'elf Expressions Ezine

One of the first things we hear when we begin our online business is that you HAVE to have a website to make sales. While that is not technically true, it certainly is true for 99.9% of us.

While having a website may be the conventional wisdom (some people have 5, 6, or more!) getting the **right** site for you is no easy matter. There are many factors that will contribute to the success, or lack of success, of any web enterprise.

A business person must carefully consider which products to sell, at what price, to what market, using what sales copy, and more.

One of the big factors is **who** will host your website. You can have the greatest site in the world, full of pretty pictures, and containing copy that makes people fall all over themselves pulling out the old credit card, BUT if your web host is down, you are out of business!

Believe me when I tell you that I know from experience. In August of this year our host had us down over 17 times in a 30-day period. Not down for long, but our site is high traffic. We lost thousands.

Based on that experience, and the experience of others, let me wholeheartedly recommend a website for you visit **today** if you do business via your own website. The link is . . .

These folks offer a no-cost service that will monitor your site 24/7 and report if it goes down. They send you a weekly report telling you how your hosting company did, and they offer hosting that promises 100% uptime too. This is not an affiliate link, just good info. I will **never** again run a site without their service.

When choosing a web host there are questions that should be answered. The following list is not meant to be comprehensive, but provides some good starting points.

* What is your average uptime in the last 90 days?
* In the last 6 months? In the last one year?
* What is your uptime guarantee?
* Do you pay me for time lost?
* How long have you been in business?
* How many accounts do you put on one server?

Pay attention to that last question. Did you know that some web hosts cram **thousands** of hosting accounts onto one server? Just like airlines that overbook, knowing from experience that some passengers just don't show up, these hosting companies overbook their servers.

This can cause major problems for you if one of your "neighbors" decides to spam or runs some huge script that slows down (or crashes) the entire server.

Don't think this overcrowding is limited to small hosting companies or low-priced vendors. One of the largest hosting companies in the U.S. was recently found to be the chief of sinners in this regard.

We've prepared a resource page to help you shop. We are not affiliates for them, and do not endorse them. We just want to save you the hassle of searching through 2 billion hits on your favorite search engine. Hope this helps.

Here's the link.

In general, there are three types of web hosting companies.

1. Free Hosts

These folks promise you won't pay a dime, and you won't. The question you must ask yourself, however, is "How much is it costing you even though you are not paying hard money?

If your site is littered with banners you don't want, and don't make any money from, then you are paying the value of that space. Even if you have a relatively low visitor rate, this space is valuable. Even more valuable is not offending your visitors with some 'You've Won!' hype flashing in a banner and distracting them from your selling copy.

2. Paid Hosts

This comprises the vast majority of websites you visit. Even after you decide to take the plunge and pay for hosting, there are questions to be answered. Does your host use the latest technology?

At the DOE we wanted to use Brian Garvin's Lightning Track to track ads. This software requires a thing called the "Zend Optimizer." While that sounds fancy, it's really not, and most hosts should have it. When we checked with a large national host, the head of the tech department said he had never even heard of it. Our current host had it installed months before I asked about it, figuring clients would need it.

Almost all paid hosts offer web design templates into which you can plug the words you want to say and have an instant site. These "add water and stir" sites often look similar to other sites (they are templates, after all) but they look good and will work.

Be sure that the host you choose uses the latest versions of PHP, PERL and allows CGI scripting. You will need these things to run your own sequential autoresponders, ad trackers, and more.

3. All in one Hosts

A new breed of web host has entered the scene recently. The "All in one" host is a company that provides everything you need under one roof. Perhaps the best example of this is Ken Evoy's Site Build It. With these services you can literally build a website without knowing a lick of HTML or even knowing what PHP means.

These sites offer everything you need (design, hosting, autoresponders, mini-sites, search engine optimization and more) all under one roof. Of course they cost a bit more, but are a bargain if you compare buying their package against buying these items separately.

One word of warning. In many cases "All in One" services provide fewer features in the modules they offer (like the autoresponders or the tracking) than stand alone products.

You just have to decide which is best for you. If you can live without **all** the whistles and bells, these services get you up and running fast with a minimum of fuss, and your site will look and perform well.

Having your own website is a big step toward success on the Internet. Carefully choosing **who** will host that site should be every bit as important to us as choosing a bank, an attorney, or a merchant account. After all, your web host is on the front line for you every day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Shop carefully . . . choose wisely. I hope this information will help.