Sunday, August 1, 2010

Free Hosting

There are many websites online that offer free hosting services. Some of these sites include BlinkWeb, Yola and Weebly. The goal of these websites is to help you to make money, and then once you do make money, that you upgrade to a paid account with them. Whether or not you use them is up to you, but here are some pros and cons of free hosting to help you make the decision.

The Pros.

Free. The thing that is appealing to so many is the fact that they are free. Many people who come online do not know whether or not they will succeed, and therefore they are reluctant to pay into anything. Therefore the free websites are a great place to test the waters.

Learning Experience. The goal is to get you started with making money online so that you will become a paying customer. Thus most free hosting providers will provide you with step by step training to help you set up your site so that you can begin to make money online. BlinkWeb and Yola are two of those site who provide you with excellent training.

The Cons

Downtime. One of the greatest downs is the fact that a lot of these free hosting providers are not reliable. If your website is down, you not only will not be making any money, but it can also ruin your credibility as an online entrepreneur.

High Hosting Fees. You can always upgrade to a paid hosting account, but the truth is that the price which you end up paying, is much higher than if you were to purchase your hosting from a hosting company. One of the cheapest and most reliable web hosting companies is HostGator.

No Control. Another one of the cons is that you have no control of the layout of your website. You are provided with several layouts which you can somewhat customize, but when it really comes down to it, you are very limited with what you can do. On top of that you do not own the design, and thus if you ever want to switch to a new provider you have to start all over again.

So hopefully this information will help you to make an informed decision as to whether or not a free hosting account is something that you want to get started with. To be honest with you, they are a great way for you to learn the ropes of internet marketing, but in the long run you are better off going with a more reliable hosting company such as HostGator.

Email Web Hosting

In today's world of web technology and connectivity are those certain factors which are so important in every online business type, if you want to grow your business you need to have a good web presence on the Internet. Even you require the best web presence where your online customers can read about your products and services easily and with a good e-mail hosting service they can easily communicate with you directly without any trouble. That is the role of web hosting and email hosting. These two concepts are very complex and you need to understand in depth each if you plan to get one.

First, see what is a web hosting? Web hosting is the use of a specific Hypertext Transfer protocol and its necessary services to view Web documents or files in Hypertext Mark-up Language. The usual extension for the file type is a HTML. A web hosting company provides you disk space and bandwidth to loads your site quickly on the Internet. With sufficient amount of disk space and bandwidth your web site will receives more web traffic. Most hosting providers do more than simply host static web pages, many also offers management services where you will get around the clock technical support to manage things much easier such as data backup, regular services for domain name extension and much more.

Certain services include additional web hosting services such as database management, where you have access to a MySQL or SQL database back end. SQL allows you to gain access a database hosted by the site resulted in the use of a content management system. The advantage of using a content management system is it allows you much more co-ordinated and complete control over how your Website looks.

Usually, web hosting service providers offer the best quality email hosting service with custom configurations and the large number of email accounts. For this service, hosting providers use client's own domain name, including any system of valid e-mail that the domain owner wants. Also make sure to set the type of Web Access that you want your mail queue.

Eventually, you must decide the platform on which you want to share your web hosting and e-mail hosting services. Usually, there are two choices, Linux and Windows server. You can choose the suitable one according to your needs and requirements.

Website Creation

A website can be considered part of any company's marketing strategy, but when not done property, it can be ineffective. If you're in the process of building your business' website, the following are questions you have to answer first to help you along the way:

1. Purpose - What is the main purpose of your website? Are you doing it to showcase your products and services, to advertise your company or both?

2. Budget- This is very important because although some things can come for free, a highly functional website is not. Of course, you can have a fee site, but it won't give you significant benefits. You do have to spend for a website, although it doesn't have to cost you a fortune. If you are not familiar with website building, then you should hire a web designer who can make the website for you. There are still many things that you will be needing to consider when you are making a website and these will depend on the hosting features you need.

It is not only the large corporations that need a website but even small and medium businesses that want to get ahead of their competitors. The good thing about having a website is, it allows a business to reach millions of people from every corner of the world. If you advertise on TV and print ads, that's good because you are reaching out to your local or national market. But when you have a website, you are actually advertising and selling to the whole world without boundaries. Of course, if you're going to open up to the international market, you should be able to keep up with the demand. Second, websites are not that expensive compared to advertising on television and even on print. Online advertising or marketing is a lot cheaper and the extent of your reach will be almost immeasurable. Third, websites do not just let you advertise to the world. You can actually do business from someone from the other side of it. When you have a website, definitely, you should incorporate an e-commerce feature that allows you to accept payments, usually through credit cards.

When making a website it is, therefore, very important to include your company's contact information so your clients and future clients can reach you. And do not limit the contact information you show. Go and publish your phone number, email address, physical address, fax number and every other way that people will be able to reach you. This way, you give your clients and clients-to-be the option of contacting you the way that is most convenient for them.

Another thing to keep in mind is to never neglect the look of your website. It is important to have a website that attracts people, although it is not the only important thing about it. Aside from being attractive, your site should also have good information. After all, content is still king.