in and create a bunch of images and sales messages for the web you might want to slow down and give some thought to how you will put together your site. And one important question you will have to answer is where you will host it.

It may not be immediately apparent to you but how you make a website and where you host it are closely related questions. The one greatly affects the other. So begin by answering the question...

How Important Is The 'Where' of Home Business Web Hosting?

Does it really matter where you host your work from home website? Well, it depends on what you mean. Are you concerned about...

• Bandwidth?
• Security?
• Storage space?

... or any of the other technical issues of website hosting?

Then no... It doesn't. Not really. There are thousands of companies that will provide you with a secure storage space to put your website. It will be safe. You will have everything you need... technically.

But if you are making a website that will help feed your family, then the 'where' of home business web hosting matters a great deal.

There is nothing to building a website - from a technical point of view. There are plenty of simple tools. There are plenty of places to host it. But making a website that draws prospects and converts them into paying customers... That is a horse of a different color.

Avoid the Free Hosting Companies

There are free and very cheap places to host your site. But you are building a business. The free and very cheap options will not give you all you need. And they may end up costing you a whole lot more than some other services that are apparently more expensive.

Why? Because there are a lot of tools you will need to make a website that can help you grow your business. Buying all these tools separately can be expensive. And many of the tools you buy won't be as good as the tools you can get bundled together at a much lower cost... Especially if these bundled tools are included in the site hosting fee.

Why would the bundled tools be better?

A website hosting company that has a long-term vision knows that your success benefits their company. As long as you are successful you will continue to pay the hosting fee year after year. By providing guidance and creating a full suite of tools the hosting company is ensuring its success.

Plus - bundled tools are well integrated with the technology supported by the hosting company.

Make Your Hosting Decision Part of a Long-Term Plan

Consider your home business web hosting a major decision. You are going to spend a lot of time building a successful site. Don't short-change yourself with a discount website hosting service.

Having said that... You can get the best of the best for less than $1.00 a day. So you are not talking about a major financial investment. So choose wisely.

A home business web hosting company that understands niche marketing is your best investment. With the tools and guidance they provide you can effectively target the niche most suited for your success. Without defining a specific niche you are much less likely to succeed.

Do yourself a favor. Do your research. Make your choice of hosting services part of your overall blueprint for building a successful niche website.

Greg Post specializes in online attraction marketing helping others build an online presence that attracts hungry prospects to their home-based or network marketing business. Attraction marketing makes you attractive to your customers/prospects by allowing you to invest your expertise in them first. It is a more natural way of doing business where the customer's interests and needs truly become the most important thing. Therefore it is a more effective way of doing business.

Web Hosting With Free Domain Name

Is free web hosting a good option for you? Just about everyone wants to go online and put something up on the Internet these days. Many people just want to express themselves with a blog or diary where they can tell the world about something they are passionate about. The easiest and least expensive way to do this is through free social sites like My Space or Facebook. However, sometime there is good reason to register your own domain and host your own website.

Anything you put on a free social network site really isn't yours. You are subject to rules and regulations regarding what you can post. There is nothing wrong with having standards, and this usually isn't a problem for most people, anyway. The biggest reason to have your own site is ownership. If you spend a lot of time building content on a free social site, it can all be wiped out if that site changes the rules or decides there is something about your site they don't like. It happens.

If you choose to register a domain and create your own site, you have a choice between traditional paid web hosting and free web hosting. Paid hosting is a bargain these days, with many hosts charging $10 for less a month for just about everything you need. Most hosting plans in this price range include enough disk space to host several different websites, or one big site, depending on how much content you create over time.

Just a quick note about "unlimited" bandwidth or "unlimited" domain offers. There really is a limit, but for 99% of users it won't be an issue. Web hosting companies know that the average user will only put up maybe one site or two, and the amount of resources they use will be tiny. I guarantee you if you buy a $5 a month web hosting package that advertises unlimited domains and bandwidth, and go into business selling web space to other people, you'll soon find there is a limit. Again, for most this isn't an issue, I just wanted to touch on it briefly in case you were wondering how web hosts could offer unlimited services at such low prices.

Despite the low cost of standard paid hosting, some people still want free web hosting. If you are just putting up a site as a hobby, or a personal blog or diary for fun, free web hosting might be a great option for you. If you are planning to sell anything from your site, or promote some sort of business, don't even consider free web hosting.

The positive side of free web hosting is the "free". However, there are drawbacks.

- in most cases, the hosting provider reserves the right to run ads on your site, usually on the top or side margins. This won't disturb your content, but can make viewing it annoying to others, and make your pretty design and setup look pretty lousy.

- other forms of advertising are often used, including popups and other types of advertising that greet your visitors upon entering and leaving your site. These are perhaps more annoying than anything.

- you will have pretty serious limits on how much bandwidth you can use, so don't plan on putting up a lot of videos or other heavy multimedia content.

- your website address will the hosting companies name plus something you create, for example "petejohnson.freewebhostingcompany.com" - not exactly a personalized or glowing expression of you or the impression you want to make on the world.

Bear in mind that companies can offer free hosting based on getting revenue in return from advertising. Unfortunately, many people set up free web hosting services on the fly hoping to rake in some decent money from ads and promotions to you and your visitors. If this doesn't go well, they are likely to shut down without warning and leave you stranded.

My advice is to avoid all free web hosting services, unless you simply don't have the money or don't want to commit to a few dollars a month for a regular host. The bottom line is, never put anything up on a free host that you really don't want to lose. It is definitely a risk.

Web Hosting With Free Domain Name

When signing up for a web hosting account, be sure to take advantage of the promotional items. Many hosting companies offer free domain names to entice new customers to sign up. Along with your hosting, you should be getting a free domain name. A domain name cost about $10 a year. So that means you are getting a $10 discount upfront on your hosting plan.

What happens if you wish to change web host?

Don't worry, your domain name won't be stuck with your hosting company. But you must transfer your domain name out to your favorite registrar (like GoDaddy or NameCheap) after you sign up for your hosting. The domain is free - it is given to you. You should have full control over the domain name. The only way to regain control is to request for a transfer. Send a support ticket to your hosting company, mentioning that you would like the domain to be transferred to your registrar. They will revert with the transfer instructions.

Once the domain has been transferred out, remember to change your domain name servers to point back to your servers. Otherwise, you will experience down time.

A domain name can become a very valuable brand. So even though it's offered to you free of charge, don't just register for any domain name. Make sure you pick one that suits your business.

You can make as many searches as you like on the web hosting site to see if the names that you want are available. Try to choose domain names that contain your primary keywords in it. For example, if you are selling "basketball shoes", you may wish to register something like "basketballshoes dot com". Always choose a dot com extension if it's available. A dot net or dot org will do as well, but they are not really meant for commercial sites.

After you have transferred the domain name to your registrar, you can switch hosting companies any time you like.

To do so, start by signing up for a new hosting account. Don't terminate your existing hosting account yet. Transfer all the files and databases to the new server. Sometimes, if you give the login details to the support department of the new company, they may even transfer everything for you. Test out the site on the new server. If everything works out fine, it's time to make changes to your domain name servers (DNS).

Go to your registrar, and make a request to change the DNS. You have to modify at least two fields - the primary DNS and the secondary DNS. Once the changes have been made, the site migration will take place. Do be patient and allow up to 48 hours for the information to be updated. If the domain name still point to your old server after 48 hours, recheck the DNS, and send an email to your registrar to see what could have gone wrong.

Usually, when done correctly, the domain name will point to the new site within a few hours.

Web Hosting With Free Domain Name

Finding a good web hosting service provider can be a frustrating and a tortuous job. So, we have made a list of ways to help you find a good service provider. Here it goes:

Never sign up with a company that demands yearly payment that way you have to stay with them even if you do not like their services unless you know them well enough, always go for monthly schemes.

Be acquaint with your needs do not go for companies that offers unlimited services there is no such magical servers that can provide unlimited services they know well that customers generally use not more than 300mb of bandwidth and100mb of space.

You may need a week or two to observe the performance of your service provider so choose companies that provide trial periods and offers refund if the customers are not satisfied with the service.

To choose a web host the best way is to look up for the directories that way the search will be less troublesome and you can also read the reviews about your chosen company to verify their reputation in the market.

Your service provider must be flexible with their plans of services because with time you may include many features and can even add graphics according to your requirements.

Customer services play a vital role in deciding the credibility of any company, customer support system should be competent enough to give you a good technology support and they must respond quickly to your problems.

Try to avoid very big companies as they usually have vast client pool and take a day or two to solve even a simple problem.

Try not to fall prey of companies that claims to provide free domain space because after you register with them they may persuade you to pay more.

Web Hosting Plan - Basic Criteria For Their Selection

When it comes to building your website, the first thing many people do, but do not spend as much time on as they should, is selecting the right kind of hosting. Think about it, if you want to make money online, the last thing you need is to have to change hosts in a couple of months because you are maxing out your bandwidth, or whatever reason you may have. This equals downtime, but downtime is not profitable.

So you really need to start by determining what type of hosting to choose from. There are many different types and only a few of them are right for you particular situation. You could always choose to go with shared hosting which is the most common, but what happens if your website really becomes popular? Did you know that if you land on the front page of Digg, most shared hosts will cancel your account because of the high amounts of traffic hitting your site? This not only affects your website, but the other sites that share the server you are hosting on.

Of course you can always go with a virtual private server which may be able to handle this, but not always. You have to remember, that a virtual private server is still shared hosting. You along with several other people are sharing the same server, except with the operating system, you each get equal shares of resources. However, if you do become really popular, really quickly, then a VPS can also shut down do to the excessive bandwidth.

Then again there is the dedicated servers in which you have your very own server and do not share it with anyone else. These can take the beating of becoming popular, but they can be quite expensive. Shared hosting is obviously the cheapest route to go with prices less then $6.00 per month, but may not always be the right choice. A VPS is an affordable way of having control over your own server, except that it is not really a server of your own, but rather virtually shared between you and several other accounts.

In the end, you need to take the time to look at the features that come with each type of hosting plan to make sure you are making a sound decision. Do not simply settle for the lowest price or you may end up regretting that decision. Most of all though, be weary of those hosts advertising unlimited bandwidth and storage. They are going based on the belief that you will never use it all and therefore are overselling their service. In the event that you do go over an amount which only they know and refuse to share, they will simply close your account leaving you stuck without any of your website. Make the right decision by taking the necessary time to thoroughly research all of your possibilities.