You wanna start a web site but who should be your Web Hosting Provider?

With out a doubt there are so many web hosting providers, choosing a Web Hosting Provider for your site can be more of a headache then most of us would like to admit....

So, who do you choose as a web hosting provider for your site as well as to be your partner in business?

Well that's what your web host is, they are your partner in business because if for some reason their systems go do then so does your website and your sales for that matter.

So the choice of who to add as your web hosting provider for your site or web business is very important.

Your choice of web host will depend on a number of things such as:

The purpose of your website

What type of products do you want to sell?

What is your budget for you online business?

What strategies do you what to go with when it comes to advertising in general?

Etc, etc

So how do you actually determine who is the right solution for you?

 Well you can use the backwards method. This is how it works, you write down the final goal of your entire online business or Internet business campaign. In other words write down as vividly as you can the actual website you want to have running in the future, how much it is making, how much it is costing, the colours, design, everything.

This will give you the basis of what is required for you to have in order for this web site to function and this is verr important in determining who is the right web hosting provider for you.

Now this is where you will start asking yourself more technical and specific questions in order to find out what it is exactly that you need. Here are some of the questions you could ask your self.

Do I need an autoresponder?
Well, yes because this can take out a lot of legwork in emailing to your list, because the work is done once and all your subscribers will follow the series of autoresponders that you have created once off up front.

Do I need lots of storage space, or will I have enough storage space just in case my site grows?
You might not need it in the beginning but your site will grow and grow fast. Take for instance 13thnet.net in its first month it was tiny it didn’t even reach a meg. But now 6 months later it’s over 250megs big to accommodate its library of over 52 free e-books. So you have been warned ;).

How much traffic bandwidth do I need?
As much as you can get. why? Well it starts to get expensive when you have to start adding more bandwidth to your site because you have to pay for each meg, and having that buffer up front certainly gives you time to grow your business so that you can accommodate the increase in traffic later and afford to pay it.

Do I want a shopping cart?
If you are going to sell quite a few of your own products, a shopping cart just makes it easier for the customer to shop first and when they are done, make the payment afterwards.

Do I want to create my own blog?
This isn’t a must but certainly gives your customer the freedom to comment on your site trough a blog. And that can be powerful information.

Do I want to capture email address of my visitors?
Yes, because it is cheap to communicate to the customer afterwards via email or autoresponder

Certainly there are more and more questions you have to ask yourself depending on the industry and business you are in.

There are some traps that you can avoid.

Trap number 1: Let me get the cheapest web hosting provider out there.

This is a very weird trap to fall into because at first all is going well when you are small and you don’t have a large site in terms of traffic and megs. But as you go along you so realize that each and every add-on that you want to place for your site you have to fork out the dollars.

Cheap web hosting in the language En, English, Pt, Portuguese or what ever host you are looking at they all entice you to sign up and bill you heavily on the back end sales.

Owch...

Trap number 2: I want all the gadgetry features that I could ever need.

You may have already experienced this problem, where you want to start an online business but you get hooked on finding out the next best thing online. And guess what the next best thing will keep you guessing, so don’t fret about the new and fancy, worry about the old and mandatory.

Trap number 3: They are a big company so they must be good.

Never assume that the big guy can provide, because most often than not the big guy can’t manoeuvre around to accommodate the small guy. Your web host should be flexible and they should be able to provide you with the support you need when you need it.

So who do I give my thumbs up to? That's a good question :)

Living Life