Why I’m Pulling my Affiliate Business from Hostgator

As the owner of a web development and SEO firm for dentists and physicians, I am very careful with which services I recommend to my clients. Without getting into the weeds about the specific issues that my clients had, the larger issue is broken promises from management at Hostgator.
Early in January (or thereabouts) the new affiliate program manager sent out an email to all of the affiliates explaining to us how there was a new affiliate regime at Hostgator, and how he is looking to reach out and work with the affiliates. I even sent him a thank you email about how the personal touch was welcoming.

Then it all hit the fan. I had a client who had a problem that we were able to resolve, but I emailed this affiliate manager that I had an URGENT problem and I never received a reply. I sent a follow-up email and never received a reply.

I spoke two Hostgator reps and explained the situation – I left two messages with them for him and I never received a reply. One representative incredulously asked me, “Since we solved the client’s problem, why do you want to talk to him?”. I explained since he made the offer of “being there” for affiliates when they needed him, then he needs to live up to his promises.

Avoid Hostgator’s Affiliate Program – In MY opinion

While all of the support that I have historically received fro Hostgator’s tech team has been excellent, and while their shared service has been reliable, I simply cannot work with a firm where management is disingenuous.

As far as I’m concerned, the one of the most important measures of a company isn’t how nice they are when they are selling you a product, but how helpful they are when you are in a jam. And that’s where Hostgator’s top management failed, — and lost my trust and with that, my business.

A; I asked Basecamp support and unfortunately the answer is no.

A: No. At this time the best thing you can do is delete your signature before you forward the email. But if anyone has any other suggestions I’m listening…

A: As of right now (01/2013) the answer is no. this cannot be done.

I asked Basecamp support the same question recently and they told me that the only implementation they currently have is to create a new To-Do list via email. You can find those instructions at the bottom right of your project and it will explain to you what content you can and cannot add to your projects via and how to do it.

A Workaround?

What I’m doing currently, because I personally like to keep task lists out of my INBOX (I’m trying for the Inbox Zero nirvana) is to take any email with a task or to-do, and forward that email into the proper Basecamp project. And then the next time I login to Basecamp, I look at the forwarded emails and I copy and paste what I need into a task.  I know it’s rough and unpolished, but it’s working for now.

What solutions do you have for adding single tasks into Basecamp?  Are you creating new lists and consolidating? Leave a comment and let us know!

A; Yes and no.

Most project management advice that I’ve seen strongly recommends keeping your personal tasks/to-do’s out of your business project management system because of privacy.  If you have a user in your organization that has access to all of your Basecamp projects — a web developer or a graphic designer, for example – then having your personal info in Basecamp isn’t a great idea.  Though with Basecamp you can naturally limit access to projects only to specific people. But if you are in a large organization — especially with a company policy on backups and data control, then I’d recommend against it.  Or at least if you want to do it, make a separate Basecamp account just for this purpose.

Now if you are a small shop or a solo developer, with limited access to others on your projects, then I don’t see it as a problem.  I’d simply create a new project for yourself “myProject: Personal” for example, and go from there.  One of the nice things about this approach is that since your Google Calendar (or other iCal calendar) is presumably synced with your Basecamp projects, you will be able to have your personal items and your business items all on one calendar.  Again if you need your personal task to be personal, then this approach won’t work in a shared environment.  But if you are a solo shop, you could do it and you would avoid the problem of having to use on PMS for business and one for personal.

So those are just my thoughts.  What are you using for personal project management?  Do you find it a problem having two different systems, or are you using Basecamp for your personal projects, as well?

A:  As far as I can tell there is no direct way to do this.  I have thus come up with two solutions:

1. Change the title of the project.  So if the project is client_Website, you can change the project title to Follow: client_Website. Personally I don’t like this solution because I have a feel for the order of my Basecamp projects and I this workaround, while viable, would distract me.  So on to suggestion #2.

2. Add a reminder in your “company project”. I’ve gone ahead in Basecamp and created a project for my company.  In that company project, I have a handful of to-do lists (which I will talk about in a dedicated post another time), but one of those is “follow-up”:. So If I send a client a task and I’m waiting for their reply, I simply go to my company project and add the “follow-up with Client ABC to my “follow-up”: to-do list.  I then assign it to me (or whoever needs to do the follow-up) and add the date that I want to do the follow-up.  It is a bit of a workaround but it works.  I could have put the follow-up into my CRM, but then I’d be dealing with two systems — which I really don’t want to do.  It’s one thing (IMHO) to have a separate project management system and a separate CRM, but I can’t have active to-do’s in both systems.  I do have certain To-Do’s in my CRM, but there are only very specific to-do’s that I put in to the CRM (which again I will discuss later on in another post).

So those are my two methods of notating a “client follow-up” in Basecamp,.  I’d love to hear what you think of these methods, and what other solutions you have come up with, so please add your comments!

Preface:

There are two bands that wireless networks use:  2.4 ghz and 5 ghz.  2.4 has been around for a long time and is reliable.  The complaint about 2.4 is that lots of devices use this band so there is potential for “congestion” on the band.  The 5 ghz band is newer and naturally has less congestion.  Many devices are not equipped to use the 5 ghz band (Macbook Pros can use it but iPhones can’t).  The complaint about the 5ghz band is that is doesn’t do as well for longer distances of signal strength.   It’s important to know that newer components that work on the 5 ghz band can “drop-down” and work on the 2.4 ghz band.

One option (that I don’t currently advise) is to have two routers.  One for the 2.4 ghz band and another one for the 5 ghz band.  I mention this fact as it will make more sense as you read down.  But clearly in a home where you have devices that work on the 2.4 ghz band, you will need to have a router that can handle this 2.4 ghz signal.

That being said, here are the three choices at Best Buy (and I’m sticking with linksys because I like linksys/cisco and I’ve used their routers for years — and I currently run two of them myself).  All three choices below allow to run a wireless network as well as plug in your wired desktop computer or other wired device.

For reference I run an older model 2.4 ghz linksys router and I’m very happy with the speed at 2.4 ghz.

1. Linksys E1200  -  this is an inexpensive router that works on the 2.4 ghz band only. It’s $50 at best buy and has great reviews.  The advantage is that is a simple router that will do the job reliably.  It will not however take advantage of the potential speed benefits of the 5 ghz band.  As you get more and more 5ghz compatilbe devices in the future, you’d need to get a 5 ghz router for the 5 ghz band.

2. Linksys 2500 -  this is a $80 router that works on both bands — 2.4 and 5 at the same time.  The idea is that you have two separate networks (one at 2.4 and one at 5 but both with this same device) and then you connect the 2.4 devices to the 2.4 network, and repeat the process for the 5 GHz-capable devices.  This router did not get good reviews at Amazon.com and it seems to be hit or miss with reliability and performance.  Thus, I cannot recommend this router.

3. Linksys E3200 – this is a $110 – $150 router (Amazon vs Best Buy) that received good reviews and can handle the 2.4 vs 5 problem.  The only reason I’d consider this model over the 2500 is because of the 2500′s mixed reviews.

Wireless Network Speed (Potential) vs Wireless Range

So ultimately it comes down to the E1200 vs the E3200.  I think the simplest and most cost-effective way to go for most home router users is the E1200.  You could setup this router simply and get everything to work on the 2.4 ghz band.  You could do a little more future-proofing, however, and  go with the E3200 and just use it in the beginning on the 2.4 band to make sure everything works well.  If then in the future you want to add a 5 ghz device, you’d just need to “turn on” the 5 ghz band on this router.   The only concern I have about this last approach is that there are reports of people having problems getting the correct devices to run on the correct network consistently.  So when you make your final decision, really consider if you will need to use the 5 Ghz band,.  For most of my clients their primary concern is range, and for this factor, 2.4 Ghz is still the way to go.

The computer gives an error message, no networks found, radio off. When I google radio off, it says something is turned off on the router, however, everyone else’s computers in the house work including a netbook, two laptops and a desktop.

Another thing I noticed, it says No Networks found, and the bar List Networks is grayed out as unavailable. It used to detect the neighbors networks, and now it’s finding nothing. I at least can get access to the Internet with my air card, but I like to save those minutes for when I am mobile, which is going to increase in the next month or two as I enroll in an on line course. Thanks for your help! PS (and YES, my wireless button is in the ON position ))))))

A:  This sounds strange.   But let’s work it out.  It’s possible that your built-in wi-fi card in your laptop is having a problem — but this is rare.  Please answer the following quetsions below as YES/NO so we can go forward.

1. Are you the only person (your laptop) the only device in the house that is having problems connecting wirlessly to the home network?

2. Are you able to connect your laptop via wi-fi  (not the cell carrier aircard) to anywhere else?  E.g. if you go to a store that has free wi-fi, can you connect?

A: If by your question you mean, .”Can my wife and I share an iPad and access both of our Facebook accounts on the same device?” then the practical answer is no.  Unfortunately the iPad was not designed to be a multi-user device.

BUT – what you might be able to do — and I haven’t tested this — is to download the Facebook app for the iPad and then have you use the Facebook App to access Facebook, while your wife uses the web browser for access.  It’s not a perfect solution, but until Apple make the iPad easy to use for multiple users then this may be a workaround.

Good luck!

But What if You Don’t Have the .PDF Printer Installed?

If you don’t have the .PDF printer installed or you don’t have Acrobat Standard or Pro, then here’s what you can do.

1. Select just the content of the page you want.
2. Hit CTRL+C to copy the content to the clipboard.
3. Create a new document in Word. (CTRL+N) and paste (CTRL+V) the content into the new document.
4. Now simply save the file as a .PDF:  File -> Save As -> and under the “Save as type” dropdow select .PDF -> adjust the filename as needed -> Save.

4* Note that if you don’t have the .PDF printer installed but you DO have Acrobat Standard or Pro installed, you can use the “Save As PDF” selection in the File tab.