Posts Tagged ‘successful’

Ways Of Becoming A Successful Web Host Reseller

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

Here some points dealt with to help you identify the ways of becoming a successful web host reseller. You need to consider these tips when dealing with both the web hosts and with clients.


Choose an appropriate program


Linux has more of open source software programs compared to Windows. Thus choosing Linux will work out cheaper. Though it is common for most of the programs like flash, PHP and PERL to run on both Windows and Linux, there are a few which will run only on one of them. Windows is mandatory for a site that uses MS Access or ASP.


The correct choice of control panels


Control panels are varied from the simple ones to advanced and complex ones. As a web host reseller you would need a control panel to handle the hosting accounts. While making a selection of the hosting automation software there are numerous control panels with superior features.


Choose the correct host


When you decide to resell web hosting services make sure that you choose your host with diligence. The factors that need to be taken into account are the control panel and the operating system, the online reviews of the customers, the server uptime determination, the time span between help sought for and the help actually provided especially during emergencies.


The experience of the web host is a must as most of the web hosting companies do not last for long. You should ensure whether the web hosting company can provide you with plans that can come of use during highly demanding situations and the flexibility of their policies in tense conditions. You should also check the price that you are being quoted.


Make your own business plans


You need to identify the amount of space and bandwidth that you are ready to resell keeping in mind that there could be changes according to the packages that you provide your customers with. You need to be aware of the ongoing market price so that you maintain the correct pricing. Keep in mind the added privileges provided by the web hosting company and fix your rates accordingly.


Set up a business site


You can either make a site with an open pattern or hire a site developer or develop the site using your own skills. The information provided in your site should be authentic and relevant to the needs of the customers.


Build an e-commerce site


You should have the facility of online payment for customers for which you would need a trade account, an SSL permit and an access to expense.


Set up a helpdesk


Your customers should not suffer due to any negligence on your part. Set up a customer helpdesk to respond to the queries.


Systematic billing procedure


With the help of the automated billing systems you can easily register billing as well as make payments to your customers. Various billing software licenses are available on annual or monthly basis. While choosing your billing software you must check for its compatibility with the server.


Promotion of your website


You must ensure that your website is duly enlisted with all the search engines and also propagate it through friends, family, peers and colleagues. Your signature in the mails should contain a link to your website and also use newsletters, incoming links and unique offers as a way of promotion.


Welcome email


You must send a welcome email to all your customers once they set up their accounts. The welcome emails should contain the name server names, a user name, a temporary password, a forward link to the control panel as well as to the helpdesk and the confirmed plan details

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Responsys Wraps Up Successful 2010 Spring Tour Examining “Marketing. A New Day in the Life.”

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

Responsys Wraps Up Successful 2010 Spring Tour Examining “Marketing. A New Day in the Life.”
SAN BRUNO, CA–(Marketwire – 04/30/10) – Responsys , a global provider of on-demand email and cross-channel marketing solutions, concluded its Responsys 2010 Spring Tour last week, a series of complimentary half-day events in six cities across the U.S. designed to explore what it takes for marketers to succeed in today’s new cross-channel environment. The events, structured around the theme …

Read more on Marketwire via Yahoo! Finance

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Web Developers Can be Successful Web Hosting Resellers

Saturday, May 1st, 2010


By becoming a

reseller, not only can web developers create websites for their clients, but

they can provide their clients with Web hosting, as another studio service. All

you need to become a reseller, is to find a Web host who: offers multiple Web

site hosting accounts; along with reseller services; and then its up to you to

host your clients’ web sites from your own account. Your clients will be happy

with the low fees you can offer; and, you will have yourself a very profitable

side business.

So what do you

need to be a successful Web site hosting reseller?

Multiple domain

hosting – To become a Web hosting reseller, the first step is to get yourself a

multiple domain account. For example, if you take out an account that allows up

to 6 websites (or domains), you can use one of the domains for development of

your own site; and, still have 5 domains to allocate to your clients sites. All

you need to do is pay your regular fee to your Web host; then, you can charge

your clients what ever you like.

Control Panel –

It is preferable to have full administrative control over your client’s web

sites. Make sure that, not only does your Web host provide you with a control

panel that includes full administrative facilities to easily manage your

multiple account, but that your host provides your clients with their own

control panel too. Most importantly your web host should give you the facility

to ‘hide your Web hosts identity’ so clients are unaware that you are offering a

third party service. Ensure that you can customize your clients control panel to

suit your own requirements.

Terms and

conditions – Terms and conditions are essential when offering any service,

ensure that all your clients have a copy of your terms and conditions. Many

resellers forget to create their own terms and conditions, as they are often

very time-consuming to write. If you ask a Web host you will find that some of

them will either let you copy theirs or they will just supply you with terms and

conditions specifically written for this purpose.

Fast and

reliable support – Fast and reliable, service and support, is essential, from

your Web hosting company. If something happens to your client’s web site it is

important to be able to get the problem solved as soon as possible. You don’t

want clients being unhappy with your hosting services, as this will reflect

badly on your other services too.

Reselling can be

a very profitable side business if you find the right host. It may take up some

of your time, however, if you put the time and effort into providing a little

bit extra in your services, not only will your clients be a lot happier you will

have a rewarding total Web services business.

Lowest Domain and Hosting Services

from

http://www.yoursdomain.com

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How to Choose and Register a Successful Domain Name

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

As a business seeking to expand by creating a website and selling goods and services online, it is critical for your rapid success on the Internet that you choose, buy and register an excellent domain name.

Domain names are names assigned to represent, identify and distinguish your website space from that of others. Domain names are unique and consist of a name you choose and an extension such as .com, .org etc. depending on what kind of firm you wish to represent. or which location you are based in.

Getting a domain name itself is quite simple, you simply access one of thousands or domain name registrars or web site hosting firms on the Internet, do a search to confirm that the name you want to use has not already been used by someone else, pay your money and register it, usually for just few dollars.

That is the easy part. The harder part is choosing a good domain name in the first place. Your natural tendency could be to choose one that reflects your company name. Another might be to choose the wackiest, zaniest name you can think of so your company can stand out.

This is okay if you are a large company, or have a lot of money to invest in marketing and promotions. If however, like most small businesses building their websites on the Internet, you have a limited budget, you may want to consider carefully choosing a domain name that reflects a very narrow niche of products you wish to market i.e. you may need to very precisely and selectively target your market. A good website name should provide a good description of what services of goods your website offers.

The Internet is a huge marketplace, but conversely there is also huge competition on the Internet for the top positions in the search engines.

Most people carrying out a search on the Internet never get past the first few pages before giving up or changing their search terms to find something more.

If, for example you plan to sell Doll’s Houses – and you type the term “doll’s houses” on Google (the World’s biggest and most popular search engine) – you will get back more than 5 million results. In essence you are competing with more than 5 million competitors for the top few positions in Google.

So is there any hope for small business website builders? Yes, there is, because firstly Google does not rank websites, but individual website pages so even if your home page is not highly ranked, other pages on your website can get top ranking for similar topics.

Secondly, you have the opportunity to beat your opposition because you can specialise and therefore reduce the competition. This is where your choice of domain name comes in.

Normally search engines match the terms people are searching for to similar words (known as keywords) on your website to determine how relevant your website is to their searches.

However, in addition to this, the major search engines also match the relevance of your domain name to the keywords – hence in that search we just did for dolls houses – the dollshouse domain comes up first. But if you sell dolls houses, you can make your website domain more specific than that. What kind of dolls houses do you sell? Which niche in your industry do you cater to?

It is better for you to choose a more descriptive domain name, which has the effect of both limiting your target market and reducing competition. You might think it is a bad thing to reduce your target market, but this is not actually so. You might decide to call your site woodendollshouses, giantdollshouses, miniaturedollshouses etc.

Someone looking for a giant dolls house is highly unlikely to also be looking for a miniature dolls house, so targeting a more specific audience will lead to you receiving traffic that is far more interested in your sites content rather than getting visitors who pay a visit to your website and leave quickly (bounce) because your site is not relevant to their needs.

There are other factors one can optimise, so the most specific name may not always come first. But making your domain name relevant to your main topic and specialising it so that is becomes the most relevant to capture a niche is an important way to get noticed on the Internet and build your website traffic.

Fortunately, it is not all guess work to determine exactly which keywords people are actually using for searches in your particular realm. There are both free and paid for tools that will help you find which keywords people are searching for, how popular the terms are and even how many searches are being done for these keywords.

You can easily find the best keywords to base your domain name on. Since your domain name is the one thing about your website you can’t change without having to start all over again, make sure you get hold of one of these tools and do some good research before you even consider buying your domain. Then you will find it much easier to get your website to rise to the top ranks of the search engines and profit from increased website traffic.

Small Business Website Builders and London Website Builders WebITLondon help small businesses and SME’s build online success through website builders, website design, traffic building and website optimisation (SEO). Visit us for free SEO, traffic and website building resources.

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3 Tips for Picking Successful Domain Names for a New Small Business

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Picking a good domain name can be essential for an online business. Although one good domain is the same is another good domain. Having a bad domain could cost your a lot of business.

A great place to do your domain name research is InstantDomainSearch.com

A few tips on how to choose a winning domain name are:

1) Don’t use hyphens. Hyphens can kill a domain name. Unless you are using the domain name for strictly SEO purposes, having hyphens is okay.

But if you are creating your main website. The hub of your business. Having hyphens could kill your business.

For example a domain name Fix-Your-Window.com though a domain name like that is good for SEO purposes, try telling someone your domain name out loud.

It’ll go something like “hey visit our website, ‘fix hyphen your hyphen window.com’, it’s hard enough for people to remember your domain name without remembering whether there are hyphens are not.

What’s even worst if you combine hyphens, and non-hyphens in the word spacing of your domain. Such as Fix-YourWindows.com …. no one will remember it.

Though Hyphen domain can look good on a business card it is still better to have a domain without them. If you truly must have a hyphen domain, try to get the non-hyphen one as well.

2) Shorter the Better. The shorter your domain the better chance your prospects will type it in. You ever try typing in a long domain name? It is a horrible experience. And if you have a spelling mistake, sometimes you often just tell yourself “forget this”.

That’s why domain searching on Google is so popular. You know that the search term “myspace.com” is really popular on Google? I think it’s because people know if the mis-type it, Google will still bring them to the right place.

Why is Microsoft’s Hub website named MSN.com instead of Microsoft.com? Because the shorter the domain the better.

3) For a business get a .Com – Get a Dot Com if you are a business. It is more professional. Though good dot com domains are harder to come by, when a little bit of clever thinking you can get yourself a great .Com domain.

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Diamond Capital Partners Aids in Successful Acquisition of Search Engine Marketing Firm by Leading Web Service Provider

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Diamond Capital Partners Aids in Successful Acquisition of Search Engine Marketing Firm by Leading Web Service Provider
Mid-Market Investment Banking Firm, Diamond Capital Partners, Advises Search Engine Marketing Firm, MerchEngines, through its Acquisition by Hostopia.com, Inc.

Read more on PRWeb via Yahoo! News

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Building a Successful Web Hosting Business

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Building a web hosting business can be very lucrative. Just as with any business, there are certain steps that you have to take to make your business a success. You need a solid business plan in place before you do anything else.


With a web hosting business, you have to figure out if you plan to be a web hosting reseller, or if you plan to start your own hosting business from the ground up. If you are going to open a web hosting reseller business, you have to choose your hosting service provider and get your account set up. If you are going to start from scratch, you are going to have to find bandwidth to purchase and get your hosting servers set up so that you meet or exceed the quality and service offered by your competitors.


Don’t lose sight of putting together the infrastructure that you need for your business to be successful. For example, many new business owners overlook setting up the ever-important bookkeeping system as well. This can lead to both serious cash flow and tax problems.


Of course, once your business is up and running, the next thing you have to do is attract customers to your business. To succeed in web hosting, or any business, you need customers. Without customers, you have no revenue. Without revenue, you have no business.


How To Attract Customers

To attract customers to your business, the first thing that you will need is an effective website. As a hosting provider, having a top-notch web site that works flawlessly is a pre-requisite to success.


Most prospective customers who are in need of Internet-based services are going to use the Internet as their primary means of gathering information. If prospective customers visit your website and finds it unappealing, difficult to navigate, or slow to load pages, they are certainly not going to hire you to host their own sites.


As a web hosting provider, your web presence has to send a positive message about your company. It must convey to prospective customers that your company has expertise in all aspects of web development.


Designing Your Website

The field of web hosting is one in which there is a significant amount of competition. Your site should not look like a clone of one of the thousands of other websites on the Internet. Use the design of your site to establish a unique corporate and professional corporate identity for your company.


Make sure that your site is easily navigable. The design should be intuitive. As you are setting up your site map, think about what customers will be looking for when they visit your site. Create the design so that it will be very easy for customers to get what they need.


If you go to a doctor to seek help losing weight, and the doctor is seriously obese, you aren’t likely to consider that doctor to be a credible source for weight loss assistance. If a website owner comes to your site seeking a professional web hosting company and finds an amateurish looking web site, or one that is slow and hard to navigate, that site owner is going to leave because you will not seem credible to him or her.


Website Content Matters

Your website must offer specific information about the services that you offer. Prospective customers should be able to learn virtually every detail of what they need to know in order to make a purchasing decision from reading the information on your website.


Be sure to include information about the different packages that you offer on your site. Also include information about software compatibility, details of technical support, information about your billing process, and other relevant information. Of course, no matter how thorough you are when putting together information for your site, different customers are always likely to come up with unique questions from time to time. Make sure that your site content includes an easy way for customers to contact you to obtain answers to any questions they may have that are not included on your website.


The above information is the bare minimum required to have any chance at attracting customers through your website. However, to experience the greatest success with attracting customers, there are many other content techniques that can position your web hosting business as a value-added choice for your customers.


One way you can demonstrate commitment to your customers and to encourage customers to view your site and your company as a resource that can help them grow their businesses is to establish a support forum as part of your site. A forum will allow customers to interact with each other and with representatives of your business. This is a very appealing feature to many customers.


A major technique for positing your company as an expert in the area of web hosting is to post articles on your website on topics of interest to website owners. For example, people who are shopping for web hosting are likely to be interested in information about setting up shopping carts, how to be market a website properly, and tips for driving traffic to their websites.


When prospective customers find interesting and relevant content on your website, they are likely to see you as a web hosting company who both understands their situation and needs, and as one that is committed to helping its hosting clients be successful.


Ad added benefit of having article content included on your website is that having such content can actually help direct prospective customers to your site. Search engine spiders love content-rich sites, and if the articles you include on your site are written so that they incorporate sound search engine optimization (SEO) principles, they are going to help drive you to the top of relevant web searches.

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To Choose a Reliable Web Host is Imperative to Successful and Smooth Online Haul

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Expecting the best from a web host:

Amongst affordable web hosting services provided by professional web hosts, there are few who meet the requirements of a growing business concern. A web host must be practical and study the needs of its client before making a commitment. It should promote positivity and provide excellent support services and should strive to constantly upgrade its facilities and services. The most important aspect of a reliable and honest web host is its commitment to build a lasting relationship with its client.

There are a couple of factors that should be considered while hiring the services of a good web host. Apart from affordability and quality, a 24/7 support team and high speed are two important aspects of a professional web hosting service provider. Many web hosting companies also offer incentives and extras depending on the service plan selected. Some will offer a free domain with the purchase of a certain hosting plan and some will even waive a setup fee according to the service plan chosen.

Space and Bandwidth Requirements:

Before hiring web hosting services and plans one should determine the space requirements of the website. If the website consists of a horde of animations and images, then the website owner should consider having an extra space to add elements to the website. Different companies have different disk space in their servers. An owner of a large website should opt for 3000-10000 MB disk space for its online customers.

Bandwidth is also an important aspect in attracting online customers. Organizations need to be sure they have enough bandwidth to accommodate web traffic that gets attracted; otherwise a professional looking website may go down. Beware of such web hosting services that promise large bandwidth and terminate the account when the client tries to reach the bandwidth limit allotted to them. A large website owner should choose a 250 GB bandwidth.

In today’s competitive environment affordability counts and so more and more web hosting companies offer cheap hosting services.

Whether for personal or business needs, cheap webhosting services in Australia guarantee professional website designing and hosting at affordable costs. Companies offering cheap web hosting in Australia also offer money-back guarantees, script support, a free domain name and a host of other options.

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Five Features You Need for Successful Web Hosting

Friday, March 5th, 2010

So you need hosting for that great website you have planned. You did the obligatory Google search and found out there are a gazillion web hosting companies. They all are offering what you need (web hosting) and you found the price varies from free to sky’s the limit. You also found that there are a ton of features some of which you have no idea of what they are. So now what you thought was going to be an easy task has just turned into a semester of study at your local junior college. Well believe me I know what you’re going through. Through trail, error and mistake I have learned that not all web hosting is created equal. While there area ton of features and hosting plans offered by web hosting companies, there are five basics factors you will want to make sure you are getting when selecting your hosting provider.   

1. Databases
Be sure you are getting ample databases to support and expand your website. All blogging, forum, and Websites that use any form of dynamic data applications or capture user data require a database to function. Unfortunately, most shared hosting packages only offer one to five databases; this can limit your ability to expand and may not be enough to carry out the planned functions of your website. The minimum number of databases you should look for is ten. Granted you may not need that many but if you do they will be readily available without spending additional money to add on databases. Usually the higher priced hosing plans offer more databases but you should not have to opt for a more expensive plan to get 10 databases.

2. Multiple Domains
Web hosting companies usually limit the number of domains you can serve from your hosting plan. Some hosting plans, usually the lower cost or free plans, only allow one domain name per plan. If you are for sure you will only have one website then this will be of no consequence. However, if you plan on having multiple websites then you should look for a hosting plan that offers the ability to host multiple sites from a single hosting plan. A hosting plan that offers at least 5 domains is a minimum. You should be aware that the resources of your hosting server will be shared by all domains assigned to the web hosting plan. Make sure the plan you get provides ample disk space, bandwidth and databases to keep multiple sites up and running.    

3. Developer Support
Developer support is the litmus test for any Web host. You may be starting with a simple website but as time goes on many times you may want to add additional functionality or features to your site. Also when adding new websites to your hosting plan additional capabilities may be needed. This is where a hosting provider can easily make or break your plans. If your web hosting provider is limited on developer languages or web application offerings you may have to find a new hosting provider. This is something you do not want to do. Having multiple hosting accounts or hosting providers is a sure way for confusion and frustration. Most hosting companies offer various language support and misc. application support but why not get it all. Yes there are hosting providers that offer everything you will ever need and it doesn’t cost any more.
 
No matter what hosting package you are considering, make sure you are getting the most support possible. Below is a list of the most popular website development items available:

• PHP
• MySQL
• Ruby on Rails
• Python
• CGI
• Perl
• Java
• ASP.net
• Coldfusion
• Frontpage Server Extensions
• Content Managment Tools
• eCommerce Solutions
• Project Management Tools
• Blogs
• Message Board/Forum Tools
• Photo Gallery Tools
• Admin Tools
• Misc. web-site add-ons

4. Customer support
Working late at night on that website, or perhaps on the weekend (Sunday Night)? Got a deadline to get a site up and running but just ran into a problem. Perhaps you just discovered you need an additional web app or database. It can be very frustrating and sometimes costly if you cannot get customer support from your hosting company when you need it (on your schedule). Always look for a web hosting service provider that provides 24×7 customer support. That is 24 hours a day 7 days a week and I don’t mean just Email support. Email support is important and should be part of the customer support package but what you really want is phone support. Many times problems or issues need to be discussed to reach a quick resolution, passing Emails around can takes days or sometimes weeks. Your number one tool for support should be the phone, make sure your web hosting company is awake and working when you are. You will want to make sure there is an on-line knowledgebase as well. Not only is a knowledgebase good for answeering questions, it is also very usefull for use as a learning tool.  

5. Server Uptime
Your website should be up and running 24×7. However things do happen in the real world that can sometimes cause a website to go down. In spite of real world problems, your web hosting provider should offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee. With today’s internet technology there are ways to insure websites stay functional virtually every minute of every day. Don’t settle for a hosting company that cannot guarantee your website is up and running around the clock.   

Web hosting is the backbone of the success of your website. While the content of your site is vitally important, any short coming in your web hosting service is sure to translate to failure at your site. The hosting company you start with is most likely the one you will stay with, so take the time to choose the right web hosting company from the start, you’ll be glad you did.     

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First Steps to a Successful Web Hosting Business

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

What should not be forgotten is that web hosting is a business like any other; requiring the entrepreneurs to follow subsequent business ethics and practices. The number of Web Hosting business may have saturated the industry, however few have attained success. This is mainly caused by the overall attitude that a Web Hosting business is an opportunity to make a quick buck. No successful business has ever been an opportunity to make a quick buck.

Moving on, the brand strategy relies on the steps you take to stand out and differentiate yourself from the competition. We shall leave this aspect of the business to you.

The services you choose however, relies completely on your service provider. The make or brake factor relies on the service provider you choose. The first step to choosing your service provider is that you must always look for the service provider that actually develops and maintains the services and products. Registrars are at the top on the chain. Registrars provide services to resellers who either serve registrants directly or resell these services to other resellers. Business sense dictates that Registrars are the sensible choice. Singing up with Registrars means drastic cut down on support time, increased reliability and most importantly premium services.

Even before you select your service provider, there are couple of things that you should consider:

Check the efficiency of the customer support team of the service provider, in terms of how fast they respond to your query and issues. They are reachable at any point of time. To check this, you should call at odd hours and see if they easily available to listen to your queries or issues.

How reliable are the service providers. You will have to check since how long they have been in the industry. There are many good companies which provide a certain amount of uptime depending upon which offer you have chosen. For example: They may offer an uptime of 95% for say $8 and 99% uptime for $12. It is better to pay more money than have any problem. 

Check the control panel as it is the integral part, wherein you can control the functioning of the website. With a proper control panel, you can password protect directories, prevent image hotlinking, block certain IP addresses from coming to your site.

Check out the storage capacity of the server. If you will be loading the website with heavy files then you will have to check the limitation.

Check the bandwidth. There are packages which allow you to upgrade if you want to.

Check the statistics of your website. This will help you understand, which keywords were used to come to your website, the browser types, from which company the visitors are from, which page they have visited the most on your website, etc. With good statistical analysis programs, you should also be able to view Raw Access Logs for your Site, Disk Usage, Bandwidth Usage, Web Traffic Statistics, Error Logs and visitors demographics.

Email is an integral part of running a website. You will have to be expert in creating email addresses. Auto Responder, POP3 and Mail Forwarding is a must.  It is not all that difficult if you have the rest of the tools. See to it that you have full control over your email hosting or you will have to be dependent on the service provider.

Check how much you will be paying each month. There are web hosting packages that range from $4.95 to $9.95 per month, which would satisfy the basic necessities. There are websites which give out offers throughout the year. Consider & understand all the features offered by the service provider and choose a good package irrespective of the cost.            If you plan to go for a free web hosting provider, than I would say it is not a good idea. There are many issues when it comes to free web hosting service providers, in terms of availability, service, and bandwidth. And there are these pop under ads that keep popping up, each time somebody visits your website. Hence it is advised that you should not compromise on the quality for some meager amount.

If you are looking for advanced hosting features then check out for MySQL and phpMyAdmin, PostgreSQL and phpPgAdmin, PHP, Perl, CGI, Python and Tomcat. If you are just entering the world of web hosting, I would suggest that you don’t look for these advanced features.

 

A few simple but essential decisive factors that dictate the success of your Web Hosting business.

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