Extra traffic right under your nose!
Do you know what's the 2ND MOST VISITED page on your web site? This may surprise you. But in my consulting work the error page is the second most visited web page on many of the web sites that I've seen! Anywhere between 10% and 40% of your page...
Google and Your Domain Name
Most everyone agrees that with Google content is king and
natural anchor text links is second to the throne followed by the Meta
Description Tag along with several other factors. But most everyone often
overlooks one of those several other...
Link Popularity - fact, fiction and your ranking
Link popularity is one of the single most influential factors for determining how well a web site will perform in search engine rankings. A web site's link popularity is computed from the number and more importantly, the quality of links pointing...
Starting An E-Commerce Business
The development and expansion of the Internet has made business opportunities, once only available to the wealthy, available to nearly everyone. In the past, opening a business was a huge commitment in terms of finances and risk. Traditional...
The Importance of Having Your Domain Name
Copyright 2005 Sumantra Roy
A question that I frequently hear is "Do I really need to have
my own domain name?" The one word answer is "YES.". If you put
up your site with some of the free web hosting services, the
only company who benefits...
Domain Name and Web Hosting Hell
Does GoDaddy really suck?
I am in the process of registering more and more domain names so it seems natural to look for the best pricing deal.
Each domainname represents a new site concept which will in most cases involve the selection of a webhosting plan.
It also makes sense to pay a little less for webhosting right? After all, all these new projects add up.
How much do you really save?
The answer to this question depends on how much value we place on our time, and our ability to determine what other software tools are required to run the type of website we have in mind.
In other words, if we think that our time is valuable, we will not mind investing an extra $50-$400 per project per year, especially if there is a lot of value added services and software tools included in the price.
What's the point in saving 50 bucks a year on some bare-bones webhosting if our time gets wasted with support issues or we need to buy additional products and services in order to run our site effectively?
I do not know about you, but after I read one of these bad webhosting reviews, I start to become very cautious about that company. In this case, it is GoDaddy.
Research your new Web Host or Domain Name registrar
I remembered that GoDaddy has been mentioned a number of times in some of the Internet Marketing courses and SEO books that I own, so I decided to check GoDaddy out. By check them out, I do not mean just visit their web site, swallow their sales pitch and click through to the checkout patting myself on the back for a job well done.
I did a search at Google.com for the term godaddy review, and discovered some interesting results.
After reading a few of the results, I decided to search for the term "do not use godaddy" (this string was searched enclosed with "inverted commas"), and discovered even more negative feedback not only about their webhosting services but also their domainname registration and associated services.
Is it all about Price?
No way. Do we *really* save? On one hand it looks like a saving but on the other hand the saving can be offset by extra costs elsewhere.
As a result of this little study, I have no desire at this time to change my domainname registrar or my two webhosting companies that I use just to save a few bucks.
At the moment, I enjoy the following benefits from my web hosts and domainname registrar:
Everything works to my satisfaction 99.99% of the time
Very little support needed in the first place
Support queries attended to quickly
Support queries always solved to my
satisfaction
I never suffer from emotional disturbance as a result of dealing with rude support staff
I am never accused of being the problem
Example of excellent support
I created a new directory and installed a PHP script on one of my sites. All the file permissions were set correctly and the files were uploaded in the correct format.
So I edited the HTML user interfaces and tried to upload them to this new directory. For some reason I was denied access to this new directory. Permission Denied!
I emailed my web host with a description of the problem and within a few hours my web host sent me an email saying that the problem has been fixed and that I can now proceed to upload into that directory. Wow!
A good Web Hosting and Domain Name service is worth it's weight in Gold
Who really wants unnecessary dramas with webhosting and domainname registrars? Nobody does! (except those that cannot survive one day without chaos)
The peace of mind for a few extra bucks a year buys is priceless.
Besides, even if I select some of the platinum (no extras to buy) webhosting deals out there, it still only costs about 10-30 bucks a week to run a business on the Internet.
Imagine that, for a few extra bucks, I need not worry about: Content Management Software, web design, domainname registrations, expensive keyword research and SEO tools, search engine rankings, and the list goes on and adds up *real* quick.
Compare this to a regular bricks and mortar business where you pay thousands a month in rental fees just for a bit of floor space.
Sometimes it pays to do the sums. It might *appear* to cost more money at first, but does it really cost more after you calculate the out-going dollars over the whole year?
When I was in the process of building my first web site, I would not have had the capacity to answer that question because I had no experience. But you know that old saying:
"When someone with experience meets someone with money, the one with the experience ends up with the money and the one who had the money, ends up with an experience"
As a result, I have ended up spending thousands of dollars on eBooks, software, scripts, courses, private memberships, DVDs, VCDs, MP3s in an attempt to complete the Online Marketing mystery. This is all now part of my experience.
Conclusion
When we go looking to buy a car or a house, we do not base our decision on price alone. Otherwise we would all be driving around in smokey old $200 bombs. We look for features which we then translate in some way to benefits.
So why waste time looking for cheap-as-chips deals for the very important job of setting up an Online Business? We would do much better to look beyond price when buying services on the Internet.
Copyright 2004 Ed Zivkovic
About The Author
The author, Ed Zivkovic is based on the Gold Coast in Australia.
Contact details are available at his web site along with many helpful webmaster articles: http://www.ezau.com
